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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>

#$%@&#$!!!

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

    

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?

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."

Crochet? Why crochet?

These days I've become quite engrossed in crochet, to the exclusion of nearly every other technique. A while back someone asked me, "But aren't you going to knit anymore?" Of course I will. I've been knitting since I was 8, and will always knit. But crochet's been my recent passion for a couple of reasons.

First, I love color -- more than texture, more than shape or drape. The most satisfying handwork I do involves large colorways in a single piece. Crochet allows me to combine a zillion lovely colors with no more effort than working in a single color. Knitting has more limits. You can make stripes, do Fair-Isle patterning with floats, or <shudder> intarsia. (There are not enough words in the English language to describe how much I hate intarsia.) But all of these techniques are rather fiddly when compared to crochet. And given the state of my brain these days, fiddly is something I'd like to avoid.

The second reason is also anti-fiddly. There's only one live loop at a time on a crochet project. Nothing can fall off a needle. Stitches don't drop. It's hard to lose your place in a pattern. It's very portable. (Well, nearly always portable. Notable exception to be described later.)

Acrylic odyssey

Well, I sat down and made a few more hexagons for the playmat. I'd forgotten to write down how I made them before, so I spent a while trying to reconstruct the pattern. But, once I got past that, the crocheting went very quickly. I sewed a few units together, stood back to look at the effect...

... and realized that the project had already begun to bore me. Perhaps I didn't have enough of the hexagons to get the full effect of the color interplay. Well, that's what I told myself at first. But the more I stared at the swatch, the more I knew that I'd never be able to crochet a zillion of these things. They are boring. Two colors at a time are boring.

So, I'm rethinking the project. I still want to make a playmat. But now I'm thinking that mitered squares might be more interesting. Like this blanket from Mason-Dixon knitting. So, for now, the project is on the back burner while I mull over the options. The baby's not due until March, so I've got time.

Babette continues

I'm crocheting more squares and sewing up the Babette in a rather haphazard way these days. But it's actually letting me do a bit of color design as I go. I can see the current arrangement and then create squares in the colors needed to balance composition.

Sewing is slow. I don't dislike the process, but the squares are all different sizes, due to the different weights of the yarns used. (Blast you, yarn companies, for your ridiculous inconsistencies in weight labeling.) So I spend a lot of time easing squares together so the seams match. The fabric looks pretty silly right now: some squares are all puffy, some are all stretched out. But I'm sure that once blocked it'll look fine. And as I said before, I don't mind if things look a bit skewed in the final blanket.

I finally dared myself to dye the yarns in the missing colors I needed. It was a complete improvisation. No scale, no calculations, unknown dye concentrations, mystery dye colors. (I have worked with Washfast dyes for nearly 20 years. But I'm using Jacquard dyes for now.) I spilled dye stock all over the stove a couple of times, dyed the sink red, and nearly melted the plastic bags that the yarn was steaming in. I had to wash out one skein before it was steamed, because I hated the color and wanted to change it. But all in all, they turned out okay.

It's a good thing that they did, because I realized a couple of days ago that I'm running out of greens, reds, and now purples -- and I haven't finished all the squares nor even thought about the border for the blanket. I'll need to dye those colors now, too.

Step by step. I'm still sticking with it. Yay me.