Preview of things to come.

This is actually the chart for my current project. I post it in full knowledge that it doesn't mean anything to anyone but me. But doesn't it look impressive? It's another of those things that I will claim is much less complicated than you might guess. I actually had quite a struggle with this pattern (my current baby afghan) because it's one of those things that just makes more sense when you look at a visual representation than "ch 2, sc in ch-5 sp of prev motif, ch 2, 3 dc in same ch-4 sp," etc. Also, although I drew the chart as ovals, the motif is more of a parallelogram. Possibly a rhombus, I haven't measured the sides to see if they're equal. Or, if you'd like to be a little less mathy about it, it's a diamond shape.



I'd also like to point out that this is worked in motifs, joined as I go, and I am STILL holding firm to my resolution to sew in the ends of each motif before I begin the next. It'll make my life much easier, not having to sew in some 240 yarn ends all at the end of the project.

Once I've got enough done to see if the pattern will do what I want it to do visually, there will be pictures. Stay tuned!

Well, what do you know, I knit, too!

See, it's not just crocheted baby afghans all the time!

This is actually the first cable knit project I did. (If you can't tell, it's a scarf.) My friend S assures me that it's typical of me to think of this as an easy project, because there are just two different pattern rows that alternate, and the rest is knitting the knits and purling the purls. She claims that most knitters would start with a scarf that had maybe one cable down the middle. But I know me, and I would have been bored silly with that.

I remember starting this last spring some time. I did a test run of the pattern (Aran Plait from the immortal Donna Kooler's Encyclopedia of Knitting) and decided I really liked it so I'd make a scarf from it. I forget what it was left over from, but this WAS stash yarn. I'll even have to dig around to find what kind of yarn it was, but I have the feeling it's a TLC soft yarn that's discontinued now. It's an aran/fisherman/cream sort of color, despite what you may infer from the photo. And I knit until I ran out of yarn, which was just excellent. One tiny bit of the stash actually used up, hooray!

And here's the close close-up of the pattern stitch. I love how it really looks braided even though it's not. I had just gotten a good start on it in May 2005 when I went down to E's graduation, and I worked on other things over the summer and eventually finished it on my Christmas vacation last year. Whenever I get to the point of actually knitting my First Sweater it'll most likely be a cable knit, the kind that has a cable running up each of the sleeves.

That's all I've got. Stay tuned for more about the baby afghans (because you know there are more)!

Something a little different.

I talked with my friend A last night and learned that she's applied for a new job. Of course I hope she gets it because she's awesome and I think she'd do great. But just in case she doesn't get it, this is for her.




Notice the "Now Hiring" on the second picture. I took these years and years and years ago, but somehow I imagine they're still hiring. It's possible that only A will appreciate how awesome these pictures are, but for the rest of you, just imagine yelling "Ho-Chunk" at the top of your lungs every time you drive through Wisconsin on your way to or from college and you might begin to see why we love this casino that neither of us has ever been in.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for you, A!

Oh look, another baby afghan!

Like I said, I do a lot of these.

This one was for Baby GP, whose mother is friends with Baby CK's mother. We joke that GP and CK are destined to go to prom together.

This was the next afghan I did after CK's. By the time I finished that afghan, I was getting a bit tired of the old standby V-stitch. I had this pattern which was originally for a completely different yarn in brown and tan, but luckily I was able to see past that. If I remember correctly, I used Red Heart Super Saver, which I probably won't do again. I liked the colors (Delft and Royal, I believe) but I just don't think it's soft enough to use for baby afghans.

I'm trying to remember where I came up with this pattern so I can link to it, and I'm absolutely at a loss. I'll have to dig through the pattern file to see, but I'm pretty sure that it was either the free pattern on a yarn label or one of the free ones you find at JoAnn's or Michaels' next to the yarn. This is another of those patterns that looks a good deal more complicated than it actually is, which I always enjoy. I think if I redid it I might pick a different border, because this turned out a bit frillier than I had imagined it.

Okay, that's it for baby afghans for a while!

Another baby afghan

It seems that a good ratio of my projects are baby afghans. I'd hate to calculate a percentage, but it's significant.

Here's one that I did just over 2 years ago for Baby CK. It turned out to be quite a long afghan because I was crocheting during the 2004 Summer Olympics. It's the same V-stitch pattern as I used for Baby MD a bit further down, and that stitch is so easy that I don't really have to look at what I'm doing. I can feel where each stitch goes, and all I have to do is look down to make sure I start each new row in the right place.

Which is exactly what I was doing... crocheting, not really looking, crocheting, etc... and all of a sudden I could hold the afghan up at neck level and it came down to my ankles! I think it ended up being 54" long, which just means that it'll take that much longer for CK to outgrow it. What can I say, they show a lot of swimming, and Aaron Peirsol is pretty. Very pretty.

Um, where was I? Oh yes, the technical stuff that's probably of no interest to anyone except me. This is Caron Simply Soft in soft pink with a white border. I think the border is the same as my first afghan. It reminds me of ice-cream cones, and I thought it was cute for a little girl.

Baby CK has a big brother on the way, and he'll be the recipient of my current project! Stay tuned for details.

All right, Universe, I can take a hint.

This isn't actually about anything craftistic, just a true story that I had to share.

The other day I was trying to send some magnets (the cheap promotional kind you put on the fridge, like from Peapod) to our sister company in Canada. I had thought that our countries were basically friends, but Canadian import customs routines are not what I'd call friendly. After spending over 10 minutes on the phone with FedEx, I finally had most of it figured out. What I hadn't counted on was the fact that our FedEx account is still in N's name (she's left the company), and there's some declaration form that you have to sign that was pre-filled with her name. I was sort of reluctant to perjure myself by just signing her name, but I didn't know if it would cause problems if I crossed out her name and wrote in my own. And it occurred to me to wonder if it actually was perjury if it was in writing. You know how there's the difference between libel and slander, and I wondered if there was something similar for perjury, like is there a different word if you're not under oath? So I grabbed my dictionary to look it up, and the first page that it opened to had, as a guide word, "Lie detector." That sort of freaked me out, so I took my lesson from the universe and cancelled the FedEx shipment and sent it US Mail, with a sticky note for the mailroom to contact me if they needed more info for the customs forms. I didn't hear a word from them, and I was only vaguely paranoid for the rest of the day.

Okay, I feel like I should make this about something that I actively did (not just something weird that happened) so here's a photo that I took last week. It's of the Sears Tower from the Buckingham Fountain plaza.

Hardanger: A Norwegian Region

I so wish I could take credit for this post and its awesome title, but I can't. Special thanks to H for the title, and to today's guest crafter, my mom!

Mom does lovely hardanger work, which we discussed last night at Kelly Girls, my regular Wednesday night knitting group. There are crocheters there too, and the girls create a lot of other craftistic projects also. We've got cross-stitchers and stampers and scrapbookers and seamstresses, including J who's sewing her friend's wedding dress! So I mentioned Mom's hardanger, and then had to explain it. Traditionally it's done in white thread on white cloth, but as you can see that's not quite my style. These days it's actually quite common to see colored thread and cloth.

It's worked on evenweave fabric (like the Aida cloth that cross-stitchers use), but the advantage is that you only have to be able to count to four. I've never tried it myself, so I don't know all the terms, but the basic filled-in four-block is a staple of the form, as are 8-pointed stars and the nifty cut-work sections. Yes, you actually cut out certain threads, as you can see in the bottom photo.

To learn more, I recommend you visit my mom's pushers... I mean dealers... I mean the store where she buys a lot of her supplies: Nordic Needle. They've got all sorts of cloth and thread and patterns and instructions and everything else you could possibly want.

Thanks again for this lovely present, Mom!

Oh, and I forget exactly what this is called, but it's meant to go on top of a dresser. Which is what it does.

The next logical step after Doogie Howser, M.D.?

Baby MD

He's not an infant doctor, but he plays one on TV. Or possibly those are just his initials.

This is the afghan that I did a couple of years ago for AD's first boy, M. I will have to look up his birthday, but I have a feeling it's around March of 2003. I remember A sent me the funniest thank-you note about how she was getting to be quite an expert at writing one-handed thank-yous!

This yarn is one of my favorites, again from Bernat. This is Soft Bouclé, which is another acrylic yarn that is just so snuggly soft you don't want to put it down. I think the main color was sort of a combination of light blue and light green, possibly with a bit of white in there as well. It's not variegated, more heathered. Looking at Bernat's website now, I'd say whatever color it was, it's now discontinued.

The pattern is my old standby, the V-stitch. It's one of the easiest patterns imaginable, and yet it still looks somewhat interesting. It also works up very quickly, and I don't always need to look at what I'm doing while stitching. This looks like a plain single crochet border, not that I wrote it down or anything useful like that while I made the afghan.

I probably owe M a "Happy Birthday" so even though it's late, Happy Birthday, M!

Baby afghan #1

AD Afghan

For A, who is expecting her second boy in May. This is one of the quicker baby afghans on record (for me, at least), because I know full well that after this one is done, I have 4 more to finish by the end of August. And the next 2 are due in May and early June. So no pressure! But I think I finished this in 23 days, and that's not a bad pace.

Technical details: I used Bernat Softee Baby yarn, in Pale Blue and His Jeans Ombre. (I was all set to swear at Bernat for daring to make variegated yarns that don't match their solids, when another girl at my knitting group told me that there is a matching blue, which she is using with the same ombre for her baby afghan. It just wasn't at the store where I bought the yarn. [Thanks for the info, J.] So then I was all set to curse Michael's for not stocking it. Except that when I went to their website to find a page to link here, I discovered Glow-in-the-Dark embroidery floss. I don't embroider any more, but the concept is so cool that all is forgiven.) Anyway, it's an acrylic sport DK weight yarn, and I used a size G, 4.25 mm hook.

For the record, blogger software is a lot less clever than I think it should be. Apparently you can't post live links from a Mac unless you're using FireFox, or you've been forced to learn some html coding. (Stupid blogging software.)

So, the pattern. The pattern is based on something I found in Donna Kooler's Encyclopedia of Crochet, which is a fabulous source for beautiful stitch patterns. She's got an Encyclopedia for Knitting and one for Embroidery too, and if you're at a level where you just need the basic idea, I can't recommend them enough. There are some full patterns, but to me the real resource is the pattern gallery. Page after page of stitch patterns just waiting to be given life and form. Anyway, I used 16 repeats of the Closed Ripple stitch. Finished, the afghan measures about 41" by 45" or so. I think I would have to block it to make it perfectly rectangular, and to be honest, I can't be bothered. It's a baby afghan, and it's meant to be used, and I really don't think it matters to the baby if it's not precisely right-angled.

Congratulations, A & M, and welcome, Baby D!

And bring on baby afghan #2 (already in progress)!

Technical Details

Because people have asked (hi, Mom & Dad!), here's how to leave a comment if you feel so inclined.

Every post has a "posted by craftistic" line with a timestamp. To the right of that, you will see a link that says (#) Comments. Click on the link, and it will bring you to the comment page, where you can leave your comment for me. Once you're on the page, it's pretty simple.

Thanks for checking in!

'Tisn't the Season

All right.

I admit that this is terribly out of season, but I'm fairly proud of finally finishing a treetop angel, so I'm going to brag about it. I've wanted one of these for years, and never quite managed to actually make one. I forget when I started crocheting this project, but I know it was a second attempt after finding a poorly-written free pattern somewhere on the internet. That first one was sort of a disaster, possibly because the designer was under the influence of something regulated. So I got smart and bought a booklet (Our Best Christmas Thread Crochet from Leisure Arts) and did pattern #12, Treetop Angel. (Where do they think of these creative names? I'm just kidding, Nanette Seale, your design is lovely.)


I do know that I pulled out the barely-started angel in June or so of 2005. I remember working on it on the lawn at Pritzker Pavillion during Grant Park Orchestra concerts. Sometime later, much closer to Christmas, I had the flash of insight that really made this project special. The original design is all in white, but I happened to have silver crochet thread in the same size, and I realized that all of the outermost edging is done at the end. So after some debate about whether I should make the edging gold or silver, and silver won, I was anxious to finish. And I did get it done in time to place it atop my tree, maybe early to mid-December, so that was sort of a personal victory.



The technical stuff: Finished size is about 7" tall with a wingspan just shy of 4 1/2". I used standard size 10 crochet thread, mostly white, with the edging is done in "silver" which is actually more of a pewter color with a metallic silver wrap. It's kind of irritating to work with because it twists up so much, but worth it for the final result. I used a size 6 steel hook--this is the part that usually freaks knitters right out, because the size 6 has a diameter of 1.8 mm. That's 0.2 mm smaller than a size 0 knitting needle. (And not even remotely close to being the smallest of the steel crochet hooks. A size 14, which I don't use because I value my eyesight and my sanity, has a diameter of 0.75 mm.) The part of the hook that you actually work on is where my index finger is resting in the photo.

Oh, and to finish it, I used a product called Stiffy. Seriously. It's a fabric stiffener that really works well. (No, you don't have to go to a special section of the fabric store and ask for it in hushed tones and then receive it in a paper bag. But it sounds like you should.) You just immerse the finished piece, let it soak a bit, gently squeeze out the excess, and then pin it down to the shape you want. A bit tricky with the whole 3-D thing, but a styrofoam cone is your friend here. The only caveat is that Stiffy is permanent, so take your time and get it right the first time!

Next year, I might even post a picture of the angel actually on my tree!

Chatelaine

This is a little project that I started and finished last Tuesday, April 4. The original pattern is from Annie Modesitt & Friends' 2006 Crochet Pattern-a-Day Calendar, found here. It's probably called an embroidery scissors holder in the calendar, but it amuses me to call it a chatelaine. Technically it's something that might be hung from the chatelaine, not the chatelaine itself, but as I've said, it amuses me so that's what I'm calling it.

I have no idea what kind of yarn the designer used, but I used size 3 crochet thread and a size 00 hook and it worked out just fine. I also had some slight issues with the way the pattern was written, so I sort of made something up and that also worked out. If there are any aspiring pattern designers out there, please do us the small favor of telling us if you're going to use short-row shaping, otherwise we'll think you don't quite know what you're doing. I ended up working to the end of each row on decrease rows instead of leaving the last stitch unworked. It turned out much the same as the pictured one in the calendar, although I did have to do some extra decreases at the pointy part. Speaking of the pointy part, those are very sharp scissors indeed, so I've stuffed a bit of batting in to make it a bit more portable.

I love that you can click on the picture to see a larger image, and I don't have to do anything to make it happen.

Not quite sure what to do with a blog.

So I mostly have this blog so that I can comment on another friend's blog (hi, Candi!) But some day it might be nice to post some pictures of whatever I'm working on, or maybe even finished projects. (I do finish projects from time to time.) Stay tuned.