A Snake in My Knitting Bag
My two-year-old Ella and I ‘play buttons’ a lot. We pour the big jar out onto a blanket, sort the buttons, pick out our favorites, and make up stories about them. The biggest ones are the daddies, the middle-sized ones are the mamas, and the small ones are the children. She said, “Mama, I pickted out your favorite buttons.” Sweetie!
I usually sit down with some knitting or notes, because Ella goes off into her own button world, where she doesn’t need me.
So there I sat, playing buttons, when I noticed a box that had been sitting there a while. I could quickly clean it out and clear a spot on the floor. My red bag was on the top, full of knitting magazines I need to read. But what was that smell? Ugh. It was the smell of something dead.
I moved the books a little, and saw a scaly, flat, smelly thing in the bottom of the bag. “What’s the matter?” my husband asked. “There is a dead snake in this bag,” I told him.
He took my bag outside and dumped it. Oh, it was about a foot long, probably a young Glossy Snake or King Snake, broken in two. I must have left my bag outside long enough for it to get in. When I picked it up, the magazines and papers trapped it inside. Poor baby!
What?! Did you think I meant a knitted snake? I did knit one many years ago for my brother. Mom, do you know where that snake is? Maybe I will post a photo of it later.
The last few days, I have been preparing teaching proposals for the brand new DFW Fiber Fest (late April 2006) and the Wool Festival at Taos (October 2006), and Stitches in 2006. I’m developing a new workshop called “Cables, Bobbles, and Braids,” and I have started knitting the class samples. This is one.
Among other things, I plan to teach how to design a cable sweater and how to design a cable of your own! Should be good!
Construction Site Crochet
We were at our new house site. The foundation guys were finishing up for the day.
“Eva. see what he’s doing with that cord?” I said.
My daughter looked. “Yeah,” she said.
“What do you call that, when you do it?” I asked.
“Crochet?” she said.
“Bingo!”
It’s not finger crochet, it’s more like arm crochet.
Now you know. Burly construction guys crochet power cords. It’s quicker than winding the cord into a roll, and I bet the crocheted power cord stays neater than a rolled power cord.
Alaska Report Inspires Button Blanket
Each student in my daughter’s fifth grade class wrote a report on a state. Her state was Alaska, and she wrote about the usual topics. My husband let her in on many of his professional secrets of map-drawing. Naturally, I always try to get her interested in the things people make. Alaska’s earliest inhabitants continue a wonderful tradition of art and craft.
Since “visuals” counted for one quarter of the requirements for a grade of A, I thought it would be neat for Eva to craft something, rather than just relying on the usual pictures glued onto poster board. What could be better than a button blanket?! Northwest Coast Indians, including the Alaskan Tlingit, make and wear button blankets for ceremonial dances.
Eva designed a cat’s face in her interpretation of the style of a Tlingit button blanket. She sewed diligently until it was done. I knew it was important to collect mother-of-pearl buttons!
Intarsia How-To
Intarsia How-To
In intarsia, you knit areas of color, guided by a graph. Depending on how big a color area is, you can use a ball of yarn, a yarn butterfly that you wind on your fingers, or a bobbin. I’m going to call them bobbins, since that is the traditional yarn-holding method for intarsia.
Intarsia is usually worked in stockinette stitch, and the color changes are done with the yarns on the purl side.
Each color change in a row requires a separate bobbin of yarn. Here’s what I mean.
For this graph, you need three different bobbins of blue and two different bobbins of yellow:
Rows 1-3: blue bobbin
Rows 4-7: blue bobbin, yellow bobbin, blue bobbin
Rows 8-12: blue bobbin, yellow bobbin, blue bobbin, yellow bobbin, blue bobbin
Rows 13-16: blue bobbin, yellow bobbin, blue bobbin
Rows 17-19: blue bobbin
Ooooo, I know it’s tempting to strand the yellow across those three stitches of blue in the middle, so you won’t have to wind two separate bobbins. Don’t do it! Stranding and intarsia don’t mix well. They stretch differently, and you’ll get stiffer, solid areas surrounded by stretched-out areas.
The color areas are knitted more-or-less independently, so the key is to change colors so that you don’t get holes where the colors meet. If you want to knit along, cast on 6 sts with color A, and then cast on 6 sts with color B. Turn and knit across the 6 sts of color B.
Alright, here you are, all finished knitting color B (pink in the sample). (I went ahead and knitted a few rows so you could see the color changes better.) You want to change to color A (white in the sample).
Drop color B to the purl side of the work (away from you). Reach under color B to pick up color A. When you lift color A to knit, it should cross over the strand of color B on the purl side.
Hurray, now you’ve finished the knit row, and you have purled color A, and now you’re ready to change colors again. Drop color A to the purl side of the work (toward you, this time). Reach under color A to pick up color B. When you bring it up to purl the next stitch, color B should cross over color A.
Oh no! I’m getting ready to purl the white yarn, but it’s not crossing the pink! If I don’t fix this problem, I’ll have a hole at this color change.
Here’s the back of my finished sample. Crossing the yarns produces the dotted line of white on the pink side, and the pink line on the white side. You can see these lines, even when I change colors on the diagonal. When you add another color, it’s the same thing: drop the old color to the purl side, pick up the new color from underneath the old. The colors should cross.
Because stockinette stitch looks like a series of little ‘v’s stacked on top of each other, you will always get the little color jags when you change color on a diagonal. It’s especially apparent where the white changes into the plum, on the right side of my sample.
Another time you should use this color change method is on the first and last color change of a row, when you are knitting a stranded pattern on straight needles. It’s not necessary to cross the yarns in circularly-knitted Fair Isle. Back-and-forth stranded patterns are different. Do the cross-color-change at the beginning and end of the row.
Magazine Day
Yesterday was marked by three separate magazine encounters.
The fall issue of INKnitters arrived, and there was my article about Fire Ant Ranch, with lots of pretty pictures. In a box, set off from the rest of the text, I wrote about the 2005 Taos Wool Festival. Oops! Just a little late! But I hope it will pique peoples’ interest and move more knitters to attend next year.
My friend Joan from Canada had two copies of the fall issue of Spin Off , so she sent one to me. Inside was an article about fringed purses, using a familiar lazy fringe-making technique. The author mentioned a workshop at Alston Hall. Hey, I’ve taught there! Then I read my name—Thank you, Freyalyn, for giving me credit for the fringe technique.
Oddly enough, I had a letter in my computer, waiting for a final photo of my pink tassel, proposing an article on my fringe-making technique plus various trims and tassels that can result. Yep, the letter was destined to be sent to Spin Off . I’ll probably still send it. Hope they will consider another article about handspun fringe.
Then, late last night, I sent off the last photo for my article in INKnitters, winter 2005. Here’s another teaser picture. Can you guess what the article is about?
Talk Went Well
I arrived at Joy’s Fabrics a little after nine o’clock, to find Joy and her husband, George, already setting up for my talk to the Busy Bees Sewing Group. We brought in my piles of samples, and organized them for the program.
Before long, the ladies came in. They came from far and wide, including some from our little town of Dublin. We enjoyed coffee, Halloween treats, and chat, before the meeting started. They were a knowledgeable and attentive audience. Their questions and comments made the discussion lively and fun.
Best of all, I get to come back and teach a button-making workshop next spring! I will probably go back anyway, and join the group. I need to get together with others who like to make stuff.
Here’s the aftermath of the program—my wall hangings all on a rack, and people talking among the bolts of fabric after the meeting.
Many, many thanks to Joy for telling the group about me, to Freda for inviting me to talk, and to the Dublin Citizen for publishing an announcement about my talk.
A Fungus Among Us
What is this? An alien fungus set to take over the world? No. It is just the beginning of my Rexlace bag, nestled against a bladderpod, growing in my future studio (those boards are part of the foundation framing). I wanted to try knitting Rexlace after seeing its rainbow variety of colors at Michaels. When the NotYarnKAL came to my attention, I knew it was meant to be. Here I am, enjoying the beautiful weather last weekend, taking notes on the Rexlace bag design, with the fungus on my knee.
This project attracts a lot of attention during my frequent episodes of knitting in public. Just yesterday at the Coffee Studio, a young lady said to me, “I’ve never seen anyone knitting that stuff.” We talked, and the more we talked, the more apparent it was to me that here was someone knowledgeable about yarn and dyeing. The chances against casually meeting a fellow textile artist in Stephenville, Texas, must be astronomical!
She had just been to Santa Fe, another yarn and fiber art paradise in New Mexico. “I just got back from Taos!” I said. Raising an 18-month-old son on a tight budget, she is seeking her fiber thrills by growing a weaver’s dye garden, and by shopping at one of the old wool/mohair warehouses in her hometown to get (she hopes) a 100-lb. bale of raw wool. I hope she will contact me if she would like to talk about publishing her work.
Here’s some more fall color from our yard.
Giving a Talk at Joy’s Fabrics
Joy’s Fabrics (Stephenville, Texas, across from the courthouse) is host to the Busy Bees, an informal sewing group that meets on the third Saturday of each month, from 10 a.m. to noon. I am giving October’s meeting program, where I will show lots and lots of my knitted/sewn/machine-embroidered work. That includes the secret ladybug wall hanging, previously glimpsed on this blog.
Joy will set up an ironing board so I can demonstrate some TextileFusion techniques. You can pick up one of my pretty postcards, too.
And now for a Joy’s Fabrics testimonial: I love shopping at Joy’s. Joy herself is there to help. She knows a lot about sewing, and she can give help and advice. When I finish a quilt top or garment shell, I take it over to Joy’s. She walks around the store with it, testing it against various fabrics. We pull out bolts of the most promising fabrics. We always find something that works beautifully.
Now, suppose one had a couple of young daughters who weren’t particularly interested in fabric shopping at the moment. Joy’s store is roomy enough for children to run around. She doesn’t mind if they hide under the pattern book table. Last time we were there, my husband chased our two-year-old Ella all over the place. The little one giggled and laughed a lot, and she may have even shrieked. Joy took it in her stride, and offered a cool drink of water to the two runners.
Stephenville is southwest of Fort Worth, on Hwy 377/67, going through Granbury. It’s a small college town, so it has a good choice of restaurants. It has hidden treasures, like a Dutch food store, called Dutch Touch, which carries Dutch cheeses, rollmops, wonderful cookies, and more. It is tucked into the back of a children’s clothing store called For Kids Only.
Wool Festival at Taos, Part 4
Here are the finished projects from the ‘Small Quilts and Tote Bags from Your Old Sweaters’ workshop.
Randi admitted a sewing machine phobia at the beginning of class, but she really wanted to make a tote bag. So she plunged in. As we worked out the construction details, she did the required sewing. She was very pleased with the finished bag.
Ginger’s tote bag was well underway, when she placed her small quilt on it. “I think I’m going to use this as a pocket on the bag,” she said. It was absolutely perfect! Ginger used a variegated thread for decorative stitching on the bag.
Continuing the outer space theme, Susan sewed a bag from silvery black denim. She used her small quilt as a decorative panel on the front. Then she made another small quilt to decorate the back of the bag.
The class was made fabulous by the loan of Husqvarna Viking Designer I sewing and embroidery machines. Thank you to those who made it possible!
Taos Wool Festival, Part 3, Beginnings
Tuesday was a long, hard-working, fun day. I had the best possible students in my ‘Quilts and Tote Bags from Your Old Sweaters’ workshop. I dutifully provided a tote bag pattern, all written out with measurements and everything. None of them used it. They all had their own ideas and just went ahead with them. I love that kind of class!
Randi read my class supply list carefully, and correctly interpreted my intention for each student to make exactly the bag she wanted. She spindle-spun the yarn she used to make her tote bag, and bought jute upholstery webbing for the handles. Using one of her own tote bags as a pattern guide, we figured out how to cut, construct, and sew the new bag from her hand-knit fabric with Guatemalan fabric as a base and lining.
To strengthen the handles, Randi folded the webbing in and over itself along its length. She used a decorative stitch in red thread to secure the fold and match the stripes in the jute. The difficulty came when it was time to sew the handles to the bag. We finally got the job done with a denim needle, and slow, patient stitching. We both learned from this project. See the finished bag in tomorrow’s post.
Ginger saved our sanity when it looked as if we couldn’t get the fusible interfacing to stick to the sweaters. “They’re all different,” she said, “so you have to read the directions.” I always steam my fusible to make it stick better, but it seems that some fusibles work best with a dry iron. Unfortunately, fusible doesn’t always come with directions, so we experimented with steamy and dry irons to find the right combination.
Ginger was very comfortable with the sewing machine, so she put her small quilt together, and embellished it with decorative stitching and appliqué, without much interference from me. Time was getting on, and she decided to finish the quilting and binding at home, so she could start on the tote bag. Read the rest of the story and see the finished bag in tomorrow’s post.
jewelry-maker, pulled together her purple and charcoal sweaters with bits and pieces of knitting from my scraps box. “It reminds me of outer space,” I said. “Take a look at my lining material!” she said. The white dots and purple balls on a black background looked exactly like the Milky Way with planets. She had picked up the fabric because she liked it, but with no particular project in mind at the time. We all commented how beautifully things come together sometimes. Check tomorrow’s post to see how her project evolved.
