Annie’s Hands™

More than just a crochet hook

2011-03-14T00:32:00.005-04:00

It's a riddling rack! Riddling is a part of the process of making champagne. The bottles are put into a riddling rack, and whatever sediment is in the bottles comes to the cork end of the bottle. Every day or so, someone comes along and gives each bottle a shake and a twist. Finally, the cork end is frozen, the sediment is taken off the frozen end, the cork reinserted, and on with the rest of the process.

I just thought it was a pretty cool way to store wine bottles in a house that has precious little floor space left.

The wood on the face of it - the parts with the holes - are made from what used to be a door frame. I found that on eBay. The side panel is from wood that used to be a fence and was going to be burned. My buddy Rudy saved it from the fiery fate and gave me a piece of it. It is ALL oak, which matches everything else in our house.

It hangs on the wall next to the kitchen door - handy for dinner, yet out of the way. The good people at True Value Hardware are my go-to peeps for all things hardware-ish. They helped me figure out a way to attach it to the wall. So far it has @ 15 bottles, and it is holding up nicely.

And I don't even drink wine! That's Chris' territory.

Aunt Joy

2011-03-01T22:07:00.006-05:00

Please click on any photo to see it enlarged.

This is my Aunt Joy and her doggie Ana. Joy is my mother's sister, and had a large part in getting me started in the world. When my dad died, she came to the funeral, and at that time invited Chris and me to come visit in Sugarland, Texas. We decided, on sort of short notice, to take her up on her offer. I worked furiously, but was unable to finish a blanket for her before we left. I brought it with me in the hopes that I might finish it while on vacation. Pack the hook, the yarn, find some kindergarten type blunt nose scissors, the label, needle and thread. Good idea, but I forgot one essential item. The pattern.

Dward was taking care of our kitties back at the house, so I asked him to send me the file in an email. The two days I could have been crocheting non stop were the two days I spent waiting for that file. After it arrived, there was too much else going on, what with seeing the sights in and around Sugarland and Houston, so the blanket got finished after we got home again.

Here's the clip art I used as a template for the dove, along with the finished product. Finding just the right font, size and position for the name was something Chris and I spent a fair amount of time working out.

Let's Try Something New

2010-09-19T20:23:00.006-04:00

Inspiration! This guy Bob, nicknamed KnottyMale, makes some knockout stuff. Click the link and go see his work. I've admired his artistry for some time, and decided to try making a bag. A simple bag - how hard could it be?

Ok, it's not a flat surface like a blanket or a rug, but I bet I can figure it out. No, once again no patterns were made. I just made an excel file for the swirly design, and off I went. It was well under way, and got ripped out again and again to correct small issues. Then I decided that if it was worth doing at all, it was worth doing well. There does not seem to be such a thing as a practice piece when it comes to crochet. With all the time I was putting in to figuring this out, I wanted to have something nice at the end of it. So it all got ripped out again, down to the first row. Part of the issue was the inside of the bag. Why not get it to look nice? See the pretty row of purple stitches up the inside? They line up just so now. They don't show on the outside.

The handle was fun. Remember, I had never done this before. I have no idea how other people put on their handles, but mine is a continuous sort of thing. The handle or strap makes a half twist from one side of the bag to the other. That way, I could make the purple line that runs through the handle. Make sure it twists at the other end where it attaches again. Then you just follow it around the rim, over the handle, around the other rim, over the handle again, etc. until it looks like it is done.

Most of my work is crocheted back loop only. In this piece, the purple, ONLY the purple of the design is worked in both loops. This was an attempt to do away with the line that appears across work done back loop only. But I failed to take into account that that dreaded line shows up better the lighter the color of yarn. So although there is no 'line' in the purple design, you don't notice it. Maybe next time the body of the piece will be darker and the design in a lighter hue.

This is Caron One Pound Acrylic Worsted Weight, done with an I hook. It is tapestry crochet throughout, to make the fabric denser and sturdier. It covers the carried yarn quite well, I think. The spiral design is from Celtic Charted Designs by Co Spinhoven.

Black and White Celtic border

2010-02-23T21:47:00.003-05:00

The pattern for this hat and scarf set is from a wonderful book: Celtic Charted Designs by Co Spinhoven. I love this book and turn to it often for inspiration and ideas.

The yarn is Sirdar Snowflake, polyester. The yarn took some getting used to, since it is very thin with tufts. I spent a lot of time looking for the stitch on the previous row to crochet into. Has anyone ever gone blind doing crochet work with teensy fluffy yarn?

Red and Yellow Stripes

2010-02-11T00:23:00.002-05:00

Stripes! Sort of a Cat in the Hat sort of thing, eh? The colors were determined by the yarn on hand. Someone on Freecycle gave me several trash bags full of all kinds of yarn. Such luck! The hat is Tapestry Crochet, which makes it not as stretchy. The scarf is done in alternating rings of color. Next time I'll try doing the hat that way.

Wavy Experiment

2010-01-16T18:48:00.005-05:00

Now that I have a knack for making hats, experimentation is the thing. Remember the yarn I received as a door prize at the Pittsburgh Knit and Crochet Festival? It is in various shades of blue, so another try with wave action seemed to be in order. This time, the waves are more random, which made the hat more of a challenge. But the hat fits, and is warmer than I would have thought. With the scarf, you'll be toasty until the temp gets down into the thirties or so.

Here you can see the waves a little better.

Lucky You!

2009-05-06T15:44:00.003-04:00

In March I posted the following on my Facebook page:
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Lucky You!

I don't know where this started but, it came to me from a person I admire and I love the idea!- The first four people to respond to this note will get something made by me. My choice. For you. Conditions: - What I create will be just for you, and I'll definitely put a lot of love in it. - I make no guarantees that you will like what I make! I promise to try. - You will have no clue what the item is going to be. It could be a story or a CD. It could be a piece of handmade jewelry or potholder. I may draw, paint, collage or crochet something. I might bake you something and mail it to you. I may grow you a plant. Who knows? Not you, that's for sure! - I reserve the right to do something extremely strange. The catch? The catch is that in order to receive a gift, you have to re-post this and make and send out four surprises of your own, so if you aren't gonna follow through and make something for four others, you get nothing from me. Come on people, who doesn't like getting mail? If I did not tag you it is still Ok to Post. I did put a bit of thought into those I tagged. In your responses put your address (unless you're certain I already have it) and your favorite color.

*************************************

I got one, count them, ONE reply. So I decided to send ALL of my somethings made by me to her. I know that she has a husband and three kids, so instead of four things, I bent the rule and made five. I hope they enjoy.

A Scarf Done in Shades of the Sea

2009-05-06T15:13:00.005-04:00

This is a skein of yarn I found at the Pittsburgh Knit and Crochet Festival. An idea for a scarf had been burbling about in my head for a while, and I'd been looking for just the right colors to make it. The texture comes out looking like waves, or at least is intended to look that way. So the colors needed to be in sea shades. This one worked quite nicely.

Since I don't know about yards or gauge or that sort of thing, working this in a round worked out very nicely. When the yarn ran out, the scarf was done! Now for some cold weather so I can wear it.

Washcloths Revisited

2009-05-02T09:31:00.011-04:00

The Pittsburgh Knit and Crochet Festival gave some lovely door prizes, and did I ever score! There's this bundle of mercerized Egyptian Cotton from Classic Elite Yarns in swirls of blue that I have not yet begun to play with.

Please click on any photo for a close-up. Use the back button on your browser to return to the blog.

Then there's this jumble of hand dyed colors in mercerized cotton, CRAYONS LITE from Rainbow Mills. Each skein contains approximately 962 yards, which meant nothing to me. I'd never worked with cotton before making those green washcloths, and I'd certainly never worked with yarn this fine before. I'd been a worsted weight gal with the blankets. The festival was back in February, and it took me until the last day of April and the first day of May to get over the intimidation and work with it.

First attempt was the washcloth pattern I have used before. It makes a pocket for left over slivers of soap that then can be tucked inside. The heavier cotton ones in green were a bit heavier than were handy to use, so this thinner yarn looked like just the thing. And since I had no idea of gauge or yards, I just dug in. What came out was a washcloth that was about two thirds finished when I ran out of yarn. This led to some stitch counting, re figuring, and pulling it all out to start over. Next attempt led to this.

Here is the second skein from the bag of that same color. When the cloth was finished, there were about two feet of yarn left over. The recalculations worked!

Then I decided to try just a flat cloth. I stole the idea from the scarf I made recently, which was to work it in the round, and when you run out of yarn, you're done. The first one was made the same way I would make the top of a swirly flat top hat. When I got to what looked like halfway through the yarn, I stopped.

The next one I *thought* was going to be the same pattern as the first, but it turned into a pinwheel pattern with the stitches. I want to figure out how I did that, so I can do it again.

And voila! They turned out, while not the same pattern, to be exactly the same size. Those two cloths are made from one skein. Another skein is shown for comparison.

Flat Top Swirly Hats

2009-04-03T12:49:00.005-04:00

The swirls were coming along. Next challenge is to figure out a hat that is flat on top. Many many circles were started and torn out before finding a configuration of stitches and increases that works for me. At the same time I wondered if I could do away with beginning the hat with one color and introducing the other color(s) a few rows down. After several tries, I got it.

Please click on the photos to see them more clearly.

It fits pretty well. The nice thing about this hat is that it can be worn high and loose, or if things get chillier it can be pulled down over the ears without looking all that stoopid.

That takes care of the two colors beginning at the start of the hat. Now, can it be done with four colors? This looked like a total rat's nest before some passing fairy godmother took pity on me, waved a magic wand, and suddenly it all came together.

A Swirly Hat

2009-04-03T12:36:00.005-04:00

So I'd been making hats using the pattern by Carol Ventura as a starting place. Then came variations. The first variation was the Registered Architect hat. Then came this one, with the swirls. It took some doing before finding a way to make the swirls come out looking ok. The hat is a little lop-sided, since I was making it up as I went along. The lop-sided quality gives this hat a front and a back. It actually fits better on the head this way. Serendipity!

You can see that the hat begins at the top with white, then the swirls begin a few rows in. This frustrated me, and I began to wonder whether I could do it any differently.

The hat came out so well I decided to make a scarf to match. It is not as stiff as I thought it might be, and is very warm. Next time I might make it a bit longer.

More Hats!

2009-03-20T16:20:00.005-04:00

I've been so taken with the notion of crocheting things that are not flat rectangles that I have been making hats almost non stop. Today I asked myself whether I was becoming a slave to the dictates of a pattern. Where's the innovation? The testing, the trying of the untried? So I put an innovative border on the bottom of one of the hats. So there.

The Celtic Cross

2009-03-17T17:23:00.006-04:00

Whatever posessed me? What came over me? I could have saved myself so much heartache if I had just said, "That's pretty," and gone on. But no, I had to go and try to chart the darned thing.

Celtic designs were the fancy of the moment. And I was devising ways to chart out designs for myself. The down side of being self taught is that you can't do things in the ways that lots of people have spent time streamlining. The upside is that there are no boundaries! There Is No Box. So I was merrily making charts of celtic patterns, when this photo came along.

Saint Moluag was an Irish lad who did his missionarying in Scotland. There is a little church named for him in Scotland, and outside that church stands this cross.

One of my favorite sayings is one from the Finnish people. "The work will teach you how to do it." And this little project did indeed teach me. I can now draw pretty quickly in Excel. Yes, I know it is spreadsheet software, but to me it is an art form, just as valid as charcoal or watercolor.

The finished piece measures eight feet tall. It's pretty impressive.

Look Ma, I'm Famous!

2009-03-17T17:10:00.002-04:00

I'd been happily crocheting along all by myself. Then I was given the sparkly yarn, and that is what set off the series of events that led me to here - world fame!

Ok, not world, and not exactly fame. But noticed and mentioned?

In searching for more of the sparkly yarn, I met the nice lady at the local yarn shop. (Hello Lindy!) She told me about Ravelry.com, and I tripped over the Yahoo group. And in these online sites is where I learned that what I had been doing was called Tapestry Crochet.

Dr. Carol Ventura looks to me to be the Grand Poobah of Tapestry Crochet. She teaches the technique, and celebrates others who use this art form. It was she who wrote the directions for the hats in the previous entry.

Anyway, Dr. Ventura was kind enough to feature me on her site under "artist profiles." I can't begin to say how honored I am to be in the company of such creative folks.

Annie Makes Hats

2009-03-14T13:38:00.014-04:00

Check it out - I made a hat! I followed directions and made something that I did not design myself! Up to now, this has not been possible, because I have no earthly idea how to read a pattern. They are full of abbreviations and assumptions of what you know. But this pattern, or set of directions, was written by someone who bridges that gap by writing her patterns in plain English. What an innovation! This first one turned out a little coneheaded, but that's ok. Hats made after the first one fit better.

Carol Ventura is the mastermind behind all this. More about her in the next post. First I'm gonna show off my pretty hats.

This hat is made in the colors of Mardi Gras, that being the time of year and all. I had a particular Mardi Gras partygoer in mind, but once it was finished, it was snapped up by a certain blonde. She likes wearing it turned up at the bottom, with the option of pulling it down over her ears when things get chilly.

Here's the top of the hat, and the pretty design crocheted into it.

And look inside - no loose threads! This is the beauty of Tapestry Crochet. There is no 'wrong' side to the fabric. The inactive color gets carried inside the active color, and serves to strengthen the fabric at the same time. No cutting, tying knots, weaving in loose ends, or dangly yarns hanging loose inside your hat.

So I've proved to myself I can make a hat. What else can I do? With the Schess in mind, (and thinking of that stolen hat) I made one for the architect.

This hat got made several times, pulled out, made again, over and over, round and round. In the process some shortcuts became necessary. When pulling out a row, it is difficult to know where to stop pulling. So now each row gets marked with a different color thread stuck in the last stitch in a row, and that color gets noted on the pattern.

A new set of alphabet letters was made for this hat. I now know that small letters can be readable at this size.

The buildings were not too tricky. The main headache was getting the curve into the hat in the proper proportions.

Pittsburgh Knit and Crochet Festival

2009-03-13T18:47:00.009-04:00

Did I mention that it was Barb Grossman who led me down the slippery slope to yarn addiction? She only compounded the issue by organizing these festivals, and then having the audacity to invite me to come see!

Look at her trying to appear innocent of it all....

I was dazzled by all the textures, the colors, the many types of yarn. They don't make it easy!

My friend Pat was my date for the festival. She and I took a class together, even though she already knew what was being taught. I got a little basket started, and finished it at home the next day.

Here is the demo of the giant knitting needles. The nice man signed and personalized each set as it was purchased.

My Horizon Gets Broadened, Continued

2009-03-08T14:24:00.009-04:00

Around the corner from my house is this sign. I see it while out and about walking the dogs, and it has been a handy landmark when giving people directions to our house. "Turn left just past the sign for the yarn shop." When my hunt for more varieties of yarn intensified, I called the number for the shop. After a few tries, I reached the proprietor, Lindy, who invited me over for one of those 'hours by appt.' What Lindy failed to mention was that the entrance to the shop is around the back. So I spent some time on a bitter cold day standing and stomping on the front porch, shivering. No Lindy. The long story is that we played phone tag - I am not kidding - for months. The slightly less tedious story is this: I am happy to report that I no longer obsess over the painful details of that time of my life. It is all behind me now. Anyway, during the process of phoning and tagging, Lindy told me about a gathering she and some other ladies have on a regular basis at her shop. They get together and knit, and they would welcome someone who could crochet, also.

Here's the gang at a recent meet:

One of the gals can knit just about anything. Here she shows us an example of what she called "Russian Knitting." She is a real help in figuring out a tricky pattern.

Judging by the way they looked at the work I did, I would guess that they had never seen tapestry crochet before. But they have always been very complimentary when I have brought something to show off.

And one for Jennifer

2009-02-24T18:46:00.006-05:00

If Claudia was going to get a new blanket, it followed that Jennifer should be next. Jennifer is an outdoorsy type gal, and works at a very outdoorsy type place. She is controller for a lumber company that does sustainable harvesting of their trees. Their lands do not look denuded, and are not monocultures after being replanted. Their lands are maintained as close to nature as possible. That means that if there is a certain percentage of oak, birch, cherry, poplar, etc. in a wild forest, then that is what they will have there. Because who knows what wood will be popular sixty years from now? And animals need the diversity to be happy. So the firm employs foresters to keep things healthy. With all this in mind, Jenn needed trees and critters. I am pretty pleased by how the trees came out, while a bit embarrassed by how cartoonish the critters are. I charted them myself, which is fine. But right after this blanket was made, I came across charts for all sorts of animals, all looking much better than what I did here.

The trees' leafy bits are a textured yarn, Patons Mosaic, that I had never tried before. And the critters are Patons Pebbles, once again a new experience. On a run to the yarn store, I'd come across a sale on these, and thought I would try them. While I was at it, I made a bath mat from the Pebbles. It came out very soft and cushy. I want to try working with it again, this time with better charts.

A Blanket for Claudia

2009-02-24T18:21:00.008-05:00

My dear friend Claudia and her partner received the first blanket of the modern era of Annie. It was complicated as far as chart, but extremely simple in terms of color. So, remembering the success of the blanket for Christina, I asked Claudia for a color consult. Claudia is a quilter, and assembles color on a regular basis. She and I went through my stash and picked out colors for her blanket.

It was more a matter of grouping colors together. Then with those groups, I picked out patterns. There is more of the metallic yarn from the stash of Barb Grossman, and Claudia picked out some truly lush color combinations.

The text for the names has finally come into focus. The letters are not so tall and skinny any more, but nice and round. The spirals next to the name were a particular challenge. I made a couple of tries before I was happy with the chart for these. But then the experiments became coasters to go along with the blanket.

As you can see, it is very rich in color indeed. If I had a favorite blanket, this one might be it.

My Horizon Becomes Broadened

2009-02-16T15:06:00.012-05:00

I'd been happily making wash and wear blankets with my acrylic for some decades when a friend popped out of nowhere with a bag of yarns for me. I took it happily, not knowing where this would lead. Yarn addiction is a serious thing, and I was being lead in a dangerous direction indeed. But I didn't know that at the time. I was an innocent in the ways of the yarncrafters.

To make matters worse, the friend with the stash was Barbara Grossman, founder and director of the Pittsburgh Knit and Crochet Festival. The first one of these festivals was five years ago, and I attended in a working capacity. I was on the board of directors for The Midwife Center for Birth and Women's Health www.MidwifeCenter.org and we were selling snacks and lunches as a fundraiser at the festival. Most of my day was spent behind the food counter, but I did wedge myself into the crowds to look around a bit. There were vendors selling an astounding collection of pretty things that were rather overwhelming to me. There was a dazzling array of classes in subjects that were completely foreign to me. My limited experience, self taught as I was, had ill prepared me for this environment. It was just as well. The first festival was so jam packed with attendees that one could barely insinuate oneself through the throngs.

But back to that stash. There was some yarn that had a metallic thread through it. Since this was a stash, there were no labels, so I had no chance of finding that particular one again. I set out to find something at least similar. What Was I Thinking??? My first searches were online, and I began to taste some of what is out there. Wool, linen, alpaca, merino, cotton, silk, bamboo, mohair, soy (!), angora, cashmere, et cetera an nat. I could and did search for yarn with metallic content. I could and did search for machine washable.

And I found far more than I ever bargained for. But that is for the next blog entry. For now, a suitable yarn was found. There was not nearly enough of it to make a blanket, but it could accent one nicely. Here began a collaboration. I make the patterns and designs using Excel, and Christina is my color consultant. She, being an architect, has more sense of color than I do. Chris had in mind something with an overall unity of design. It was a foreign idea to me, but what could it cost to humor her? She grouped colors together, and this is what came out. I was almost shocked by how well it worked.

Now, I ask for color consult on a regular basis. A huge resource had been right under my nose, and I hadn't known it.

Letters

2009-02-04T16:17:00.016-05:00

The evolution of names on the blankets has taken a while. The charting of each letter was done in Excel, using cells as pixels. In my usage, one cell on an Excel page represents one stitch of crochet. I learned fairly early on that in crochet, stitches are not square. If I followed a pattern that was charted on a page of squares, my finished crochet work would look very tall and skinny, simply because my stitches are not square like the graph. It took a lot of fiddling and fooling until I found the proper ratio for my stitches. When charting on graph paper, my pixels - one pixel representing one stitch - needed to be taller than wide. These letters were made early on in the scheme of things, and so look pretty tall and skinny.

Since making the above, the letters have come along nicely. This letter C, for example, is better proportioned. The proportion was getting straightened out, but the lines still didn't look quite right. The horizontal lines looked fine, and even the diagonal lines looked better than the vertical. In experimenting, I found that the trick lay in where to switch colors of yarns. I had been changing yarn colors after a completed stitch, but found that I got a much better vertical line by changing colors halfway through a stitch. This leads to its own particular set of troubles, but it does solve the problem of letters looking all spiky and zippery along their edges. Contrast these two vertical lines, each from the letter i.

Dward and Spot

2009-02-03T19:43:00.016-05:00

Dward is my friend Edward. When he needed a dog in his life, Sydney and I took him to the shelter to shop. Sydney needed to approve whatever choice he made for a canine companion, since she would be spending time with the new arrival and might tear it to shreds on sight. My approval was needed since Ed's health is a crap shoot from day to day, and I would inherit any dog he came home with, just in case.

The first dog we visited with was at the same shelter Sydney had been adopted from. This was a sweet doggie, and she was not a puppy which in my mind was a big plus. But she was a heavy, heavy shedder. We happened to be browsing at the shedding time of year and she was "blowing" her coat. After sitting on the floor with this dog for five minutes, Ed was surrounded by a rug made of her fur. I turned her down. Sydney had no opinion.

At the next shelter, Sydney was asked to stay in the waiting area, since there was a touch of kennel cough running through the inmates there. I sat with her, wondering (and dreading) what Ed might bring forth from the many dogs in the pens. Not two minutes later he returned with an indescribable glow emanating from his every pore. "I found my dog. She's perfect. I found the perfect one." If you know Dward, you have some inkling of what I was going through as I waited to see what he had set his heart upon. "Just wait till you see her," he kept saying as he rocked from one foot to the other in a frenetic back-and-forth dance. I learned in a few moments that he had found a puppy. A puppy covered in dog shit.

I had to wait while they scraped her off a bit to make her somewhat presentable. When this puppy was brought out, Ed and I both held our breath. What would Sydney do to this baby? Into how many shreds would she be torn? We needn't have worried. Sydney, like most dogs, knows about babies. This little pup crawled all over Sydney, pulled her tail, nipped her ears, and Sydney posed like a Sphynx on the floor under all this indignity. We were amazed.

Ed named her Spot. Here she is the next day, at the park. That was April, 2004. Since then, Spot has become a part of the pack, and a part of our lives. Ed and I are both convinced that she saved his life, in a number of ways and on a number of occasions.

This was my first attempt at anything other than letters and numbers. Spot just had to have, well... spots. The spots weren't charted, I just made them up as I crocheted along. That explains why they are somewhat lopsided here and there.

Dward needed to have his name in two colors, to commemorate the mismatched socks he wears.

And the intertwined hearts?
You figure it out.

2004 Was A Busy Year

2009-01-26T18:44:00.000-05:00

This stack of blankets was a pretty ambitious goal for the year, since they all had to be done by Christmas. I don't have photos of all of them, but I have sent out word, and they trickle in from time to time.

There was this one for David. I didn't yet understand how to do Tapestry Crochet, much less that it even had a name, and so the change in color for the lettering was not done strictly the way it should be done. In true tapestry crochet, the color that does not show gets carried, unseen, through the fabric of the other color, and serves to strengthen the piece. I hadn't yet figured that out, so instead of carrying the inactive yarn across several feet of blanket, I carried it far enough to anchor it, then snipped it off. I wonder how long those blankets will hold up under this less-than-optimal workmanship. But I was getting the hang of it, and the technique would continue to develop over the next few years. Remember, I was not taught how to do Tapestry Crochet. As far as I knew, I had invented it. People who knew knit and crochet would comment on how even and tight my stitches were, but they all said they had never seen anything like this.

The big red M with the hearts for the Milner family had me tearing my hair out. It is a combination of two techniques: Tapestry Crochet and the funny double crochet stitch. Either one of these stitches is tricky, but by this time each had become relatively doable. What made doing both together crazy-making was trying to figure out when in the course of the individual stitch to change color! I swore I would never attempt this again. Until this year, I remembered that promise. Then menopause memory caught up with me and I tried it again. That attempt was all I needed to remind me of just how nutty this was.

Which brings us to Steven. He was kind enough to send me several photos, including close-ups of some sections. This zig-zag section was one that I had tried on the experimental blanket, and so I decided to try it once again. I like it! This is another reason to keep photos of what I have done before - so I can do it, or a variation, again.

Claudia and Jennifer get a blanket

2009-01-25T18:38:00.000-05:00

Jennifer and Claudia got the first blanket of the new era. It has two types of eternity knot, each done twice. It is the only one if its kind so far, being square, and having no other pattern than the eternal knot. Later on I would make them each their own blanket (you can see Claudia's blanket hanging, waiting to be photographed.)

This is the only blanket, other than the experimental one, where separate pieces were joined together. These were joined with a few rows of single crochet that include a zig-zag looking pattern.

The Beginning of Patterns, er, Charts

2009-01-24T18:32:00.002-05:00

Now we begin in earnest. This means making blankets for friends. And this also means continuing to make patterns. (I have since learned that these are called Charts.)

This is what is left of my original pattern book:

The book has been through a lot since I began using it over thirty years ago. Nowadays I create patterns and graphs on the computer.

Fans of my work may recognize the third pattern in brown and yellow. It is a variation of a Finnish pattern, Hannun Vaakuna, or Saint John's Arms.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_John%27s_Arms

It is used in a lot of ways by many peoples, but in my usage it denotes an eternity symbol.

And when it is added to a blanket in the colors of Black and Gold, well, it is clearly a reference to the Steelers.

This pattern is another variation of that same eternity symbol, this time being tipped into a diamond. With this symbol begins my fascination with celtic knots and borders. This symbol, in various sizes, appears on many blankets. It is done in one color, with the stitches, not the colors, creating the pattern.

Here is one last page from the book, with some examples of Grecian keys. Working with these symbols has led me to do some research into their meaning. Grecian keys are an offshoot of the labyrinth, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labyrinth which in its true meaning was a one way path that meandered around so that it felt like a maze. But if one kept one's wits about them, proceeding at a steady pace, one would eventually emerge from the labyrinth. The Grecian key simply is a more orderly depiction of the concept.
Grecian key patterns can be found everywhere in architecture. Floor tiles, wall trim, window decoration, etc contain numerous examples of this type of ornamentation. Here is one example from wallpaper.
Both of these types of patterns are very painstaking to do, since one stitch in the wrong place makes it all come out wrong.

Experimentation

2008-12-09T14:57:00.000-05:00

It was many years later, after moving from Oklahoma to Pennsylvania, that I took up the noble crochet hook again. And began to experiment.

Color! Shapes! Sizes! Angles! Change colors along a row? Yes I can. Bend a grecian key banner around a corner? Yep. Make a five pointed star? Why not?

Yes, it is a total mish mash, has no central theme or color palette, but it was fun. So shut up.

The Big Blue Blanket

2008-12-09T14:51:00.001-05:00

This one is maybe the largest blanket I ever crocheted. It's queen sized. It certainly is heavy, and until we got our front loading washer, it took a trip to the laundromat to find a machine large enough to wash it.

With this blanket I learned the value of checking the dye lot. The band of solid color blue near the bottom has faded over the years in a way that is inconsistent with the rest of the bands of that color.

A dog chewed a hole in it, so it became mine.

Where it all began

2008-12-09T14:44:00.000-05:00

That is the first blanket I ever made, and I believe the second item of any kind I ever crocheted. Someone (thank you, whoever you were) taught me to crochet, having me make a doily of some sort. Then I made this thing, which is still very warm, thank you. It was made during the 1980 Olympics, and I made the red, white and blue portion while watching the hockey team win the gold medal. "Do you believe in miracles?" I had stayed home from church (gasp!) to watch the US - Finland game. I was fresh home from living in Finland, but happy with how the Miracle on Ice turned out. "Do you believe in miracles? YES!"

You can see how excited I got during the game. The stitches became very tight. Oops!

There were a couple of blankets I made after that, but who knows where they are now?