Gift Delivered

Last week I gave the aqua version of War of the Roses to the person I knit it for. She was surprised and loved it.

I didn't look closely at the picture before gifting the shawl that you can't really see the beautiful beads. I really like the pattern an perhaps in the future I will do another.

Good Intentions

Oh well, it is good to know that I am human. The summer has been very busy. I reconnected with my inner spinner.


I am learning to be more relaxed when it comes to accomplishments. For TDF 2011 (Tour de Fleece) my main goal was just to spin and enjoy it. I actually used merino, 50/50 s70ilk/superfine merino, 70/30 alpaca/silk, superwash merino, Australian merino and BFL. With the exception of the Australian merino there is still more of each fiber to spin. I can consistently get singles that will double ply to lace weight/fingering and Navajo ply to fingering/sport weight.

The Australian merino was a beautiful deep red. A friend gave me a piece of the braid she had. So I spun it up and two plied it. I got about 120 yards of lace weight. It had been spun during the last week of TDF at some concerts in the park. I gave it to the wife of the sound man. How difficult could that be you ask. Very is my response. But, it was fun and I look forward to seeing what it becomes.

I finally finished the baby afghan I started last summer. It is waiting to be washed and then taken with the others that are done to a local home for teens who need a little help. I started a new one using a pattern from "A Year of Afghans, Book 3". Hopefully it will go a bit quicker.

Don't ever let on when you are in the hardware store what you are going to use your purchases for. I was going to order the interlocking blocking mats from KnitPicks but I just kept putting it off. Eight months later, the first knit shawl I had finished was still unblocked. A friend loaned me her blocking wires and I still didn't have mats. So on a whim off I went to a big box hardware store. When the nice man asked me what I needed I said I wanted some of the interlocking floor mats. I now own 8 - 2' x 2' - mats. I purchased 2 yards of a 1" gingham (that way you don't need a yard stick) and I was off. Yesterday I put everything together and blocked the first shawl.

This morning the second one got pinned up.

It feels wonderful to finally cross things off the ToDo List. The summer issue of Interweave Crochet has some incredible things and they have found their way on to the project queue.

When I was at the local fabric store for the gingham I found a beautiful piece of that is gold/purple/oriental/Hawaiian. It managed to jump into my basket and now I am off to JoAnns to get a pattern. I realized when I was taking the rubber mats apart that they will make a perfect place to pin and cut out patterns.

Motivation

Sometimes I find it hard to stay motivated on a project. I suppose this is not an uncommon dilemma. I did make 2 stuffed bears that are awaiting a trip to Minnesota and then on to Africa via the Mother Bear Project. I will admit that it was fun letting my imagination go in creating these wonderful bears. I hope that their new parents love them as much as I do.

Part of my motivation issues started with the disappointment that I experienced when the March patterns were released for the Crochet Club 2011. The individual motif or expansion of a working motif was not the problem. The design just didn't seem to flow because of the placement of the individual motifs. I also realized that the stated sizes for each finished motif creates issues for the overall design.

The March patterns introduced two motifs that are to be placed on the outside of two of the corner blocks. The center is bridged by the long wave / beaded section. So the new outer motifs have a finished height of 17 cm. The corner motifs are supposed to be 19 cm and finally the longwave motif is supposed to be 17 cm. I am in such a quandry. My corners were working up smaller than the gauge stated so I went up a hook size (from D (US) to E) to make gauge. Now I am thinking that this was a poor call and I should have just stuck with the original hook. I haven't worked with cotton yarns and so I am not sure how the finished pieces will maintain their shapes after blocking.

I was not the only one having problems with the design. April has brought new patterns and these are much better. I am beginning to decide that I may omit certain parts of the design or at lease modify them so that I will be happy and finish the project.

Progress Report

Things I have learned -- It is hard to count to 2. It is especially hard to count to 2 when you are watching TV. My vacation started out in strange ways. First southern California had a wet storm roll in along with the jet stream dipping down from the north. There was actually snow in the higher elevations in the LA basin -- pretty rare especially in late February. By the time I left for the airport on Saturday morning at 'O' dark thirty the rain had pretty much passed through. The main problem was that the dew point was causing fog on the freeways and the other drivers on the road didn't seem to understand that when it is hard to see you need to slow down. Oh well.

TSA ended up being a nonissue. When I got to Hawaii and started unpacking I discovered that I had both tweezers and nail clippers in my carry on bags. It might have been that both the person in front of me and behind me in the security screening had items that triggered hand searches. Coming home I actually brought my knitting and the pointy lace needles and that caused no issues.

While waiting at the gate I strung the beads on the garnet. I counted twice and there was no mistakes in the number of beads. The blue was a snap, the gold was a snap and the first row of the wine colored beads was also easy. Then I reverted to a mental state of pre-Kindergarten. For the life of me if I crocheted that row once I did it at least 6 times. If the person sitting next to me had been awake I might have gotten up and walked the aisles; but, since he slept from the time we left until the final announcement began telling us we were landing, I had little choice but to just slog through it. I finally got the second row correct and for some reason the final 4 (March Maddness reference not intended) rows of wine beads were done by the adult that knows how to count to 2.

The whole motif was finished before landing and I took a picture. I am not sold on the color. I would like a little more contrast between the bead and the yarn. I have done the second long wave January portion of the motif and the February portion through the 4th row of beading. I think that the beads I chose to substitute for the red beads is too close to the gold beads. So I quit until I get up to the San Gabriel Bead Co later today.

[The original post was at 9:30 a.m. 3/11/11 -- This addendum was added at 4:50 p.m., same day]

I just realized that I frogged the February portion of the second long wave motif before I took a pix. I ended up with a silver lined red bead (yes I know that is the color shipped originally shipped from England.) with an iridescent overlay. The Overlay tones down the red color and now it doesn't clash with the other two colors.

I started the Wave and Chevron motif with the SB 3.12 (D) hook. After the first 2 rows (foundation and first pattern row in garnet) and the silly thing measured 37 cm. Arrrggghhhhh! . . . . . So frog, frog, frog . . . . . . Switched to the Clover D hook and worked the first 5 repeats on the first pattern row and measured and it is just a little over 17 cm. Success!!!!!

Today I am going to look for some worsted weight acrylic at a big box store so I can start a crocheted bear for the Mother Bear Project. http://www.motherbearproject.org/ If you would like to contribute I give this organization a 5 star endorsement.


I have a suitable yarn for the body but I don't really have anything that I like for pants and shirts. I still am not adventurous enough to deviate from the main pattern but I know that once I get more comfortable I will start experimenting.

Wow!

Well, I finished one of the long wave motifs. I ended up using a Susan Bates D hook (3.25mm) that the micrometer measured at 3.12 mm. After each wave pass I measured the width because the pattern - designer states that the design tends to get wider so when this happens you are supposed to down size the hook. Well my motif never grew so the entire piece was sone with the D hook.

Forty eight hours later I picked up the yarn and started motif #2 of the long wave. Crocheting along I decided to double check the width just before starting the third wave. Well what do yo want the silly thing was about 37.5 mm wide from the beginning. Frogging -- frogging -- frogging. Pick up that silly Clover D hook. I just don't know what to tell you.

The parts we crochet next involve beads -- size 6 pony beads. The designer chose turquoise (silver lined), gold (silver lined) and red (silver lined). The red is supposed to be strung on the garnet (841) and the bubbles (724). I could sort of see the red on the pink (bubbles) but no way on the garnet (really sort of a dark dusty rose. Today I went off to my favorite local bead shop, Beads Beads in Tustin. I brought home two tubes of beads. I am undecided which to use but either one will be better than the designer's choice.

I leave on vacation on Saturday morning and this is the project that I am taking. I will have some hooks packed in the suitcase and a self addressed envelope just in case TSA has a problem with the crochet hooks. I take a dental floss container to cut anything I need to cut on the flight so no scissors will be harmed in this endeavor.

Hopefully when I am home I will get pictures of everything and be able to include them here.

Slow Progress

This weeks crocheting is marked by many appearances of that pesky amphibian -- the frog. The chevron motife for the Crochet club is going to disappear once again and the new one is going to use an E hook. If I weren't so stubborn I would just leave well enough alone and say enough to the gauge. However, not knowing how everything is going to fit together I do not have that luxury. Reading posts at Ravelry shows that I am not alone in having the same problems.

The second part of the pattern is due this week so perhaps there will be a better idea about how things fit together. Right now the dimensions are not very helpful in guessing about how things might be going together.

Even the knitting was not immune from the unwelcome critter. Since the project is lace and I am never comfortable just taking the needles out and unraveling it was TINK time. fortunately I only had a row and a half to TINK. Back on track and ready to make some progress.

I brought home 2 needlepoing canvases from the shop last Tuesday. They are supposed to be shop models when finished. Started several years ago and tucked behind a bookcase and forgotten, The first is a JP Needlepoint purse in silver, gray and charcoal gray. If I had started it I would have chosed a different stitch for the background (gray) but since the backgound was 90% completed I am just continuing on in basketweave. I did frog all of the silver because the previous stitchers switched fibers (size 12 and size 8 Kreinik) and the back was a total mess of knots and hanging threads. I toyed with the idea of using a different stitch for the silver but the pattern just gets lost in the shine of the silver. I have restitched everything I frogged in the silver and should make good progress to finishing this week.

The second canvas is a Lee Needlepoint Japanese Kimono -- flying cranes against a red background. This one is not very far along so I will have quite a bit to say about how it looks.

Progress

I finally came out of the funk I was suffering because the first 3 finished sections of the Crochet Club 2011 were not to gauge. Starting with a second corner using a Susan Bates 'D' hook (mfg in Mexico and actually measuring 3.11 mm) the completed corner was spot on gauge. Did another corner and it too was 9 cm x 9 cm. So frogged the 2 sections of ripple (chevron) and the first corner. I am doing the first section of the long wave and it is coming out to gauge as well. The designer says that the pattern tends to grow so that you are supposed to step down the hook size mid way through the pattern. At first I went down to the Clover 2.5 mm hook. The change seemed too tight so I just went down to the Clover 3.0 hook and everything seems to be working.

I really like the long wave section. The pattern is very intuitive once you get through it. I will try to post pictures as soon as I get them off my camera.

Saturday was a regular CIP with fellow crocheters at The Library coffee house in Long Beach. It is so relaxing to meet friends and catch up on everyone's lives. The group ended up being 5 strong. So much fun. Sunday was a spinning kind of day at Jamie and Abraham's loft. I brought some of the wonderful beading/cross stitch magazines from Australia for Abraham to look at. I think Jill Oxen's designs are so stupendous. Abraham's design preferences tends towards the more geometric so some of her designs are much more suited to his tastes than other magazines. Abraham went out for Chinese food in recognition of the Chinese New Year. We had enough food for 20 people not just the 4 who eventually dined.

Whew!

All I can say is thank goodness Monday traffic is lighter than the rest of the week. So Cal temps have dipped a little and it seems more like our winter. Life at the LYS was really crazy. Didn't sell much but at one point we had 3 different customers all learning something different.

I had told one customer that I would bring in my current summer afghan because I thought that the pattern was the one she was looking for. It is a pattern from a very old Lee Wards kit. Basically shells and chains worked in 2 colors in a manner that each side is a different color and makes a heavy fabric ideal for putting under a baby on the floor etc. Turns out that the pattern wasn't quite what she wanted but she is going to make it anyway.

Next was an unexpected surprise. A customer that I had helped a couple of years ago dropped in to get help with a pattern that she was having difficulty with. The project we worked on before was a felted purse in mohair that taught both of us how to work knitted short rows. Today we learned how to increase. She is making a small neck scarf that starts out with a humoungous number of cast on stitches. The next few rows have lots of decreases followed by about 3 inches of plain stockingnet. The piece is finished with lots of rows with tons of increases. Finished scarf is ruffle, straight, ruffle. She is using koigu (KPPPM). It is going to be incredible. It was great fun to see her and hear how the bag turned out.

I have finished 3 of the first motifs for the wall hanging that the Crochet Club 2011 will ultimately become. While I was spot on in the gauge swatches I did, these motifs are running smaller than what the pattern says I should have. So now I am going back and forth between frogging and just living with a slightly smaller wall hanging. We shall see.

Underway -- AT Last

Well, the second package of yarn for the Crochet Club 2011 finally arrived on Monday. I picked it up Tuesday. The empty storage tub I had picked out hold all the yarn perfectly. The yarn I purchased last weekend has been frogged and rewound in to neat balls -- or as a friend refers to them -- YARN CAKES. 8-)

The first chevron (a.k.a. ripple) went really fast. I am working on the second. Then I will tackle the waves section. This is the section that the original pattern had some mistakes. I have never done this particular type of pattern before so it should be interesting.

Now to the hooks. I went to the big box home store last week and got my own digital calipers. A very nice young woman helped me and thank goodness she didn't want to know what I was going to use it for. It is very easy to use and I started to work right away.

I wish I had a 'known' object ot calibrate it against. Since I don't I will just have to judge the results in a 'relative' light. So far I have found that the small Boye hooks appear to have the greatest difference from what they are stated to be. I know that these are newer hooks because I only buy them when I forget my Susan Bates hooks and I am making socks. One Boye hooked marked 'B' (should be 2.25 mm) measures 2.75 mm (a 'C'). Another Boye marked 'C' (should be 2.75 mm) measures 2.67 mm. I have measured 36 hooks so far and 27 of them had a variation of 2% or more than the advertised size. The greatest over stated was 22.2% greater (the Boye B hook) and the greatest under was 14.3% under stated (Boye 00 steel hook). At this time I am reserving my judgement about the Boye 00 hook because it is an older hook and I am not sure that the internet information on what the size should be is accurate.

I still have tons more to measure so we shall see.

Tools of Our Craft

The new mystery Crochet Club for 2011 brought to the fore a subject that I had discussed with friends about a year and a half ago. My friend David is an incredible crocheter and designer. His passion is creating fabric with crochet that has the same drape and other properties that a knit fabric has.

Both of us understood that hook sizes recommended by yarn manufacturers were usually way to small. Logic tells one that the people who come up with hook sizes are just taking the needle sizes that are appropriate for knitting and converting the millimeter sizing of the needle to the corresponding crochet hook. David has a cabled Tunisian crochet hook that is probably either an 'O' or a 'P' that he uses for his slip stitch crochet. The tip is extremely pointed and this property makes it a very successful tool for this technique.

When he was teaching me slip stitch stitches I had lots of trouble using standard hooks. Using his hook I progressed rapidly. Now the quest was on to find 'pointy' crochet hooks. The company who made his hook is out of business and his research indicates that the tooling used to make them was destroyed.

We tried lots of hooks with little success. So the discussion turned to the possibility of modifying hooks that were easily available. Since the majority of hooks are metal the options were limited. Susan Bates makes a line of hooks out of colorful plastic called Crystalites. So David began using fine sand paper to 'sharpen' the nose of the hook. When he brought the hook to one of our weekly CIPs we were comparing his modified hook and my hook. The first thing I noticed was that the two hooks had different diameters. Looking around the table we found 2 more hooks that were supposed to be the same size and now we had 4 hooks that appeared to be 3 different sizes. So frustrating. How was he going to get enough hooks to be able to teach others the technique and have them be able to create fabric to a set gauge???

Fast forward to today. The new project that I am starting calls for English hooks sizes 2.5 mm and 3.0 mm. I tried swatching with my hooks and was not making gauge. That meant 'road trip'. Three days and 4 hooks later I was back to swatching. Gauge was closer. Then I got the bright idea to double check the hook against my needle sizer. Surprise - surprise. The 3.0 mm hook fit snuggly into the 3.25 mm hole. So its size was not accurate. The 2.5 mm would not fit into the 2.25 mm hole and was way too small for the 3.25 m hole. So its size was probably accureate. This was Saturday and I was once again CIP with friends so we began checking other hooks. Some hooks measured what they were marked. But, others way off. I think that one of the most surprising is that an older Boye hook marked 'D' (should be 3.25 mm) was way smaller.

I will be going to the big box hardware store to buy some calipers so that I can accurately check all my hooks. I am not sure who to contact but I am going to start with the two American manufacturers to see if anything can be done to get some quality assurance implemented.

It's Almost Soup!

Everything is coming together at the same time. The counting part of the inventory at the shop is almost done. I started on the computer part. With any luck I will finish that next Wednesday. If everything works out this will be the first time since I started working at the shop that we managed to finish in January.

I ran around in circles this weekend trying to find UK sized crochet hooks without 'handles'. I thought that I was successful until I measured the D hook. While it was marked 3.0 mm, it is actually 3.25 when measured in a needle sizer. Comparing the Clover hook with a Susan Bates, the Susan Bates is smaller. Arrrrggghhhhhhh........

I have been thinking about getting a micrometer to measure hooks for quite some time. I may just price them at the hardware store tomorrow. I wonder if the people who manufacture our tools really have any quality assurance programs in their manufacturing plants. wonder if they even care. A while back when a friend was trying to figure out how to get a 'pointy' crochet hook we had the opportunity to compare several Crystalite hooks all marked size M. I think we had 4 hooks and only 2 of them were the same size.

Waiting in my mailbox tonight was the notice for the first of 2 packages from England for the mystery Crochet Club 2011. I am going to be at the PO when it opens to get that package and then I am camping out on the front porch for the rest of the day to make sure that I don't have to repeat the trip on Friday.

Fingers crossed, I will be starting the first sections of the CAL this weekend. To make it more fun another membger of our CIP group is also participating in the project so we can inspire and challenge each other.

I have begun the lace part of the second War of the roses shawl. This one is going much faster because I know what I am doing. Surprise, surprise. I hope to get some pictures soon so that I can add them to this blog.

Anticipation

For the first part of the new year I am going to be participating in a Mystery CAL. To decide we were only given pictures of portions of the design. What totally captivated me were the incredible jewel tones of the fibers being used. So too many dollars later, I am now waiting for boxes to arrive from the UK. No mail delivery today because of the MLK holiday. The first north American touch down happened in Ontario, Canada. I am guessing that the boxes should hit the west coast by Wednesday. That means I will get mine on Thursday. The packages require a signature and I won't be home on Wednesday so I will have to go to the PO on Thursday.

New Year

Wow, I didn't intend that my postings would become delinquent so quickly after starting the blog. Powers outside of my control prevented me from connecting with cyberspace. California usually gets about 15 inches of rain a year. What we don't normally do is get 10 of those inches in a week. I still don't have a landline but hopefully that will change in the next week or so.

I finished the shawlette that I was knitting. I switched beads and the method of attaching them because I wasn't please with the way the beads were laying as they were attached as you go. So working from the inside of the ball I strung the beads on the yarn. As I moved the beads to the workingend of the yarn I rewound the ball. Now all I have to do is block and give it away.

So a new year and a new beginning for projects. I have wound on of the skeins of the Tuscany colorway of a BFL that I finished spinning in November. I have started a scarf / stole for myself. The pattern is from a very talented designer in the UK, Allison Collins. Recent health issues have prevented her from being as active as she would like. Everyone is hoping that things improve for her because she is really missed in the crocheting world. I was going to put beads on this one too but after looking at the design they just didn't seem to fit.

In the next couple of weeks the yarns will arrive for the mystery CAL that I joined for 2011. The little pictures published of the design and the beautiful jewel tones of Rowan fibers just hooked me. The finished project is a wall hanging. This will be a first for me and I am looking forward to doing something new in the coming months.

I outlined what I want to accomplish in the coming weeks with my crocheting and stitching and I seem to have piled the plate pretty full. We shall have to see how things go. Off to do a little of the chores that seem to interrupt crocheting time.