Reader Project
Susan, who blogs at humblethreads loved the idea of decorating greeting cards with crocheted flowers from Crochet Bouquet!
She made this one as a thank-you note for her daughter’s swimming teacher. She crocheted “Petal Arches,” “Large Fancy Five,” “Small One-Row Leaf,” and a couple of “Millefiori” from embroidery floss. Floss is a great choice for such small motifs, because of its wide range of colors.
After experimenting quite a bit, Susan settled on this attractive arrangement. On the inside of the card, she stamped “Thank You” with a rubber stamp from Michaels.
Susan has several other creative projects in the queue, including a crocheted flower bouquet, which she will put into a beautiful carved frame, and a bulletin board ‘picture’ which features changing combinations of flowers around the edge.
Watch this space for more Crochet Bouquet Reader Projects.
Seamless Argyle Sock Survivors
Here is this year’s “Argyle Sock in the Round” class from Stitches East. We not only survived the grueling workshop, we triumphed! Lots of participants finished knitting their sample sock. Others came very close.
In response to requests from people in other seamless argyle workshops, I made the sample sock smaller, so knitters would have a better chance of finishing. This was a fairly major alteration in my handout, so there were bound to be mistakes. The Stitches East sock-knitters found them for me. Future classes will benefit.
These are some of the finished sock samples. They’re so good!
Flowery Gifts Feature in November Crochet Along
Personalize the gifts you give this Holiday Season with crocheted flowers from Crochet Bouquet! Flowery gifts are the focus of our Crochet Bouquet Crochet-Along for November and December 2008.
Your job, if you would like to join in, is to embellish a purchased or hand-made gift with a crocheted flower.
Remember to share your creations in our Crochet Along groups on Yahoo or Ravelry or in the comments to this blog. (You can use html to insert a photo into a comment.)
I hope the handbag and slippers you see here will give you some ideas.
Rose Handbag
You will need
- Crochet Bouquet
- Metallic yarn, like Twilley’s Goldfingering (available at herrschners.com)
- 3.5 mm crochet hook (size E US), or size needed for a firm gauge
- Purchased handbag
- Sewing needle and thread
- Crochet two Shelly Roses (page 68) and two Corrugated Leaves (pages 109–110).
- Arrange the flowers and leaves onto the handbag. Sew them in place.
Luxurious Slippers
You will need
- Crochet Bouquet
- Super Fine weight (1) yarn, very soft. I used Jojoland International’s 100% cashmere.
- 3.5 mm crochet hook (size E US) or size needed for a firm gauge
- One pair plush terry cloth slippers
- 12 oblong cultured pearls
- Sewing needle and thread
- Beading needle and pins
- Crochet two each:
Large Sweetheart Rose (pages 93-94)
Small One-Row Leaf with One Leaflet Pair (page 120)
Small One-Row Leaf with Two Leaflet Pairs (page 121) - Arrange flowers and leaves on each slipper, using the photo as a guide. Pin and sew in place. Sew a pearl above each leaflet as in photo.
Thanks!
Handmade Halloween
“Mom, what should I be for Halloween this year?” asked Eva.
“I’ve always thought the Patchwork Girl of Oz would be a fun costume to make,” I said.
We love all the books about Oz, more than a dozen in all, written by L. Frank Baum. One of the many interesting characters in the Land of Oz is the Patchwork Girl. Her name is Scraps, and she was made and brought to life by a woman in some remote corner of Oz, who didn’t know that Ozma, the rightful ruler of Oz, had banned the practice of magic for everyone except herself and Glinda the Good Sorceress.
Eva quickly agreed with me, remembering her success with patchwork last summer. We couldn’t find our copy of The Patchwork Girl of Oz, but we did find several pictures of her online and in a wonderful book we have called All Things Oz.
Eva made a great big piece of patchwork and I turned it into a skirt. We had fun shopping for crazy socks and button-boots. We used the leftover patchwork to decorate a thrift-store shirt.
Most people didn’t instantly recognize the Patchwork Girl, so Eva spent a lot of time explaining. She didn’t mind. Here she is with Ella, the Queen Bee. I made Ella’s costume for Eva when she was six or seven years old.
Unfortunately, their little sister wasn’t able to come. It’s difficult to go trick-or-treating when your body is a clothes hamper. She’s a bit air-headed, as you can see from the photo. Little Sister is Ella’s creation. Charles and I don’t mind having another daughter in the house, especially one that is so quiet.
Wrapping Up Taos
Here are a few more things about our trip to the Taos Wool Festival.
This is the rug yarn I bought from Liesel Orend of Earth Arts. Liesel’s yarns are dyed with indigo, cedar, sage, cochenille, madder, and other natural dyestuffs.
Ellen of Ellen’s Wooly Wonders continues to produce realistic and whimsical knitted designs, like this basket of knitted cactus with a knitted lizard. My photo doesn’t do it justice. It’s much nicer in real life. Ellen designed a knitted wall-hanging of a desert mountain, which I hope you’ll check out here (better photo of the cactus basket, too). From a distance, the wall-hanging looks like a photo.
The Yarn Shop on Bent Street is under new ownership. I went in to have a look around and to promote Crochet Bouquet. The owner, who is called Granny G, said, “As you can see, I don’t have many books in this store, because I’d rather encourage people to design their own patterns.”
Wow! I never thought I would hear a yarn shop owner say something like that! It made me very glad. I replied, “They can design their own patterns, and then decorate them with crocheted flowers from my book.” She bought two copies.
Granny G wrote and narrated a CD called 7 Lazy Steps: Using Chakric Energy for Self-Healing. We listened to it on the way home. Granny G describes the chakras and their attributes, then leads the listener in prayers that ask for release from habits and thoughts that keep us from enlightenment. The sound of bells separate each step. I could feel them resonating in my bones.
Granny G’s voice is joyful and full of good humor. Listening to 7 Lazy Steps is uplifting.
You can buy a copy of 7 Lazy Steps at
The Yarn Shop
120B Bent Street
Taos, New Mexico
(575) 758-9341, (877) 213-7732
Or you can order from FarOutThings.com.
The day we got home, the skies were dramatic and stormy. We missed all the rain, but saw all the glory.
Plain Pansy Poncho Places
In an earlier post on Curious and Crafty Readers (now Suzann’s regular blog–2023), I gave instructions for how to crochet a linked up trim with the Plain Pansy (pages 63-64 of Crochet Bouquet).
There are over 40 Plain Pansies in the trim of this poncho, which I finished just in time to enter into the Garment Contest at the Wool Festival at Taos, New Mexico, earlier this month.
My little poncho won second place in the “Capes, Ponchos, Ruanas” division. Hurray for Flower Power!
May I encourage you to enter your crochet work in contests, too? Contests give you incentive to finish projects, and if you win a ribbon that’s a bonus. Sure, you may not win anything, but if you go ahead and enter, at least you have a chance!
The Knitting Nest, Austin, Texas
My family lived on Slaughter Lane, which was in the country on the southern outskirts of Austin, from 1969 through about 1975. My brothers and I enjoyed wandering in the woods behind our house and walking up the hill to visit our friend Andy, who lived on a dairy.
The dairy is gone now, covered with apartments and town homes. Our part of Slaughter Lane is now Ralph Ablanedo Avenue, named after a police officer who was killed in the line of duty. And at the intersection of Cullen Lane and Slaughter, where I walked or rode by in the car many times as a kid, is–¦
A Yarn Store!!!! Oh, if my kid-self could have stepped through a wrinkle in time to see the yarn in that store! By the age of twelve, I was a confirmed knitter and crocheter. Even then I would have sighed with pleasure!
The store is The Knitting Nest. You can knit or crochet, sitting comfortably on the couches and upholstered chairs. Or you can sit at the long table and spread out your patterns and charts under the hanging lamps. I was there to sign copies of Crochet Bouquet, and I covered that table with crocheted flowers. It’s a cheery place, and Stacy, the owner, serves refreshing drinks.
Aside from its generally good selection of yarns, The Knitting Nest has a complete selection of Cascade 220 wool. Yes, you read right–every single color there is of Cascade 220. Stacy orders weekly to keep her stock current. She offers mail order to customers who live far away.
The Knitting Nest was a stop on this year’s Hill Country Yarn Crawl, and probably will be again next year. In the meantime, be sure to stop by next time you’re in South Austin.
The Knitting Nest, 160 Slaughter Ln W #200, Austin, TX 78748, (512) 291-8866.
Corrugated Leaf Tutorial
The Corrugated Leaf in Crochet Bouquet is a variation on a leaf that was used in Irish Crochet lace. It’s a little tricky at first, so here are some diagrams to help you figure it out. Once you understand how it works, you’ll be able to crank out these leaves without a second thought.
Stitch numbers and details are on pages 109-110 of Crochet Bouquet.
Start with a chain, which I’m going to call the ‘foundation chain.’
For the first row, begin by working across the foundation chain as you normally would. At the end of the foundation chain, chain 2, but DO NOT TURN.
Instead, rotate your work, so that your next stitches will be worked into the remaining loops of the foundation chain. You’ll stop short of the end, which creates the tip of the leaf. Diagram 1 shows all these words in a picture. The dot is the beginning of the foundation chain.
For the second row, chain 2, and this time turn your work so that you will be working back across the stitches you just finished. This part of the row is shown on top, in Diagram 2, Steps 1 and 2.
Once you’re back at the base of the leaf, chain 2 and rotate (Step 3 of Diagram 3). Work the rest of the row on the other side of the leaf (Step 4 of Diagram 2). The instructions have you stopping before you reach the end of the row, and this forms the points on each side of the leaf.
Repeat the second row until the leaf is just the size you want it. Each row goes on both sides of the leaf.
Leaves come in many colors, so don’t limit yourself to green. I love this red and green leaf, which didn’t make it into the book. It is made with Judi & Co.’s Hand-Dyed Moonlight (100% Rayon, 100yd/91m per spool).
Leaf Crochet-Along for October
As a child, I thought autumn was a pleasant myth. Leaves changing color? We didn’t see so much of that in Central Texas. The trees would be green, then one night the temperatures would dip below freezing, and the next day their leaves would be brown and crinkly.
To make matters even more confusing, the live oaks stayed green all winter and dropped their leaves in the spring!
Crochet Bouquet offers sixteen different leaf patterns for you to choose from. So whether the leaves in your neighborhood turn brilliant or brown, whether they fall or hang on, let’s celebrate autumn by crocheting leaves!
Taos Wool Festival 2008
Through an unforeseen scheduling conflict, I went to the Taos Wool Festival last week without my family. Luckily for me, a friend came along instead. We had a great time!
I taught two classes, which were pleasant as usual. Five people joined me for “Color Knitting Techniques.” “Crocheted Oak and Maple Leaves” was smaller, but just as good.
We spent Saturday morning at the market, where colors, textures, and eccentric clothing surrounded us. This wall of yarn was the first thing we saw of the market, and we had to take pictures. I’m glad we did, because the vendor later closed the tent flap against impending rain. The yarn is very thick with curly locks of mohair (?) spun into it–“fiber-spun” if memory serves–and it is meant for embellishment.
I bought some Navajo-churro rug wool from Liesel Orend, who is a fabulous colorist and weaver. The yarn is for a rug I plan to knit for next year’s Home Accessories contest.
And speaking of the contest, my Pansy Poncho won a red ribbon (second place) in the “Capes, Ponchos, and Ruanas” division of the Garment contest. Yippee!