Stitches from the Past
1984
This pretty pottery basket is signed “P. Murray” and dated 1984. I bought it because it had the look of thread crochet. I think Ms. Murray pressed a piece of crochet into the clay before she shaped it into a basket.
Sunnydaze, one of the Ravelry members of Crochet Bouquet Along, is also a potter. She wrote:
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!!!”
I’m eager to see her crocheted fern pottery!
s
1987
Just a few years after I bought the little basket, my future in-laws threw an engagement party for my (now) husband and me. It was a nice thing to do for us, and I knitted my mother-in-law this doily as a thank-you gift.
It is the Azalea pattern from Marianne Kinzel’s First (or Second) Book of Modern Lace Knitting. I don’t have the books here, so I’m not absolutely positive. Both books have beautiful lace patterns for tablecloths, doilies, antimacassars, and so on. It’s made of 100% linen.
I ran across it recently, as we were cleaning out their house. It has come back to me after all this time.
Mumsy Heads
Mumsy Heads
At the end of April 2007, I turned in the last of the flowers and projects for Crochet Bouquet, and I was one happy gal!
Linda Kopp, my editor and Stacey Budge, the art director at Lark Books spread out all the flowers and leaves, and believe me, there were a lot–many more than you see in the book. They arranged the flowers into chapters, and also worked out a flow of color through the book.
The upshot was that I had to re-crochet some of the flowers in different colors, which I was glad to do. The folks at Lark know what they’re doing when it comes to creating beautiful books.
Mumsy was one flower I redid. Linda said, “We want a yellow one and a white one, about 2-1/2 times as big as the earlier ones you sent.”
I went back to my notes. The earlier Mums were about 4″ across. I phoned Linda and said, “Two and a half times larger means that these new mums are going to be 10 inches across.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Okay, just checking!” I said, and got to work.
What do you do with a Mumsy that is ten inches in diameter? Use them as throw pillows? Maybe. Eva and Ella had a better solution. Hats!
Crochet Homecoming
It was a riot of green and gold last Friday night at Dublin’s homecoming football game. Girls and boys of all ages wore gorgeous mums. One girl had a crocheted mum. Yes, it was Eva!
I suggested a homecoming corsage with a crocheted mum as one of the projects in Crochet Bouquet. After a short but meaningful silence, my editor, Linda Kopp, said, “I think that’s too regional.”
“Really?” I said in a shocked tone.
Linda asked around the office. Her colleagues from New York and California said, “Huh?” Apparently, wearing big, fancy, colorful, crazy, and expensive flowers to a football game is a southern thing. Maybe only a Texas thing?
But I persevered! Instructions for how to make your own homecoming mum appear here.
If you go truly crazy buying ribbon, you might spend only half as much as you would if you bought a ready-made homecoming mum. Otherwise, I think you will save about 2/3 of the ready-made price. Also, you don’t have to crochet the flower. You can substitute a silk mum.
Homecoming Mumsy How To
Many thanks to my cousin Phyllis for showing me how to make a homecoming mum. She was appalled at how much homecoming mums cost, so she and her daughters and their dates would get together before the homecoming football game and make their own.
Their black and gold mums are way over the top, with braided streamers, fancy folded points around the rosettes, and strands of charms. When homecoming was over, the girls hung them on the walls of their rooms.
Here’s a fairly simple version. The streamers are about 30 inches long (about 75 cm). Feel free to tone it down or fancy it up! Either way, start early enough that the glitter and glue will have time to dry before the game. Give yourself at least three days.
You Will Need
- Crocheted Mum, using the “Mumsy” pattern from Crochet Bouquet. Use lightweight yarn. I used a sport weight wool to crochet five tiers of petals.
For the rosette:
- 2 yards each of a 1-1/4″ wide ribbon and a 1/2″ ribbon
For the streamers:
- 1 to 3 yards of ribbon in several different widths, in school colors
- 2 yards of ribbon around 3/8″ wide, in an accent color like black, white, gold, or silver
Some optional decorations:
- 1 to 2 yards of ribbon with footballs printed on it
- 1 to 2 yards of lightweight metallic chain or other novelty trim
- Tiny cowbells or jingle bells
Other supplies:
- Heavy card, like the card at the back of writing tablets
- Fabric glue or hot glue
- Scissors for cutting the card
- Sharp fabric scissors for cutting the ribbon
- No-fray adhesive
- Stapler
- Clothes pins
- Glitter and glue or glitter-glue
- Large safety pin
- A few inches of duct tape
- Cut ribbon streamers to the desired length. Cut a V-shaped notch at the bottom edge of the wide ribbons. Cut narrow ribbons at an angle. Carefully dab no-fray adhesive along the bottom cut edge of each ribbon.
- Use glitter glue or glue and glitter to write name, date, school name, or other words on the wide ribbons if desired. Set all these ribbons aside to dry.
- While they are drying, cut two heavy card circles that are as large as possible, without showing behind the mum. I traced about 1 inch in from the edge of the mum, then took a round plastic lid about the right size and drew around that. Using those two lines as guides, I cut out my circles.
- Cut 8 to 12 six-inch lengths of the wide and narrow ribbons you bought for the rosette. Center the narrow ribbon on top of the wide ribbon, bring the cut ends together to make a loop, and staple the ends together.
- Arrange the stapled loops around the edge of one of the card circles, to see how many you will need to go around (I used nine). The stapled ends should overlap the edge of the card by at least one inch. Place the mum on top of the arrangement to see if the spacing is correct. Adjust if necessary and trace just inside the stapled ends so you will know where to put them when you glue them on.
- Take the loops off the card. Spread glue on the card as shown in the picture, and begin placing loops in the glue. Add glue where the ends overlap. (You can use hot glue for this if you want. Be careful!) Set this aside to dry.
- When the streamers are dry, arrange them on the other card circle, so you can see how they need to be spaced. The way they show when you arrange them on a flat surface is very much how they will show when they are worn. If one ribbon is completely hidden by another, it will mostly stay that way. You’ll need to stagger them, and you may want to balance narrow with wide, balance one color with another. Keep your glittery ribbons near the top of the stack.
- Once you have the streamers the way you like them, you may want to take a digital photo and print it, so you can refer to it as you work. Otherwise, grab the tops of the ribbons between your palms and flip them over so the ones at the back will now be on top.Now start gluing the streamer tops, face-up, onto the cardboard. Begin with the streamers which are now on top of your stack. Glue the tops about halfway up the card circle. Cluster them toward the middle of the circle, and let them fan out slightly, so that they’re 6 to 8 inches wide at the bottom. Add glue as necessary.
- Clamp the glued streamer tops against the card with a couple of clothes pins. Let dry.
- When the rosette is dry, use a strip of duct tape to fasten a large safety pin near the edge of the back of the rosette as shown in the photo (the loops are glued onto the front).
- When the streamers are dry, place the card circle on the back of the rosette’s card circle, so that the pin is perpendicular to the streamers (the pin should be parallel to the ground, the streamers should hang away from the pin). On the streamer circle, mark the position of the pin’s loop and fastener.
- Put the rosette down. With scissors, gouge a hole where the pin’s loop was marked. Gouge and cut a larger hole for the pin’s fastener. Put circles back together, threading open pin end through the smaller hole, and the fastener through the larger hole. Do they fit well? If not, enlarge holes.
- Once the pin fits well into the holes, glue the back of the rosette circle to the front of the streamer circle. No streamer tops should show at the back. They will be sandwiched between the card circles. The pin should look as it does in the picture, except we hope you will be neater than I was.
- Clamp with clothespins at the edges. Put glue on the front of the rosette, and on the bottom of the crocheted mum. Press the mum in the center of the rosette.
- Weight the mum with heavy books, or other clean, heavy objects. Let the piece dry overnight. Remove weights and fluff mum’s petals. Tie bells or sew charms onto streamers if desired. Wear to school and to the homecoming game.
If you haven’t already crocheted the mum, this would be a good time to do it.
Austin Trip
The Austin Knitter’s and Crocheter’s Guild started in 1983, with a few people meeting at local libraries. I was one of them!
Those knitters and crocheters are still meeting after all these years on the first Saturday of every month, 2:00-4:00 p.m., at the Howson Branch Library at 2500 Exposition Blvd in Austin.
Last Saturday, I went to a meeting for the first time in about 12 years. We started with a mini-reunion of some of the people who had been with the Guild since the beginning. I reintroduced them
to Eva, who was just a baby the last time they saw her. They met five-year-old Ella for the first time.
After guild business and show-and-tell, I talked about Crochet Bouquet, and signed copies. Ella took these pictures of Crochet Bouquet projects and the meeting. That’s me in profile.
It was great to see several people who were at those early meetings. It was great to see so many new people, too! Members work on their own projects, as well as projects for charity. They inform and inspire each other.
If you’re in Austin on a first Saturday afternoon, please go to the meeting. They welcome visitors.
Mumsy Crochet Along
Please join our September Crochet Bouquet Along! This month’s flower is the Mumsy, on pages 58-60 of Crochet Bouquet. It’s shown here with a Corrugated Leaf. Make whichever size you like or whichever size you have the patience for.
In the Japanese flower calendar, the Chrysanthemum is September’s flower, symbolizing long life and happiness. For the Chinese, the Chrysanthemum, a symbol of the Harvest, Rest, and Ease, is the flower for November.
Mumsy is our September flower for an entirely different type of calendar–the American football season!
Football is huge in my home state of Texas. High schools designate one game of the season as a Homecoming Game, where alumni reunite and go to the ballgame.
The big thing is to wear a Homecoming Mum on the day of the game. Homecoming Mums are decorated with ribbon streamers, glitter, football-related charms, and anything else you can think of. They can be very, very fancy and expensive.
My cousin showed me how to make homecoming mums. I’m planning to use Mumsy to make one for my daughter Eva tonight, because homecoming is this week! Thank goodness for the local newspaper, or I wouldn’t have known.
Watch for homecoming mum instructions in the next post. Meanwhile, here’s a photo of the pieces I made for a four-tier Mumsy:
First tier (a double round of petals)
First tier padding
Second tier petals
Second tier padding
Third tier petals
Third tier padding
Fourth tier petals
You can go all the way up to six tiers of petals—about 10 inches in diameter, if you work it in worsted weight yarn!
You’re welcome to save a Mumsy Crochet Along button to your own server and use it on your blog or web site.
Have fun crocheting, and let us hear your mum stories!
Book Signings in Austin, September 6 and 7
Come and visit with me in Austin, Texas, this weekend! I’ll be signing copies of Crochet Bouquet at:
The Knitter’s and Crocheter’s Guild of Austin
Saturday, September 6, 2008, 2-4 p.m.
Howson Branch Library
2500 Exposition
Austin, Texas
and
The Knitting Nest
Sunday, September 7, 2008, 2-4 p.m.
108 W. Slaughter Lane
Austin, Texas
You’ll see the Sweetheart Rose Slippers (at top), a lovely gift idea. You’ll marvel at the Roses Cape (at right), the crocheting all done, but much assembly required! You’ll smile at the pretty Pansy Poncho in progress (below)! And much, much more!
See you there.
Fame through Flickr
Like my fellow knitters and crocheters on Ravelry, I have a Flickr account to host the photos that I post to Ravelry. The following story probably wouldn’t have happened without Ravelry and Flickr. Thank you to them!
The Cafe Rouge is a nice place to eat on Eccleshall Road in Sheffield, England. I used to meet my US-American friends there. I always ordered iced water to drink, and loved how they served the water in a faceted glass with a slice of lemon and black straw.
In fact, I loved it so much I made a wall hanging about it, called Iced Water at the Cafe Rouge.
Well, imagine how happy I was when Schmap, a collection of illustrated online maps that shows stuff to do and places to go in Sheffield and many other cities in the world, asked to feature my wall hanging with the Cafe Rouge entry! Naturally, I said yes.
You can see the Schmap web page here.
Update 2023: The schmap link isn’t good anymore, but the Wayback Machine has an abbreviated version of it. The flickr link is still good, though. The Wayback Machine, at internetarchive.org has been such a help in reconstituting my blogs—especially for the original dates.
In the earliest days of my blog, I posted some step-by-step photos of Iced Water at the Cafe Rouge. If you would like to see them, search “iced water”, and read the posts from March 6, 2005 (two of them on that day), March 11, and March 16, 2005.
Yarn Stretching
I’m re-crocheting a poncho with a border of pansies, using Plain & Fancy Sheep & Wool Company’s yarn. It stretched a lot when I blocked it the first time. I didn’t like the finished garment. I redesigned it. The second time around, it required more yarn. The unraveled yarn was already blocked, so I figured I would have to stretch the new yarn before using it.
Wool Winder commented on an earlier post about the poncho, “I have no idea how you are going to stretch the yarn before you crochet with it. This should be interesting, indeed.”
Yes, interesting indeed, because I had now idea how I was going to stretch the yarn, either.
After much procrastination, I decided to get on with it. Today was the day. I thought, ‘Okay, since the original yarn was steam-blocked while it was still crocheted, I should probably steam block the new yarn.’ I dampened the hanks and steamed them with my iron. So far so good.
But how would I stretch it out and keep it stretched long enough to dry? I put away the iron and collapsed the ironing board. Then I blinked. I pulled the ironing board back up. And collapsed it again. Hmmm!
I up-ended the ironing board, looped the yarn around the foot and the ironing surface. The moment of reckoning was upon us (me and the yarn, you know). Would the yarn stretch far enough to allow the ironing board to “catch” and hold?
It did! You can see the yarn stretching contraption in the photo above.
Progress so far: pansy trim finished except for darning in some ends; three rounds of poncho complete. It’s a start!
Pansy Chain and Altered Book-Signing Plans
The Plain Pansy is shaping up as one of the most popular flowers in Crochet Bouquet. My cousin Phyllis (whom you hear of again in September—Mumsy Crochet Along month) said, “It looks like the real thing!”
Fellow Ravelers have been crocheting the Plain Pansy, too. Hurray!
I’ve been working on a poncho with a trim of Plain Pansy flowers. They’re joined to each other side-by-side. I added a row across the top of the joined flowers, which will act as a base row for the rest of my poncho. Here’s how I did it.
Notes:
- YO = yarn over hook
- “dc-join to the previous flower” = YO, insert hook into stitch below, YO, and pull up a loop as for a regular dc (3 loops on hook). YO and pull through two loops (2 loops left on hook). Pick up the flower you want to join to, and look at the back of its left side. Insert hook into the top back loop (see the green lines in the photo) of corresponding stitch on the left edge of the previous flower, which will give you 3 loops on your hook. YO and pull through all loops on hook. This attaches the stitches, without messing up their top edge.
Making a Crocheted Trim with Plain Pansies
- Crochet one full Plain Pansy (pages 63-64 of Crochet Bouquet).
-
Crochet the next Pansy through the third lobe of Round 2.
- Complete the third lobe as follows: Sc in first ch, hdc in next ch, (hdc, dc, dc-join to previous flower) in first dc, (dc-join to previous flower, dc, hdc) in next dc, sc in next 2 ch; sc in ring. (The green lines in the photo above show where to join one flower to the other.)
- Crochet Row 3 as printed in the book.
- Row 4: Change the first two double crochet sts of the row to dc-join to previous flower. They join to the corresponding dc stitches on the left edge of the previous flower. Otherwise, crochet the row as printed.
- Join the each successive Pansy to the left edge of the previous one.
The Header Row (the purple row running along the top of the flowers in the photo above):
Work with the right side of the flowers facing you. For all the stitches on this row, insert hook into the loop behind the back loop. (Even more extreme than “working in the back loop only,” this is loop is further back than the back loop.)
Beginning at the top of the rightmost flower in the chain, attach yarn with a sc in the 6th dc of Row 4. (Ch 1, sk 1, sc in next st) twice, ch 1, skip across the fold in the top petals of the Pansy, and sc into the 2nd dc of the next lobe. Ch 1, sk 1, sc in next st, ch 1, sk 1, hdc in next st.
* Skip to next flower, sc in 6th dc of Row 4. (Ch 1, sk 1, sc in next st) twice, ch 1, skip across the fold in the top petals of the Pansy, and sc into the 2nd dc of the next lobe. Ch 1, sk 1, sc in next st, ch 1, sk 1, hdc in next st. * Repeat between *s to end of flower chain.
Now the flower chain is ready to be sewn to the edge of another project. Or you can use the header row as the beginning row of a larger piece with a pretty flower trim!
* * *
My book signing at Yarntopia (August 21, Katy, Texas) has been postponed indefinitely. Instead I will be selling and signing Crochet Bouquet at the German Texan Heritage Society Annual Meeting, Saturday, August 23, from 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., at the Crowne Plaza Houston West Hotel, at TX 6 and I-10 in Houston, Texas.
For more information about the meeting, please visit http://www.GermanTexans.org