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!
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.