Why this stuff needs to be written down!

I love this bear. I made it a long time ago with some yarn that I picked up on clearance for $1 a skien. I still have a lot of the yarn left and I'd like to make more bears but I can't find the pattern! I could have sworn it was from Toy Knits by Debbie Bliss because I definitely remember making a pig for Sarah and a rabbit for Laura using this book. However, there isn't a matching pattern for this bear in that book and I have no memory of another knitted teddy bear pattern. I've searched my collection with no results and now I'll just have to be patient and wait for it to turn up. This illustrates the importance of writing this stuff down for future reference. Memory is like a hard drive .... back it up.

Anyway, while searching for the teddy bear pattern. I remembered a few toys I had knit or crocheted through the years and figured I had better heed my own advice to "back it up"!

"Girl Rabbit" from Toy Knits by Debbie Bliss	"Piglet" from Toy Knits by Debbie Bliss
"Little Pink Piggy" from In Love with Crochet published by Leisure Arts

The crocheted pig was done with Red Heart Super Saver yarn and I'm not positive about the knit rabbit and pig but it looks like Wool-ease.

The Empty Nest

Laura wants to learn how to design and build houses. This is something she's always loved to do. When she was very young (and before she was allowed to use scissors) she built houses and villages by tearing and taping paper. Soon after that she was painting and decorating bird houses. Some of them were meant to be bird houses and a couple were purely craft projects but I liked them all and there was a perfect spot to hang them right outside the kitchen window. I put the houses up in the spring of 2002 and they were pretty to look at but not a lot of bird action took place. Bees, but no birds. The two small craft houses fell apart during the next couple of years but the big ones held together ... however, still no birds.

It had, almost exactly, been six years since I hung up the bird houses when, lo and behold, we started seeing sparrows around the "472" house!

It started with this sparow hanging around the outside of the house. In addition to the bird activity, the feather sticking out of the back of the house was a clue that a nest might have been built.

All speculation ended when we saw birds being fed. At first we only saw one, but it became clear very quickly that there were two.


Here they are taking their first look at the world.


All grown up and getting ready to fly away.

But, FIRST there must be a party!!

All of this happened outside my window during the month of June and the timing and symbolism is not lost on me. Sarah graduated from college on May 25th and has moved to Seattle to live and work. Laura graduated from high school on June 4th and leaves for college on August 22nd (to study architecture!) For the first time in over 25 years there will be no children at home in September. I will have an "empty nest". I watched a cycle of life played outside my window this spring while another takes place in my life. Fly high and strong birdies. Live free, strong and happy, my daughters.

Grandama's Tablecloth - The Finishing Details

Thank you to everyone who emailed me or left a message at the original blog entry. They were all a great contribution in helping me determine how to finish the tablecloth.

The final decision was that some sort of border was needed to stabilize the edges. The original border was not a good design and through the years had not held up well, so I decided not to recreate it. The slight visual differences between the old and new thread meant the edging needed to be small and simple -- so I started with a round of single crochets. I liked the look of this but the row "curled in" on itself and didn't look right. A second row of single crochets looked awful and I experimented with a number of single crochet, chains and picot patterns for the second row and hated them all.

The winning effect was to turn the tablecloth after the first round and slip stitch around for the second row. This produced a thin, stable and non-curling border which was exactly what I had in mind. I LOVED IT!! I worked the first row of single crochets with a size 10 hook, and this matched the gauge of the tablecloth, but the slip stitches made using that size hook were tight and pulled the edging inward so I bumped up to a size 5 hook to get them loose enough.

Before & After
Without Border	With Border

Unfortunately, I don't have a good way to properly block the tablecloth. So far I've managed using a stair railing and a touch-up with an iron. My Aunt remembered a very interesting device called a curtain stretcher. Lace curtains had to be washed, starched and stretched and the curtain stretcher was a wooden frame with sharp pins around the edges which held the curtains while they dried. Mom said Grandma had one and she'd take the tablecloth over there and use it for the tablecloth. They're actually available for about $10 on eBay and Craigslist. They're big and bulky and from what I've been reading, not friendly to the fingers! So considering the number of times I'd actually use it .... I'll make do.

I've picked out the pattern for the motif and written it out. It's available over on the free vintage patterns page of this blog.

Fox's Heart of a Child Square - Pattern Testing

Occasionally, I like to test the patterns of other designers. This is a necessary step in designing because fresh eyes and hooks are needed to get a pattern written down correctly and into instructions that most crocheters will understand. This is not only an important process but, for me, a lot of fun.

Donna Mason-Svara aka Smoothfox designed this gorgeous heart square, which I immediately feel in love with when I saw it. There was no problem reading her pattern (she provided pictures for every round which were most helpful) and in an evening I had crocheted two squares! Donna also had a great idea to have the tested squares sent back to her so she can assemble them into an afghan to donate. So these first two are off to her but I'm starting another afghan using scraps for the hearts and a soft white for the main color.

Thanks Donna for a great pattern and the opportunity to help out!

Update 8/25/2008
Check out the afghan I made using this square!

A couple of repeats

I had three family graduations this spring! My niece Karla and my daughter Sarah both graduated from college and my daughter Laura graduated from high school. It's becoming a tradition for me to make afghans for these life transitions.

The afghan I made for Karla is a remake of the Soft Boucle Throw. This time I bumped up a hook size -- to a M! and added a pattern repeat to the width (an additional 24 stitches to the beginning chain). These two adjustments were exactly what was needed, I won't need to tweak anything more. I love this pattern! The afghan is light and soft and is a perfect warm weather throw. The finished size was 49" x 59" (not stretched)

However, once again, working in Boucle has it difficulties. It's hard to see the beginning chains when I work in Boucle and that's exacerbated even further with a dark color of yarn. Because I can't see those chains, I'm crocheting mostly by feel when I work the first row of the pattern and I know I'm skipping some chains or working two stitches into others and this is a problem if I come up short at the end of my chain (it's easier to take chains apart or spread stitches out at the end of the row than it is to bunch a number of stitches together.) So my strategy when working in Boucle and making the beginning chains is to work about 3 or 4 more chains then the pattern calls for and take them out if I don't need them.

The afghan I made for Laura's "Going Off to College Afghan" is a remake of Teatime Elegance this time worked in Red Heart Super Saver Country Blue, Soft Navy and Soft White. The finished size is 54" x 72".

I followed all my notes and adjustments from the first time I made this and the results are perfect! I made no further adjustments.

Sarah is waiting until she has moved and found an apartment so that she has a better idea of what kind of pattern and which colors she'd like for her afghan. Stay tuned!

Laura's Harry Potter Sweater

My daughter Laura liked a sweater she had seen in the book Charmed Knits: Projects for Fans of Harry Potter by Alison Hansel. For my part, I was interested in learning to use the techniques for a seamless sweater that I had found in the book The Sweater Workshop by Jacqueline Fee. So I had a project!

The sweater from the Harry Potter book is a classic preppy grey V-neck design with alternating burgundy and gold stripes above the ribbing of the body and sleeves, based on the Gryffindor house colors. However, in order to follow the design suggested by The Sweater Workshop, I needed to convert the V-neck to a crew neck. In addition, Laura wanted to change the striping around the body to a solid burgundy, but to keep the burgundy gold striping around the sleeves. Laura liked the crew neck but thinks that the neckline would be better if it were wider and dipped lower.

Here are my notes & adjustments:

I used Lion Brand Wool-Ease Oxford Grey, Burgundy and Gold.

Shoot, I can't remember how much Oxford Grey I used for the body! Four or five skeins? One skein each of the Burgundy and Gold with plenty of yarn left over.

I used size 6 needles for the ribbing, size 8 for the body and size 10½ for binding off the neck band (see note below).

2" of K1,P1 ribbing for both the body and sleeves.

Semi-shaping for the sleeves (about 1/2 of the increases were done at the end of the ribbing and 2 stitches were added about every 7th row for the second half.)

In order to make the neck binding loose enough I went from size 6 to 8 needles on the last row of ribbing and then bound off in 10½. I am not sure whether this is a technique that always has to be applied when making a crew neck, or something that happened to be needed in this particular instance.

Laura wanted the sweater to have a longer body, but all of the shaping for the body occurs right after the ribbing, so finding a way to achieve a more gradual shaping needs to be considered in future projects. The book points out and gives options for more gradual shaping in the sleeves but not for the body where it is useful as well.

This is the second sweater that I have designed using the techniques from this book. I made my first one many years ago, before I had developed an understanding of gauge and garment fit. As a result of that, together with my liking for loose fit, that first sweater finished with a size that would have been large enough to fit a gorilla! My more recent attempt fits much better, and I expect my next design to be even more refined. Stay tuned!

Grandma's Tablecloth

It's been revived! My mom gave me a tablecloth that has been in our family since I was born. It was a present from her mom and during the years of my childhood it was an elegant fixture for special family occasions. However, through the years it was stained, had yellowed and a number of areas developed holes so it's been in storage for a long time. It came to me in rather bad shape, with the hope that it could repaired and used again.

Step 1: Clean. I filled up the bathtub with water, Oxiclean and a 5 day soak (it may have been longer.) Result: a clean WHITE tablecloth with NO stains!!
A long soak in a spare bathtub washed away
the years of stains & yellowing.
Step 2: Figure out what thread and pattern was used. I inherited my Grandmother's crochet books but none of them had the pattern for this tablecloth. Fortunately, the pattern is not complicated and it wasn't difficult to figure out the pattern for the motif. I also tested many different kinds of white thread for the best match, which turned out to be Aunt Lydia's Fine Crochet Thread, size 20, 100% Mercerized Cotton. I'm working on writing out the pattern for the motif and will publish it here when I have it.

A simple & elegant motif
Step 3: Assess the damage. The tablecloth measures approximately 56" x 70" and is made of joined motifs, each about 3.75" and a border had been added around the joined squares. The vast majority of the damage was a lot of broken stitching around the border (see photo). It was clearly a weak design area that did not stand the test of time. The damage to the border was too extensive and unrepairable. So with the blessings of my mom, I ripped it out (but not before I picked out and wrote down the pattern!!) I tried to save the thread so that I could reuse it in the repair of the motifs but the last two rows of the border were long chains and time and wear seemed to have fused the crochet and combined with the damage I couldn't get pieces long enough to be useful for repairs.

Example of the extensive damage around the border.
Only one corner area survived intact. (see photo below)
Step 4: Repair the motifs. This picture is an example of the typical damage to the motifs. Luckily it wasn't extensive or too difficult to repair. I took the crochet back far enough to be able to secure down ends and attach thread to work the new repair. The new thread is slightly whiter than the old but you'd have to have eagle eyes and a microscope to pick out the repairs so I'm quite proud of my conservation efforts.

Example of motif damage
Step 5: Decide what to do about a border. So the question becomes -- What do I do about a border? Here's a picture of the original border. It only looks good because it was opened up and pinned to paper -- see the Step 3 photo for the way the border actually looked.

The only corner of the border that was intact
1) Do I rework the original border? The Aunt Lydia's thread is a good match that is not discernible for the small repairs of the motifs but it would be noticeable once three rounds of border have been worked. The border was probably original to the pattern but with the test of time and wear it was not a great design. The first round is fine because it finishes off the petal design of the motif but the last two rounds are a series of long chains that during years of use got scrunched together and became a weak area where the most damage occurred (see Step 3 photo).

2) Design and work a new border? I would have the same thread difference issue as reworking the original border but perhaps some type of stabilizing border would be beneficial. If yes, what kind of new border? A simple round of single crochets? or reverse single crochets? Should I follow the first round of the original border and end there?

3) Leave it the way it is now with the original border removed? The picture below and the one at the top of this post were taken after the border was removed and all motif repairs had been worked. It looks fine. My daughters argument for this choice is that, except for restoration repairs, the entire the tablecloth remains crocheted by my grandmother and should stay that way! This choice would leave it a little unfinished by regular crochet standards and not in it's original state but may be the best way.




I need help deciding what to do! Please leave me a comment with your thoughts.


7/29/08 - Update
Grandama's Tablecloth - The Finishing Details