Two Summer Things
Last summer I saved two items to share with you, and just today, they turned up in a stack of paper. Yep, that’s how far behind I am in filing stuff. Who wants to sort papers when one could be knitting or crocheting?!
Thing One is Knit Picks’s sock yarn dye blanks. If you love multicolor, variegated sock yarn, but want the stripes on your socks to match, this is for you!
You buy the blank, which is an un-dyed machine-knit piece of knitting, made with the yarn doubled. You dye the piece using the step-by-step instructions provided by Knit Picks. Because the yarn is double, you end up with two lengths of yarn that are identically dyed. Then you knit your two socks as you unravel the dyed sock blank. They match!
It’s the most clever knitting-related product I have seen in a long, long time, and Knit Picks is where I saw it first.
Thing Two regards Dr. Michael DeBakey, the famous heart surgeon, who died last summer. Thomas Kleinworth wrote an article about his memories of Dr. DeBakey in the July 21, 2008 issue of the Austin American-Statesman. As a boy, Dr. DeBakey learned how to knit, crochet, and sew from his mother. Kleinworth guesses that the young Michael DeBakey asked his mother to teach him, adding that he had an “unquenchable thirst for knowledge.”
Just another wildly successful person who knits and crochets! Don’t they all? Well, if they don’t, they should.
Thanks to my dad for bringing this to my attention.
Sunflower Crochet Along in January
Crocheters around the world are enjoying Crochet Bouquet, and I am thrilled! Now I’m having to rethink some of my crochet-along strategies. For instance, this post was going to start with something about bringing sunshine into the cold, wintry month of January. Now that so many of my readers live in the summery Southern Hemisphere, we’ll have to try something different.
How about this for a global opening?–
Let’s bring some sunshine into our homes this month with a Sunflower Crochet Along!
Two different sunflowers are on offer in Crochet Bouquet, both for intermediate-skill crocheters:
- The Sunflower (pages 71-72) looks lush and complicated, but it’s just the same petals over and over.
- Sunflower-on-a-Grid (pages 38-39) is a stylized flower with a filet center, which you can decorate with beads or buttons, or leave plain.
If you decide to use the crochet along button above on your blog or web site, please link it to this post.
Thanks!
Happy Statehood to Kansas, USA, whose State Flower is the Sunflower!
Austin for the Holidays
We started our Holidays with a trip to Austin, where our main purpose was to go to the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar. It used to be fun and quirky. It still is! Hurray! It is a little more upscale these days.
Our favorite place was a rock and mineral shop, just east of I-35. It served the scientist with lots of fossils and beautiful rock specimens. It served the mystic with singing bowls and healing crystals.
Ella was loading a bag with polished rocks, when one of the staff said, “Do you know that crystals have healing power?” He showed Ella how to hold the quartz in her hand and feel its vibrations. Even my geologist husband said, “Quartz does have some weird electrical characteristics.”
Eva found a sweater stone for me there. It’s not what you think! It’s a piece of rhodochrosite. I’ve always said my pink Seveness cardigan has the look of rhodochrosite. Amazing! I’m going to start taking it to workshops with me.
We wandered to South Congress Avenue, where we stopped by Austin Art Glass. This was painted on the side of the building. It reminded me of yarn, which was good, because we didn’t have time to visit Hill Country Weavers. Aww shucks…I guess we’ll have to make another trip to Austin.
Crocheted Ribbon Rose Tutorial
The Artful Ribbon by Candace Kling is gasp-worthily beautiful and full of good advice about making flowers and greenery with ribbons. I recommend it highly for the excellent instructions and diagrams as well as for the inspiration.
The Artful Ribbon inspired the crocheted Ribbon Roses on pages 67-68 of Crochet Bouquet. My thinking was that a ribbon rose is made from a long, skinny piece of fabric, so why not make a ribbon rose from a long, skinny piece of crochet?!
A member of our Crochet Bouquet Crochet Along group on Ravelry asked for help in constructing the rose, so here are some step-by-step photos:
Follow the instructions on page 67 or 68 of Crochet Bouquet to make the long, thin crocheted ribbon. Fold one end down at a 45-degree angle and tack it at the base of the crocheted strip.
Weave a length of yarn in and out of the base of the crocheted strip. The pattern recommends using a long end of yarn from the crochet. In this example, I used a contrasting thread, so you could see it better. Notice how the weaving is widely-spaced, going in at the base of one hdc, and out at the next one.
Wind the strip around the folded end to make a tightly-rolled bud. Tack the layers in place at the bottom of the roll.
Tighten the thread you wove through the base of the strip, to create gathers.
Arrange the gathers around the central roll. Tightening or loosening the gathers will give different effects. I like to loosen the gathers close to the center, and tighten them around the edges.
Tack the gathers in place at the bottom of the flower. Bring the end of the crocheted strip under the edge of the gathers (see the white arrow in the picture), and tack in place.
Even after you tack them, you can rearrange the gathers to some extent.
If desired, add a leaf. The one shown here is the Corrugated Leaf.
Red Sweater Renovation, Phase I: Darts
My red cardigan, finished in 2005 was a disappointment, because the chenille I used began to worm. That means that it ooched itself out in long, twisty loops. Several people gave me hints for working with chenille more successfully–thank you!
When the chenille worms came out, the cardigan got shorter. It was too wide in the front for some reason. I didn’t really like the buttons–complain, complain, complain!
After last winter, it looked so bad, I decided to do a remodel job on it. Here was the plan.
- Make a couple of darts in the front
- Knit a peplum with pleats in it
- Sew the front opening shut. (I always pulled it over my head anyway.)
- Replace old buttons
- Pull the chenille worms to the back and tack them down with sewing thread.
And I’ve already started. To place the darts, I put the cardigan on inside-out. Then I pinched the excess fabric in and pinned it. Using a contrasting yarn, I did a running stitch along the pin-line, so I could see the lines easily.
Then I machine sewed a line of stitching about 1/4″ inside the marked lines, and another line of stitching just inside that. I cut away the excess fabric, then used a mattress stitch to sew the darts.
Now I’m working on the peplum. The pleats are going to look so good! Here it is, when I was picking up stitches to knit the peplum down. The dart is visible as a dark line.
Crocheted Roses Cape Still in Progress
The Pansy Poncho and various other projects and obligations conspired to throw off my schedule for finishing the Roses Cape.
Late in October, I finally made a fabric cape template from a commercial pattern. Then I spread it out on the living room floor and started arranging the crocheted flowers on it.
Whenever we sat down to watch football games, I hauled everything out and arranged flowers. Last Wednesday, the light began to appear at the end of the tunnel. Here it is on the dining room table at my parents’ house, where the light is fantastic. See all the white dots in the photo? They’re safety pins.
Not long after the second photo was taken, I finished arranging the flowers and pinning them in place. My calculations were a little off on the number of roses–there are about twenty left over. I used every single leaf, and there are only nine or ten extra blue flowers. All in all that’s pretty good! At least I didn’t have to crochet any more leaves or flowers.
Now to sew them all together! That will take a while, but I think I can wear this to Stitches West, at the end of February.
Reader Project: A Fern Plate
Lisa Elbertsen, a potter and crocheter from British Columbia, wrote the following to our Crochet Bouquet Along group on Ravelry:
“I do pottery and I am always trying to imprint my clay with live ferns. It usually works but it needs to be quite deep into the clay as by the time it is fired and glazed, you can’t always see the fern that well. I also can only use one fern at a time as they usually break after one use BUT a crocheted fern in acrylic yarn won’t!”
Lisa’s experiments with the crocheted fern were intriguing, so I asked her to make a piece for me. She created this beautiful plate, which is imprinted with a crocheted Fern Leaf from Crochet Bouquet. The plate arrived in the mail last week, and I am a very proud owner.
I hope you’ll visit Lisa Elbertsen’s web site to see more of her pottery designs, like tea pots, lanterns, bird houses, and pitchers. Lisa also lists craft shows and exhibitions where her pottery and crochet pieces are for sale.
Crochet Christmas Trees
Ella and I had a great time sorting through buttons to find enough to make this crocheted Christmas tree mat. The tree is a simple variation on the Fern pattern from Crochet Bouquet. Find more complete instructions here.
The mat is Shaggy Plush Felt by Kunin. The edges were wavy, and I knew it would need some kind of trim. While we were playing with buttons, I noticed how good the cream-colored buttons looked on the felt. There were plenty to trim two mats. And now our button jar is just full, instead of chock-full.
Ella wanted to make a mat, too. We found a scrap of felt, a crocheted leaf, and cute buttons for her to use. We sat together and sewed. It was fun!
Pink Sweater and TextileFusion Revelation
Ella’s cardigan may be finished before winter is over. I hope so. I had to slow down for a while due to badly tingling hands. It’s best not to push the knitting with numb fingers. But one sleeve is finished and I started the second one. The end is in sight!
Here’s a close-up of the Wheat Ear Rib stitch from Barbara Walker’s A Treasury of Knitting Patterns. I simply added several stitches between the Wheat Ears. It’s an odd little stitch, because you get the feeling it’s off by one. But it isn’t! The two-stitch rib shifts back and forth, depending on which side you are knitting on. So it takes up three stitches, total. It’s easier to see on the wrong side of the work, so I’ll scan the wrong side and post it next time.
* * *
When I came up with the name TextileFusion, it meant using lots of textile techniques and materials together. It took me a while to tumble to this fact (it takes me a while to tumble to lots of things), but TextileFusion includes writing!
I’ve written about textiles and related subjects since 1990. Mostly I write about things I make. For a while now, I have wanted to expand my writing to include books and articles for children. Last summer I took the big step of going to the Highlights Foundation Children’s Writers Workshop. I learned a lot (and bought yarn, too).
Right now, I am writing two stories to enter in the Writers’ League of Texas Manuscript Contest. Writing takes time, and it’s hard for me to put down the yarn and needles to sit at the computer and type. But I’m doing it, slowly and surely, with the encouragement of my family and the invaluable help of the young cats who check on me when I’m working at night. The deadline is the first week in March.
Don’t worry. My main characters are definitely of the fiber persuasion!
Corrugated Leaf Poinsettia
Corrugated Leaves from Crochet Bouquet make a good-looking poinsettia for a Christmas table mat. I used only five leaves. Seven red leaves will give you a much fuller poinsettia.
A fuller seven-leaved poinsettia looks good with a couple of green leaves tucked behind the red. With only five leaves, a green leaf overwhelms the red flower. That’s why I just suggested leaves with green buttons.
Crocheted Poinsettia Table Mat
You will need:
- Crochet Bouquet
- DK weight yarn, bright red and a darker red
- A package of Kunin’s Shaggy Plush Felt, cream color
- Sewing thread and needle, pins
- Five small yellow buttons and five green buttons
- Trim for edges of felt, like gold braid, rick-rack, buttons (as shown)
- With bright red yarn, crochet three Corrugated Leaves (pages 109-110 of Crochet Bouquet), with three points along each side. Make a stem with ch4, sl st in 2nd ch from hook and in remaining chain. Finish with a needle join to the base of the leaf.
- Make two more leaves with the darker red yarn. Weave in ends on all the leaves.
- Cut the felt in half to make two pieces approximately 17-1/2 x 11-1/2″.
- Pin the leaves in an uneven star arrangement, with stems toward the center, leaving space in the middle for the yellow buttons.
- When you’re pleased with the leaves, sew them in place. Sew the yellow buttons in the center of the leaf arrangement as shown in photo.
- Sew a green button between each leaf pair, as shown.
- Add trim around edges of felt.
