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Floribunda

I've been interested in making crocheted flowers lately. I thought it might be an interesting way to add color to some rooms. You know, bunches of little handmade flowers scattered in vases here and there. So I've been playing around with the designs in a Japanese crochet book that I recently got.

A couple of days ago I made a few of these. I think they're supposed to be wild roses, but I'm not sure, because I can't read the Japanese. They're worked in fingering weight cotton and were pretty simple to do once I puzzled out the chart. The color changes were fiddly, but manageable.

Now I stumbled onto a problem. The flowers look very nice bunched up into a little nosegay. Except, well, they're kind of floppy.

 

I tried wiring the flowers various ways, but I couldn't really get anything to work well. I think in the future I'll have to plan for it from the start and work the stems around some sort of wire core. Meanwhile, what should I do with the flowers I just made?

More ideas are in the works.

Traitors!

I have more projects in the works and I still need to show you the final results of my green hexagons. But right now, I am going to make a small rant about something that's been bothering me for ages.

<soapbox>

Why on god's earth do commercial crochet designers insist on making their crochet pieces look like they were knitted?

Why?

Why?

   And <sob> this??

Are designers secretly ashamed of crochet? Is there some mentality that crochet is inferior, a technique that is valuable only insofar as it can imitate knitting? Do crocheters secretly wish that "if only they could knit" they could make pretty sweaters too? Oh, it makes me really mad.

If you browse any crochet stitch dictionary, you'll find hundreds and hundreds of stitch patterns that are beautiful because they use the amazing flexibility of crocheted fabric structure. They don't try to pass themselves off as (gack! ptooey!) knitted cables. They are true to the craft of crochet. Things like

Like this

And this

And this

And this crazy crocheted afghan from a 1970s leaflet from McCall's Magazine. (Thanks to Green Kitchen for these photos.)

These are fabrics that could never be made on knitting needles.

Now, don't get me wrong. I love knitting, and I love every stitch pattern in Barbara Walker's Treasuries. But I also love crochet for what it is and all that it can do.

If you want a cabled sweater, knit one. Don't use your crochet hooks to make some wan imitation that "almost looks like real knitting." It only furthers the widely-held prejudice that crochet is the domain of second-rate afghans and frilly toilet paper holders. We can do better than that.

</soapbox>

A week of frustration

Well, my son gave me a new processor for my aging PC as a birthday present. A mutual friend was roped into installing the new chip, but of course, as things with computers always go, a number of things blew up along the way. So about a week later, I now have what is essentially a new computer, risen from the carcass of my old one, reinforced with new boards and chips and DIMMs and all that.

But simple computer resurrection isn't why I'm writing this.

Yesterday I had to claw through all the boxes still unpacked in my basement to find my Windows 7 install disks. (I moved in February but there are so many boxes still unopened.) And as I'd feared, I couldn't locate the box. The Box.

The Box was the very last thing I packed before leaving my old place. It contained the really important things that I wanted to save from the relocation chaos: software install disks, some books, papers.... and all my knitting needles and hand tools. I left The Box with my dad as I went to accompany the movers to the new place. Chaos reigned those first days. I assumed The Box was in my bedroom with the other top priority things. I kept scratching my head, wondering where it was. You have to understand that I'm very, very disorganized now. But I knew The Box had to be in my place, because I gave it to my Dad to carry. So I assumed I was just simply too scatterbrained to find it.

But after yesterday's search, the evidence was undeniable. I looked in every corner of every room, and throughout the entire basement. The Box isn't here. It's not that I'm oblivious to its location. Somehow, it's gone. An unhappy victim of the trickster moving gods.

Never mind the $200 I had to spend to get new Windows install disks. My knitting needles are gone.

Twenty-five years of collecting. Like, the fine steel sock needles that were custom-ground for me. Several dozen circular needles of all sizes and lengths. Bamboo, steel, birch straights, DPNs. Gone. Somehow my crochet hooks made it here fine. (Separate box. I didn't pack them so carefully.) But I don't know how I'm going to replace the needles. I don't have the money to rebuild the sets again.

So, farewell my lovely tools and all the memories that you held. I hope that you found your way to a new home and are making someone else happy. The alternative -- being dumped into landfill -- is really too bleak to consider.

#$%@&#$!!!

All right. I'm almost ready to throw in the towel here. I have never, ever had such problems with a colorway before, but this damned hexagon thing is just refusing to resolve itself and is Just Pissing Me Off. And not only that, my stupid digital camera is brain-dead when it comes to color matching. I cannot get the digital colors to match what I've got in front of me, no matter how much I manipulate the shots in Photoshop. So I can't even really show you where things are going amiss.

Yes, if you can't tell, I'm flustered. Here's the state of the projects as it stands. (The colors are warmer in person than they are in this shot, but try telling that to my camera...)

 

As I was first working the borders around the units, the colors just sprung to life-- it had a very botanical feel. Like flowers and leaves, each hexagon like a blossom. I loved it. But the more hexagons I worked, the heavier that green began to feel.(Hard to explain. But if any of you have experience with traditional oil paint colors -- I was going for something in the Viridian palette, one of those clear translucent greens, and ended up with Chrome green instead. Just heavy and clotted and dull.)

When you compare the colorway with its original state (scroll back down a couple of entries), I actually like the original more. A fine thing to decide after hours of work.

So... I'm just going to wrap it up. I'm not going to keep wasting all these yarns. I'll finish edging all the hexagons I have made, and I'll piece them together into a sort of mat to keep on the living room table. It'll be a decorative, someplace to put down mugs of coffee and such.

I mean, I don't HATE the thing. I just don't much like it.

Green blues...

No photos yet, but after crocheting green borders and stitching up about twelve of the hexagon motifs, I'm not thrilled with final product. It might be a case of looking at the bloody thing too much and not seeing it anymore. Now I'm thinking I should have used black instead of green. I'll post photos soon and see what y'all think. And btw, thanks for all the suggestions about the current linked piece. Lots of good ideas!

Inspiring things

I've seen this in a few places on the Net recently.

Crochet cozy for a Smart Car

(The photo was taken recently in Italy by Flickr user "Start the Day"). I mean, it is perfection. From the use of different patterns for each panel of the car, to color choices, to the perfect fit... I just want one. Badly. But if I can't have a crocheted car cozy, I was thinking of perhaps covering my vacuum cleaner. It's boxy and has wheels too, right?

Danger! Danger! Books...

I am a sucker for craft books, especially those that focus on technique rather than projects. A few months ago, I found a site called "Amazon Japan in English". It's Amazon, but they translated all navigation and user interface elements into English to make it easier for non-Japanese users. I quickly looked up knitting and crochet and -- be still my heart -- there they were, all the Japanese technical books that I have seen and lusted after, all available at market prices. (When you get them from U.S. vendors, the prices tend to be inflated even after factoring in shipping costs.)

I have already ordered one batch of four stitch dictionaries and was delighted with the experience. It wasn't cheap, given postage, but they were reasonably priced. And it took only two days from the day I ordered to the day they arrived in my mailbox. The only shipping option is international express. Yes, two days. I almost had to sit down to let the waves of excitement die down.

So, here are the links:

Amazon Japan in English
Crocheting books
Knitting books
Beading books

    

Green green green!

So, in my quest to fix the stalled hexagon project, I ordered two clear green yarns -- one apple-ish, one leaf-ish -- to see if they'd round out the current color scheme. Indeed, they worked perfectly.

The only problem... it's impossible to photograph the colors accurately with my little digital camera. Depending on where I shoot the picture, I either get strong yellow overtones or strong blue ones. (And despite my best efforts in Photoshop, I just can't compensate.) So I have no convincing evidence to show you all that the middle-range, leafy green is going to make perfect borders around each hexagon. But take my word on it, this will work.

So yes. Green borders around each piece will both bring the design into better focus, because there won't be such a relentlessly WILD color scheme that shatters your eye into chaos as you look it over. Here's what I'm sort of envisioning for the piece:

The green background just bring stabilizes the colorway. You notice the floral-ish designs of the hexagons without them screaming in a mad chorus for attention.

Now, I also got an apple-ish green as well, but it didn't work as a background color. However, it'll be very nice as another color to work into the hexagons itself.

The final question: what am I going to do with this piece?

When I first found instructions for the hexagon motif, they all instructed to join the modules as you went, so that each piece is inextricably crocheted together with its neighbor. As you can see, I got about 10 motifs in and decided to trash that idea. It frustrated me. I wanted to do each motif separately and then arrange them into a final piece all at once.

If I do green borders around each hexagon now, these 10.5 units are, well, useless. But I hate to just throw the thing away. So kind readers, do you have any ideas what I could do with it?

Something's wrong here...

Well, I just spent the last week sick as a dog. (Hmmm, that's an odd saying. Are dogs particularly sick?) Anyway, I wasn't able to sit up much to type out some new posts. But I did manage to pull out a project that had stalled and mull over it.

This is intended to be a pillow cover for the living room.

It's been in progress for about six months now. For some reason I don't work more than a few evenings on it before I find something else to do instead. Okay, brain, now why is that?

Normally I live for these kinds of highly colored modular projects. I can't make just a single little hexagon. As I work on one, I get ideas for the next colorway. I can't stop! It's like pulling tissues out of the tissue box -- one's in the hand, but look! There's another one right there, ready to go. Okay, just one more little hexagon and I'll get to bed. Oh, wait, this next one will be cool! Okay, the NEXT one will be the last...

But it's just not working this time.

So I've been studying this photo. And I think the problem is the overall colorway. Initially it looks good to me. But when I keep studying a little longer, it just flattens out. Like part of the spectrum is missing. And now that I look at it again today, I think the greens are the main problem. Warm mossy, olive, forest greens are among some of my favorite hues. And I thought they'd blend in well among the pinks and oranges and purples. (Frequent color combo's in my work, in fact.)

But I don't think they fit in this piece. I'm now wondering if cooler, brighter apple greens would blend in better. I've been trying to avoid a "RAINBOW!" color palette, which is why I picked out the warm greens in the first place. But perhaps if the cool green is used sparingly it'll enhance the colorway without making it seem like unicorns and fairies should spring out of the piece.

Thoughts anyone? What would you add to make this a little better focused?

Nostalgia

My copy of the Summer 2010 Spin-off arrived this afternoon.

It's a good issue. I luxuriated on my couch, reading it cover to cover. And I finished the last page with a distinct pang of loss. I don't know if I can sum it up in a way that could make sense to you readers who likely don't know me all that well. But I'll try.

You see, there was a time when I was passionately involved with the spinning/fiber community, especially online. I was learning so much, I wanted to share it all. Write books and articles. Teach classes. Get people as jazzed about making string as I was. I would sit down and talk to anyone about it. And I even managed to keep their attention sometimes because, by god, this string stuff was really important to human history in a way that isn't generally understood now. (Which reminds me, I have to write a post about Elizabeth Barber's books on the history of textiles and women's work. I don't see them mentioned a whole lot, but they really should be part of every spinner/knitter/weaver's library.)

Anyway, I wanted to do big things. Not because I wanted to be famous. (Although "famous" is a kind of strange word to use in our little world of spinning wheels and sheep anyway.) But I just wanted to stir folks up, get a little corner of the world running on creative juices, and just celebrate the transformation from fluff to yarn to finished object, as has been done by humans for millenia. Spin-off was at the heart of this passion. I worked my craft mainly alone, but this magazine inspired me to keep going because, hell, tens of thousands of people read those pages. And I could be a part of it.

But here I am, ten years later, and... well, I fear those times have passed far away. Too much has happened in my life. The earnest, eager ambitions I once had have been shadowed by loss. I don't know if it's possible to capture that optimism again. I read the Spin-off this afternoon, and felt those familiar stirrings of, "Oh man. That is so cool! I have to try it!" Yet those bright sparks faded before I could get up and grab a spindle. I felt the ghosts of these past years brush against my heart yet again.

It's bittersweet nostalgia, to look through the pages of Spin-off at the world I once knew. But I'm glad it's out there, and that there are so many new spinner and fluff lovers springing up everywhere. Working with our hands, creating beauty from nothing -- this is a Good Thing. And I haven't completely given up the dreams that kept me going. I just wish the hell I knew the way back to it all.

Mini Maxi

Have you ever thought about what scale you like to work at? By scale, I mean how many stitches/rows/twists per inch are found in a piece. I've noticed that fiber folks often end up gravitating toward a specific scale in their work, a sort of comfort zone. You know what I mean. There are the lace shawl knitters and the chunky bumpy hat knitters. Threadies (i.e. people who crochet with fine cottons) and afghan crocheters. Precision cobweb spinners and bold textured art spinners.

I've thought about my own scale for a while now. In 2003 I taught charkha spinning at SOAR and had some examples of my cotton threads laid out for class display. Another spinning teacher came by and remarked that I work really fine and tight. And my first thought was, "No, no, I'm teaching rug hooking this weekend! I work big and fat!" It was a defensive reaction that I am still puzzling over. (Why did I get upset when pegged as a fine thread spinner?) But ever since then, I've been paying attention to scale, both my own and that of other fiber artists.

(Click any of these images if you want to see close up.)

My conclusion is that I have a wide comfort zone when it comes to scale. I indeed do rug hooking, using bulky rug yarns and getting about 24 loops per square inch. I also do punch needle work, which is exactly the same technique, only done with tiny needles and a couple strands of embroidery floss. I'm guessing it's around 200 loops per square inch.

I've done some crazy tiny crochet. I occasionally edge handkerchiefs using needle-like crochet hooks* (0.50mm) and size 60 or 80 crochet cotton. (Think of sewing thread only more tightly spun.)

I also started a project to make crocheted patchwork bracelets with slightly larger hooks and single strands of silk and rayon thread. I'll admit this one was crazy-making, even for me. I managed to produce piles of little bright squares of varying colors, but haven't yet found a way to sew them together that produces nice clean edges. (You should have seen the nearly invisible silk thread I was using to sew them, and the specialized minute sewing needles I ordered online.) This bracelet project is still on hold. I haven't given up, but I'm pondering a different approach to joining the squares.

Contrast that to my current project -- a thermal blanket for my bed, made from worsted weight kitchen cotton. I'm using a size J hook. (That's 6.0mm, or about 50 times bigger than my thread crochet hooks if you calculate by area.) I'm estimating that it'll take about 8 lbs. of yarn to make it the desired size of 80x90 inches. I'm using a very simple double crochet stitch, with waffle holes big enough to stick fingertips through.

(You couldn't see a coin if I put it against the afghan for scale, so there's Ziggy --my yarn-hungry black cat-- as a model. And yes, after my 10 years of blogging, he still insists on sitting on my projects while I do them.)

After two weeks of intermittent work, the blanket is almost done and it is enormous! It makes me look immensely productive too, doesn't it? But it's not much work than any of my other pieces. There are about one-third the number of stitches in a row of this afghan as there are in the edging. (It's just a lot heavier to hold in my lap!)

I don't really have any conclusions about why I like such a wide range of scales. I find mini and maxi projects equally challenging and equally enjoyable. I mainly just switch the strength of my magnifying glasses between them.

*I nearly had all my carry-on luggage confiscated by airport security last summer because my little case of thread crochet hooks looked like hypodermic needles to the x-ray machine. I had to show the security agent the lace handkerchief packed in the same plastic bag to show him how they were used and why I wasn't a drug dealer. The guy shook his head as he closed the case, saying, "You could do brain surgery with those hooks."