Throwback Thursday -- Remember the Inheritance?

Remember this? I am slowly connecting all the squares to finish someone else's project. I figure I will do a large sofa pillow, but it is hard to do. After all the white of the wedding dress, it is even hard to do off-white!

 

I am working on two nine patch sides. I figure when I get done connecting all of them - which could be done in an afternoon if I could concentrate - I will connect them with a brown or some other color. As long as it isn't too close to white.

Happy Crocheting! 

An Unfinished Inheritance

Now, that the wedding dress is finished and the wedding is over, I am finally getting with long put off projects. This morning, I started cleaning out my basement and going through the overflowing bins of yarn and fabric. There are many unfinished projects in various stages ranging through knitting, crocheting, cross stitch, sewing and quilting. There is one quilt that I started over 30 years ago. It is embarrassing to see the "quitter" that I can be!

But, there are a few that I have been given - projects whose creator died and whose inheritor thought of me. I wish I could ask the creator what it was they were making, who they were making it for, etc. Take the project photographed up top. There were only a few granny squares and half of a skein of yarn in a bag. No instructions or notes. So, I dragged it upstairs to count the number of squares and see if anything could be made of them. Upon closer inspection, I found that there were actually squares which were obviously made by two different crocheters with two different yarns. There are 20 squares that were crocheted by one person and 14 crocheted by another. You can see the color difference in the picture at the top of the page. One yarn is slightly yellower and the other has a pink cast to it.

But that isn't the biggest difference.  One crocheter was very good and one. . . not so much. The granny square on the right is very, well,  square. However, the square on the left is not square at all. So what was the difference that made the left one lopsided and rounded? Stitch count.

The square on the right, like all of its sister squares, has even stitch counts on each of the four sides and the corners are consistent in the number of increases. Each side has three stitches in the first round, 7 stitches in the second round, 11 stitches in the 3rd round and 15 in the forth and final round.

The square on the left also has three stitches in the first round, but in the second round there is seven stitches on one side and six in each of the other 3 sides. The third round has 11 over the seven, then 10 stitches over the next side and 9 overt the last two sides. On the final round, there are 14, then 11, 12, and 13 stitches. This is one uneven square! It just goes to show how important counting your stitches can be.

There are enough good squares to make a nine patch pillow, so that is what I think that I will do.

Happy crocheting - er - counting stitches.

Obsessive Compulsive Chullo Knitting

Introducing: Charlie's Chullo -- that would be Chullo number four. Alright, I know I have a problem. I just love making these things.

I used Noro Hitsuji again -- this time in a brown, black, orange and green colorway. However, Charlie wanted the colors to be more like the San Francisco Giant's uniform colors, so I removed the green and limited the grey. It is amazing how different two skeins of the same Noro yarn can look! Don't worry, there will not be any waste -- with the left over yarn, I will make myself a hat with more green in it!

When I completed the body of the hat, I attached the decorative spirals which Charlie said he would prefer over "fru-fru" pom-poms.I made four spirals, each in a different color cut out of a different part of the yarn. And each spiral is made a slightly different length.

Also known as "curlicues", spirals are really easy to do:

Leaving a long tail, start by crocheting a chain of any length --my shortest one is 14 chains. Make 3 Single Crochet stitches in each chain beginning with the 2nd chain from the hook. You will begin to see the spirals curl in just a couple of chains. When you reach the end of the chain, clip the yarn -- again leaving a long tail. Draw both long tails through the top of the last loop left on the hook.

Attaching them to the hat is just as easy:
Using a yarn needle, pull each one of the long tails on one of the spirals from the outside to the inside of the hat. Put one on each side of the circle left at the bind off of the hat's crest.







Continue to do this until all spiral tails are pulled through to the inside.

Next tie the pairs together in a knot.

Trim ends of yarn. You don't want to trim them really short, where the knot can work loose. If you use a square knot as opposed to a granny knot it will be less likely to slip.

How good looking is that!

Happy Knitting!

Knitters in a twist

Instead of the international symbol for "NO" shown above, please imagine a crest with an American Flag and 5 colored interlocking rings. I can't show that, because I wouldn't want to be accused of infringing upon a trademark.

I have been reading about the interesting news of a controversy between the U.S. Olympic Committee and a community of knitters and crocheters in an on-line social website called Ravelry. (I must make a disclaimer here that I, too, am a member of Ravelry and it is one of my favorite sites.) The 'yarn' begins when Ravelry established its 3rd Bi-Annual Ravelympics set to coincide with the 2012 Olympic Games in London

The U.S. Olympic Committee has written Ravelry a cease and desist letter (you will need a membership to view the link) which has twisted the stitches of many knitters and crocheters. The letter says, "We believe using the name “Ravelympics” for a competition that involves an afghan marathon, scarf hockey and sweater triathlon, among others, tends to denigrate the true nature of the Olympic Games.  In a sense, it is disrespectful to our country’s finest athletes and fails to recognize or appreciate their hard work." Hard work? The writer of this letter obviously has never knit a pair of toe up, two at a time, cabled socks on a single circular knitting needle.

I understand that the U.S Olympic Committee feels the need, as does any corporation, to protect their "brand" and the trademarks that they have established. However, to insult a group that is at least two million strong is probably trouble. At the time of the writing of this letter, the U.S. Olympic Committee's Facebook site has been inundated with comments from knitters and their supporters, the Ravelry post on this letter has 92 pages of comments from members and there are already over 5,600 results to the Google search "US Olympic knitting". Online articles have been written by the likes of Businessweek, USA Today, and TNT Magazine.

Patrick Sandusky, USOC Chief Communications and Public Affairs Officer, issued a statement apologizing for their unintended denigration of fiber artists everywhere, then had to issue an apology for the apology as it sounded as if they were asking knitters to make them handmade items. If there is any lesson in this, it is don't mess with women holding sharp pointy things.

Plarn, the green yarn?

Over the past week, I spent some time in one of my favorite internet communities, Knitting Paradise, and learned something new. If you have never heard of Knitting Paradise or have never spent time there, it is a great way to get answers from more experienced knitters, share your latest finished project or just shoot the breeze with fellow knitters. It seems like I am always coming away with something useful, fun or interesting.

In this case, I learned about "plarn". Plarn is a portmanteau (or a blending of two words to make a new one) made of plastic and yarn. It is a great way to do what many plastic bags have printed directly on them: "Recycle, Reduce, Reuse"!

Making plarn is easy and there are a lot of good websites (see below) out there that show step by step how to make it, so I am not planning to reinvent the wheel here and shoot more plarn-making photos. But I wanted to share the project I am working on and a couple of lessons I have learned.

I decided that I wanted to try a shopping tote. (Not only is it useful, but I find it humorously redundant.) I chose to make the tote rather small as I wanted to try out the whole plarn thing without taking forever to complete something -- what a waste (humor alert) to throw out a bunch of good plarn if you don't finish the project. However, if I finish the tote, use it conscientiously, then I will soon deplete my never ending supply of shopping bags. . .

Plarn was easier for me to crochet than knit, I think it is because it does not give much and since I knit fairly tight, there was no give to slip the working needle into the plarn.

Making plarn is easy and monotonous. My preferred method quickly became: fold one bag, cut it up, and crochet it, go to the next bag, repeat.

Crocheting plarn is tiring on your hands. Again I will chalk this up to the lack of give/stretch. So it will be something that I pick up for an hour or so at a time when I am tired of working on a long term project like a sweater or quilt.

Check the bag before cutting it. Some bags are so thin that they have a tear in it which occurred  its prior use and your loop wont be a loop.

Since I do most of my shopping at one local grocery store, most all of my bags are white with red and green printing. You don't really see most of the red or green, but it shows up like speckles in the white, much like a tweed yarn.

I used a cut width of about 1 1/2 inches, but I certainly did not use a ruler, I just eyeballed it.

Happy knitting, um er, crocheting!

Good, step by step, how to make and use plarn websites:

http://www.etsy.com/blog/en/2010/how-tuesday-how-to-make-plarn-crochet-an-eco-friendly-tote-b/

http://craftingagreenworld.com/2008/06/19/yearn-worthy-yarn-plarn/

http://www.plasticbagcrafts.com/make-plarn/

http://diyfashion.about.com/od/diyfashion101/tp/Plarn.htm

http://www.crochetpatterncentral.com/directory/plarn_items.php

http://www.myrecycledbags.com/my-pattern-links/

http://debsgoinggreen.blogspot.com/2008/07/more-plarn-patterns.html