Amoebae, Sweater Insides, Tag
Inspired by the stuffed creatures on the cover of the most recent issue of Craft: magazine, Eva made these felt amoebas or, if you want to be correct about it, amoebae. “How do you pronounce that?” we asked each other over and over. So I finally looked it up: uh-MEE-bee.
While looking in the dictionary, I found a word to describe their shape: amoebiform (uh-MEE-buh-form). I just love dictionaries.
Ella was thrilled with the two brothers and the mama amoebae. The daddy is still in the works. Last night she made them a bed, tucked them in, told them stories, read to them, and kissed them goodnight. It was so sweet!
I promised a look at the wrong side of Ella’s sweater. I thought you would be able to see how the wheat ear rib is made over three stitches, even though it looks like only two from the front. Now that I look at it, I can’t see the three stitches, either. But believe me, that rib is three stitches wide!
Diana, knowing me to be a book-lover, tagged me for this game. Rules are: To open the book you are reading, turn to page 161 and copy the fifth sentence on the page.
The last three books I read, The Case of the Fenced-In Woman, by Erle Stanley Gardner (my favorite author), Gideon’s Men, by J. J. Marric, and The First Mrs. Winston, by Rae Foley never made it to page 161. So I picked a book by Hulda Regehr Clark, that I’m reading little by little. The sentence in question is:
“She was told to repeat chemotherapy.”
Well that was sad, so I’ll end with my my favorite sentence in the whole book.
“The human species can no longer afford to make a business out of illness.”
There. Now you know more about me. If you want to play this game, too, consider yourself tagged. You have to find out the title on your own, if you’re interested.
UFOs in the Sky in a Book in My Totebag
The small town of Dublin, Texas, is primarily known as the home of the first Dr. Pepper bottling plant. Dublin Dr. Pepper is still made with pure cane sugar instead of nasty high fructose corn syrup. But now we’re in the news–local, national, even international–because several people have seen UFOs in our skies.
I like to imagine the skies filled with half-knitted sweaters, which is the kind of UFO I have in several totebags around the house, but apparently the Dublin UFOs are the ‘unidentified’ variety.
In honor of UFOs of all types, I offer a review of two books by Susan Docherty The Unlikely Flying Object and Lelooni. Both are illustrated with clever and funny three-dimensional knitted characters.
The Unlikely Flying Object opens on the Planet Intarsia, where a knitted Mothership learns that she can fly. She goes to Earth and picks up various people to replicate in knitting. The story is about how the Mothership populates the Planet Intarsia.
The replica people are Sweaterheads: headless figures whose faces are on the front of their sweaters. I love the eyes and the expressions on these characters. The knitted objects are photographed within scenes, or placed into space or earthly landscapes or computer-generated backgrounds. I know what kind of work went into these well-done illustrations–a lot!
Lelooni is the silvery moon of Planet Intarsia. This book is a series of situations that showcase the knitted moon, sun, wind, and the Sweaterheads of the planet below. It doesn’t have a plot, but I was distracted from this by the ingenious knitting of the character Lelooni. His eyes are expressive, his mouth is perfectly shaped. The north wind is fabulous, too, with his curly, cloudy locks.
These stories are cute and full of puns, but they occasionally get bogged down in unnecessary description, and the odd scene that doesn’t fit.
But five-year-old Ella wasn’t bothered. She enjoyed the stories when we read them yesterday. She giggled at the foolishness in The Unlikely Flying Object and asked for a ‘reading supper’ so she could study the pictures in Lelooni. Today she said, “Mom, let’s read Loony-Moony. He’s so funny.” When we sat down to read, she decided to read The Unlikely Flying Object first, saying, “Loony is funny, but the one with the Mothership is cool.”
I am glad to support textile illustrators by buying their books. I hope Susan Docherty will expand her portfolio by illustrating stories by other authors as well.
Ella’s Stocking
Here it is, in all its pink glory—Ella’s Christmas stocking! It’s very ‘Ella.’
The stocking was ready in time for Christmas, and Santa put lots of good stuff into it. After Christmas, I decorated the other side, so doesn’t matter which way the stocking turns.
The stocking’s pink Christmas tree is a crocheted fern leaf. We got out a bunch of pink buttons to decorate the tree. They looked okay. We added a white button as an accent. The white looked so good, we went with white for all the ornaments.
Ella’s fifth birthday dawned bright and foggy at the same time. Our original cat, our beauty boy, the king of the yard, took the van as his throne to acknowledge Ella’s birthday.
New Cover for Crochet Bouquet
Thank you to everyone who has pre-ordered my new book! It’s coming out in May, which seems like a long time to wait, but you know what? I thought 2008 seemed like a long way away, and here it is, already.
Lark Books settled on a cover design for my book, and I think it’s much cuter than the first one. It also gives you a better idea of what’s inside the book. My impression is that publishers come up with several cover possibilities, and decide at the last minute which one suits the book best, not to mention which one will appeal to the most customers.
The other book I wrote, Polymer Clay for Everyone, had a different cover for each of the three countries it was published in, and different titles, too: The Polymer Clay Sourcebook in England, and Pâte polymère—Pâte Fimo® in France. It’s all about marketing!
Stocking Done in Time, But First…
Woolwinder asked about our other Christmas stockings, so here they are! Charles’ mother, Gene, knitted his when he was a child. Gene is short for Eugenia, a beautiful name, though she said she didn’t like it much. It’s Ella’s middle name.
I made the other two, and they were among my early published designs. (“Christmas Stocking,” Knitting World, pp. 27 ff., August/September 1991)
When I was growing up, my family didn’t have a Christmas stocking tradition. Those two stockings came in handy for Eva and me, when Santa started bringing stocking stuffers to our house.
Ella’s stocking was done just in time for Santa. Picture next time.
Christmas Knitting Emergency!
Ella and I discussed Christmas stockings the other day. “We have Christmas stockings somewhere,” I said.
“Can you find them, Mama?”
Since we moved back to Texas, Santa has been leaving small gifts and chocolate and fruit in a set of pretty, hand-painted wooden bowls instead of stockings. Our stockings are in storage with so much of our other stuff. I would try to find them.
They were tucked into the bottom of a box of ornaments. But we only had three stockings, Charles’s, mine, and Eva’s. Ella was just a baby when we moved back to Texas, and I hadn’t made one for her. Oh no!
We went into emergency knitting mode. My pink yarn box yielded some balls I had rolled for a Kaffe Fassett-inspired project that never got any further. We had to borrow the needles from Ella’s cardigan sleeves. Here is the stocking so far.
Ella’s cardigan is on hold until the stocking is done. I finished the body, and it looks like it will fit very well. These two kittens, helping to present the cardigan as it is at the moment. That reminds me that no one entered my kitten giveaway contest—take one, get one free!
Ella Crafts
My mom and I discussed Eva’s artwork from the last post. Ella put her arms around me and said, “Mama, I want a blog about me!”
That was perfect timing, because she just finished a wall hanging. It is mostly made from craft felt. She arranged many buttons, which I sewed on for her. We had fun adding trim and sequins and beads.
Ella’s favorite question for anyone who admires the wall hanging is, “Do you think I embroidered on this?” The admirer is supposed to say, “No, surely a four-year-old can’t embroider.” Then Ella taps the embroidery and says, “I did.”
Then the admirer gasps with amazement, and Ella cackles with glee.
Here’s another of Ella’s creations. It is a doll carrying a red bag. See her blond hair? Ella sewed that on. It was very long, until Ella gave her a haircut.
Ella is often hard at work, as you can see in the last photo. She loves the process of making stuff. I have learned to step away and let her make whatever she wants (within reason).
Angels Done!
I finished the last of the felt angel ornaments! Yay! I expected heavenly music or a beautiful fanfare when I snipped the last thread, but all was quiet as I hung Angel Number 7 on our ficus tree.
Before the job could really, really be finished, the project bag had to be emptied. I sorted embroidery floss, threw away the dog-eared instructions, and stored the extra sequins. I shook the lint out of the bag, folded it neatly, and put it in my bag-o’-bags to await another project.
I have two unopened Christmas felt kits. One has four ornaments, covered with sequins—oooo, spaaaarkly. The other is a tree skirt with sequin poinsettias. They are lurking among our stuff that is in storage, waiting for us to build a house. I can’t find them, and it’s probably for the best.
Now I can concentrate on finishing Ella’s pink cardigan, which is coming along nicely. The measured approach worked so well with the angels, I plan to set similar goals for the cardigan.
Eva Crafts
We came into a mother lode of buttons a few months ago. (Thank you, Joy!) They’re plain shirt-type buttons in many colors. Eva can think of more ways to use them. She wanted to make Christmas ornaments from pine cones, and the buttons seemed the natural choice. Here’s her button pine cone. We nestled it on a branch of the Christmas tree.
Eva read The Dark is Rising, by Susan Cooper, for Language Arts class. Her project was to dress like the main character and tell his story. She needed props, so she made the signs described in the book. The signs of iron, stone, wood, and brass are polymer clay; the sign of water is cut from a sheet of vinyl. We tried to cast it in epoxy resin, but that didn’t work very well.
Our favorite, and the favorite of her classmates, was the sign of fire. In the book it is encrusted with lots of jewels that flash like fire. Eva cut her sign from felt and encrusted it with sequins. They flash like fire, too. She sewed a back onto the piece, and stuffed it.
I read the book, too. Eva and I had the same reaction to it. We found it interesting intellectually, and we were pleased with the ending on general principle, but we didn’t love the book.
Football, Knitting, and Angels
Friday was a sad, sad day for Texas Longhorn fans. It was embarrassing, really. We’ve always told Eva, who goes to school with a number of kids whose parents are Aggies (which means they’re Aggies, too. It runs in families.), that when UT and A&M get together, all bets are off.
One good thing about the ballgame was that I got lots done on Ella’s pink cardigan while we watched. I could have gotten a lot more done, if we hadn’t spent so much time groaning in dismay. Ella tried it on after the game, and the sleeve fits better now. Hurray!
The angels are coming along on schedule. Here are two more all finished, and I have two more to go. I really work well with a scheduled amount of work to do each week, especially with a stalled project like this one. I like it, because when the work for the week is done, I can quit without feeling guilty. I should schedule more of my projects that way!
