Lucky You!

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.

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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

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

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.

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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

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

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!

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

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.