Moving In to the Earthen House
We were still putting away tools and straightening the building site after our Labor Day work session, when someone moved in to our new house. She made herself right at home, making a home in our new home!
It’s fun to watch these bluish black wasps dig in the ground. The dirt just flies out behind them. They work diligently and they can move a lot of dirt in a hurry. We can’t tell if they’re looking for food or making homes for their little ones. I think ours was making a nest. She bored herself a nice little cave in a spot where the mud was still soft.
Hmm. I wonder if our little wasp is eligible for a new homeowner tax rebate? She did move in before September 30. But wasps can’t write, so she probably didn’t have a contract in place before May 1st. She may not even have been born before May 1st. Oh well. What use would a wasp have for $8,000 anyway?
September Wall Building
September and our northwest wall started about the same time. See the tab that sticks away from the wall, behind the small pallet of bricks? It is one side of a divider-wall that will join its larger counterpart over an arch later on.
My brothers Eric and Van and Van’s wife Kathy were in town over the Labor Day weekend, so we had a family work session.
Van drove the tractor as Eric and Eva loaded broken blocks and leftovers from cut blocks. Van hauled them to our big dirt pile, where they eventually break down. Driving over them with the tractor helps. So does rain.
Once the broken bricks were gone, we worked on walls. Here, Van and Eva have finished laying the outside part of the wall. It takes the longest, because we have to line all the bricks up to a mason’s string in order to keep the wall straight. (Or in our case, straight-er.)
Van also mixed slurry for us. This mix of dirt, sand, and water is the consistency of thin pudding. It makes the most fabulous noises when you pour it into a bucket. Gloop–gloop!
Here, Kathy and Eva discuss how best to place bricks. We try to avoid having too many seams in the same place, even though the bricks are interlocked down the middle of the wall.
Later, as the dirt from cut and crumbling bricks and slurry drips piled up, Kathy valiantly swept the work area. Keeping an earthen block building site clean is very, very difficult.
Eric and Eva had great fun squishing mud slurry between bricks. You’re supposed to lay the brick in the slurry, then shove it against the previous brick so that the slurry fills the space between them. It often splatters up, much to Eric’s chagrin, when he got an eyeful of slurry.
Most of the time, the slurry just splatters everywhere else, especially onto Eva! Little did she know that she was inspiring her young cousin, Alanna.
After seeing a photo of muddy Eva, Alanna asked, “Will I be able to help build the house when we visit?” The lure of mud is very strong.
Meanwhile, across the way, Charles and Alex put another layer of lime plaster on the well-house. They also plastered the inside with dirt, sand, and mud. It is a most beautiful, hand-made building, and we are very proud of it.
Denim Jacket with Crocheted Flowers and Leaves
Here’s a project that uses the free Frilly Target Flower pattern from the last post plus the Scallop-Edge Leaf from Crochet Bouquet.
To make the flowers and leaves, I used Louet’s Euroflax Sport, a 100% linen yarn. Linen has a beautiful texture for knitting and crochet. You can use any yarn you want to decorate a jacket, though a smooth yarn will show the details of the crochet better.
You Will Need
- 3 colors of fine weight (2) yarn. Coordinate leaf and petal colors as in photo or as desired.
- Hook: 3.5mm/E-4, or size to give a firm gauge
- Purchased jeans jacket
- Sewing needle and matching thread
- Pins
Instructions
- Crochet the large and medium versions of the Frilly Target Flowers (see the blog post just before this one), changing colors after each picot round as shown in photograph.
- Crochet two Scallop-Edge Leaves (pages 116-117 of Crochet Bouquet), needle-join Rnd 2, and then change color for the scallop round. Make a stem about eight chain stitches long.
- Make one long and one short stem for the flowers as follows: chain desired length, then sl st in each ch. Weave in all ends.
- Arrange the flowers, leaves, and stems on the jacket, using photograph as a guide. Pin and sew them in place.
The project shown here was created with Louet’s Euroflax Sport, 100% Wet Spun Linen, 3.5oz/100g = 270yd/247m per skein.
Free Crochet Pattern for Frilly Target Flower
I designed the Frilly Target Flower and its variations for Crochet Bouquet. The flower didn’t make it into the book, but it’s too pretty to keep to myself. So here are the instructions.
Medium and large versions have picot frills, which you may choose either to crochet or to leave off completely. Consult your copy of Crochet Bouquet to see pictures of the needle-join; written instructions for the needle join are at the end of this post.
Frilly Target Flower
Finished Measurements
Large Frilly Target worked in medium weight (4) yarn using G or H hook for a firm gauge: 6 1/2″/16.5cm diameter
You Will Need
1 or more colors of yarn of similar weight; you can use yarn scraps or yarn from your stash
Hook: Appropriate size hook to achieve a firm gauge with selected yarn
Gauge
Work with a firm gauge to help the flower hold its shape. You may need to experiment a little.
Pattern Notes
- The instructions are written to change colors after each round of picots. Even if you do not want to change colors, cut the yarn and needle-join the picot round for the best looking flowers.
- For large Frilly Target, work all rounds of instructions.
- For medium Frilly Target, work Rnds 1 through 4, then Rnds 7 and 8.
- For a smooth center, omit picot Rnds 2 and 4.
- If you prefer not to change colors, you may join with a slip stitch at the end of a round, then ch 3 to take the place of the first dc.
- Picot-only variation: Work Rnds 1 through 6 only.
- Picot (picot) = ch 3, sc into 3rd ch from hook.
Ch 6; join with sl st in first ch to form a ring.
Rnd 1: Ch 3 (counts as first dc), work 15 dc in ring; join with sl st in top of beginning ch-3 (16 dc).
Rnd 2 (optional): Working in front loops only, *picot, skip next st, sl st in next st; repeat from * 7 more times; needle-join to first st (8 picots).
Rnd 3: Working in back loops only of Rnd 1, join next color with dc in first st, (2 dc in next 3 sts, dc in next st) 3 times, 2 dc in next 3 sts; join with sl st in first dc (28 sts).
Rnd 4 (optional): Working in front loops only, *picot, skip next st, sl st in next st; repeat from * around more times; needle-join to first st (14 picots).
Rnd 5: Working in back loops only of Rnd 3, join next color with dc in first st, 2 dc in next st, (dc in next st, 2 dc in next st) 5 times, 2 dc in next 2 sts, (dc in next st, 2 dc in next st) 6 times, 2 dc in next 2 sts; join with sl st in first dc (44 sts).
Rnd 6 (optional): Working in front loops only, *picot, skip next st, sl st in next st; repeat from * around more times; needle-join to first st (22 picots).
Rnd 7: Working in back loops only of Rnd 5, join next color with sc in first st, ch 5, skip next 3 sts, *sc in next st, ch 5, skip next 3 sts; repeat from * around; join with sl st in first sc (11 ch-5 space).
Note: The single crochet stitches of Rnd 7 serve as anchor stitches for Rnd 8.
Rnd 8: Ch 1, (sc, hdc, 4 dc, hdc, sc) in next ch-5 space, ch 1, sl st around next sc (anchor st), *ch 1, (sc, hdc, 4 dc, hdc, sc) in next ch-5 space, ch 1, sl st around next sc (anchor st); repeat from * around. Fasten off.
Finishing
Weave in all yarn ends.
To needle-join:
When you are finished with the last stitch of a round, do not remove needle from the last loop. Cut the yarn, leaving a 4″ end. Pull the hook straight up from the last stitch, so the end of the last loop comes free of the stitch. Thread the yarn end into a tapestry needle.
When you look at the tops of the stitches of the round, they look like a series of “v”s growing out of each other. Find the “v” at the top of the first stitch of the round. With your needle and thread, you will follow the course of this “v” under the threads of the next “v” and back to the top and down into the last stitch.
Here goes:
Following the “v” at the top of the first stitch, Insert the needle from front to back under the top of the second stitch of the round. Pull gently to tighten.
Following the “v” thread of the first stitch, insert the needle into the top of the first stitch. Continuing with your needle, find the loops where your yarn end emerges from the last stitch. Insert the needle back into those loops. Pull gently to tighten. Weave in the thread end at the back of the work.
Earthen Walls Rising in August
Ella built this entire earthen block castle in one morning. Not only that, she made a mud queen, mud guards, and a mud chicken to run around the castle grounds.
Our house is progressing slightly slower.
At the beginning of August, we started the second of our two inside earthen walls. Here it is, with two layers of brick.
By the end of the month, the inner wall, plus the south and west walls it attaches to, were about five and a half feet tall. I can walk under our mason’s string without having to duck, which is a good thing for the string and me. We can see actual rooms now. Hurray!
The walls are complete with electrical outlet boxes and a switch box. So far, we’ve only marked the spaces where the windows will be. Before we can go any further on the window walls, we have to make up our minds which brand of windows we want. Then we’ll make wooden frames for the rough openings and lay brick right up to the edges of the frames.
Our roof sits on steel beams which are embedded in the walls. To give the beams room to move, which they will in a stiff wind, we devised this chamfered corner treatment. There’s quite a bit of creative brick-chopping involved. You know, triangular pieces and such.
Every now and then someone asks, “How many bricks are you going to need to build this house?”
I don’t know. I’m trying to avoid knowing. I’m afraid that knowing the enormous number of bricks we need will discourage me. For now, it’s better to make bricks, build walls until we run out, and then make bricks again.
We’ve made enough bricks now to have perfected our block-making routine. The AECT block-making machine sits next to the house. Its conveyors go onto the front porch. We have about a dozen pallets arranged on the slab.
Jerry loads the hopper with dirt, using my dad’s little tractor. The machine makes about 300 blocks per hour, which keeps Jerry and the tractor pretty busy.
The machine keeps three brick stackers busy, too. We measure each block as it comes out, then carry that 40-pound rascal to a pallet with other blocks of its size. Given the choice to sort now or sort later, we found that sorting now saves a lot of time and muscle. Here, Alex and Eva are ferrying bricks to their proper pallets.
After a morning of block-making, we can truthfully say, “We made a ton of bricks!”
Circumnavigating to Dallas in January
Last time I went to the Dallas Hand Knitters Guild, several knitters showed off their finished Circumnavigated Cardigans. Medrith Glover wrote the pattern for any gauge and any size. She guides the knitter through calculations and interesting construction techniques. When you’re done with the Circumnavigated Cardigan, all you have to do is weave in your yarns ends! No sewing required! All the bindings and ribbings and other details are taken care of as you knit.
I had to try it for myself. It took me a little longer to work out some of the details, because instead of making it with just one yarn, I decided to use the Seveness color technique. It looks very rich, with many shades of brown and orange highlights.
Finally I got to the point of joining the saddle shoulders, and was eager to pick up stitches for the sleeves, when I had to move on to some other, more urgent project.
But now the Seveness Circumnavigated Cardigan is on the schedule again. It must be finished for show-and-tell at the January 4, 2011 meeting of DHKG.
Why? Because I’ll be speaking at that meeting, and even the speaker is encouraged to show and tell.
My talk will be “Designing for Knitting: 2% Inspiration, 98% Hard Work,” in keeping with their theme for 2010, which focuses on knitting design, from vision to needles to fabulous garment. Check the DHKG website for further information.
Mud on the Walls
“All right, guys,” said my cousin Jerry, “it’s time for a pie run.”
“Yay!” said Eva, clapping her hands. “I love pie!”
Poor girl. She soon found out that Jerry wanted them to pick up the cow patties from our dirt pile, so we wouldn’t have smelly bricks. This was our dirt pile at the beginning of August. It’s much smaller now.
We don’t want cow manure in our bricks, but plaster is another matter. People have been using animal hair and manure to add fiber to plaster for many centuries.
Ew. Sounds yucky. We may try it.
After our first plaster layer on the well house failed, we conducted a plaster experiment. We mixed up different proportions of sand and dirt. Some of the mixtures included chopped hay.
Photo 1 was our dirt-only mixture, just like we used on the well-house. No surprises there. It cracked and curled away from the brick like the mud plaster on the well-house did.
Photo 2 is the mortar mix we use to glue the bricks together (3 parts dirt to one part sand). It looks alright.
Our favorite was Photo 3, two parts sand, one part dirt. It was so smooth and pretty. About the fourth day after we plastered the test bricks, we came to work to find all but one sad little corner of the plaster layer fallen to the floor, having come away from the brick as clean as you please.
Two parts sand, one part dirt, and one part hay looked good and stuck to the brick, as you see in Photo 4. We went with that for plastering the inside of the well house. We may use it inside the house, too. It won’t hold up to rain. We hope there won’t be any rain falling inside the well house.
Another Week of Progress on the Earthen House
Warning! If you build a house with dirt, you’re bound to get dirty!
This is Eva after a morning of shifting newly-pressed blocks off of the block machine. All of us brick-movers were covered with fine grit. Two good things about being so dirty: your teeth and eyes look very bright, and showering makes you feel especially great.
After we set up and poured a reinforced concrete bond beam around the top of our well house, Jerry, Bobby, and Alex spent an afternoon in the hot, hot sun making its roof. We were all very proud of our accomplishment.
But did you notice that the mud plaster is artfully flaking off of the building? We learned from experience that our particular dirt plus water alone do not make good plaster. Eva, my sister-in-law Kathy, and I chipped the rest of the mud plaster away to prepare for a layer of lime plaster. I liked the crunch of mud plaster under my feet. We’ll recycle the dirt.
We worked on the inner earthen wall of the house until it was 9 feet and 4 inches tall (2.85 meters). It will join to the outer wall with an arch. But since the outer wall isn’t ready yet, we built as much of the inner wall as we could, which is why the bricks step back.
We’re going to start building the outer walls next, so Eva, Kathy, and I prepped the stem walls with primer and rubbery roof mastic. It forms a vapor barrier between the foundation and the earthen blocks. Here’s Firewheel making sure I don’t miss any spots.
What has Ella been doing all this time? She spends a lot of time at Oma and Granddad’s house. And she has started baking. She reads the recipe, preheats the oven, measures, and mixes all on her own. I’m allowed to get ingredients from high shelves and place items in the oven.
“Mom, did you ever make muffins and stuff?” she asked.
“I started baking stuff when I was about….” I had to think a minute. “About nine or ten years old,” I finished.
Ella smiled big. “Yes!!” she said. She’s only seven.
Well, Well, Well Houses
To practice our earthen brick-laying and plastering technique, we built a well-house. Our rock foundation, about 5 x 7 feet on the inside, rests on top of a concrete foundation that we dug by hand.
The first layer of earthen block is always the hardest to lay, because you have to line up and level each block. It’s not so easy to do when your foundation was made by amateur stone masons. That would be me, my nephew Bobby, my daughter Eva, and her friend, Alex.
We prevailed in the end, and built the walls up to the point where we wanted an arch-shaped opening. The arch form is two plywood semicircles. Charles led the arch construction. The crew was reluctant to put their faces in the photo, so their t-shirts immortalized here in the picture of the finished arch.
Shaping and then laying blocks around the arch was a challenge. But again we prevailed. We put up the first of several plaster layers. Next week my cousin Jerry will pour a bond-beam (reinforced concrete) on top of the walls, and then he’ll build the well-house a roof.
As all this was going on, welding guys were putting up our house roof. The frame made it feel so much more like a house. A short week later, the roof was finished. It was Jerry’s idea to build the roof first, so we could work in the shade and so our earthen walls would be protected from rain.
We moved in as soon as it was done—you know, our water jug, our lawn-chairs, and the hundreds of bricks we made earlier in the week. Re-stacking the many 40-pound bricks wore us out in a hurry.
Our big moment came last Friday afternoon, when we laid the first earthen block on the house. Minutes later, the new roof came in handy during a downpour that lasted, oh, about four minutes. My Dad and our dog, Firewheel, enjoyed dry seating as the rain dripped from the roof .
Judi & Co. ‘Cordé’ on a Handbag
Judi & Co.’s lustrous Cordé (100% rayon wrapped around a cotton core) gives stunning texture and definition to crochet stitches. It comes in many color-ways, but this one in particular makes me think of raspberry chocolate cream. Apparently the folks at Judi & Co. were thinking along the same lines, because it is called “Cherry Bon Bon.”
I used a little over one hank of Cordé to embellish this handbag. I made flower fabric (read more about how to make it here), using flowers and leaves from Crochet Bouquet:
- Oval Center Rose (page 28)
- Compound Leaf (page 107) with Round Leaflet (specific instructions on page 108)
- Corrugated Leaf with three points on each side (page 109)
- With Simple Fives (page 33) and smaller Corrugated Leaves to fill in the spaces.
Basically, I made a template the same size as the handbag, arranged the motifs to fit the space, sewed them together with sewing thread, and then hand-sewed them onto the handbag. I sewed all around the edges of the flower fabric piece, and then tacked it at strategic points to keep it from sagging.
Judi & Co. carries over 30 different ribbon styles in dozens of color-ways. Most of the ribbons are great for crochet. I also like to crochet their solid and multicolor raffia-like yarn.