Off the Hook: Lattice Scarf

Just took two days of crocheting to finish this scarf. The pattern is Deborah Hedges' "Crocheted Lattice Scarf", a pattern that is one of my favorites. After row one to set up the stitches, row two is repeated until you get the length you want or you run out of yarn. The pattern is so easy I've even crocheted a scarf while riding (not driving, of course) in a car.  So it's a good pattern when you just need something mindless to work on. 

I bought the pattern leaflet in 2009 at a local yarn shop that closed a few years later. So I have no way of providing a link to pattern in this post. I checked to see if Hedges has some patterns on Ravelry; she does, but not this one. 

I used 2 skeins of Loops & Threads' "Twirl" in colorway "Clowns." The fiber is 60% polyester and 40% acrylic. Each strand has 2 colors so the tweedy, striping effect is simply the work of the yarn.

2017 North Carolina State Fair Entries: Baby Sweaters

I entered two baby sweaters in this year's State Fair, a crocheted one (which won an honorable mention ribbon) and a knitted one (no ribbon for that one).

Crocheted Baby Sweater

The pattern is Sylvie Damey's "Dancing Poppies Mini Bolero" from Crochet One-Skein Wonders (ed, by Judith Durant & Edie Eckman, Storey Publishing, 2013, pp. 180-81). I left off the edging of poppies called for in the pattern. (Wonder if I'd gotten a greater than an honorable mention ribbon if I had put them on?)

The yarn is Plymouth Yarn's "Jelli Beenz" in red; it's a blend of 75% acrylic and 25% wool yarn.

Back view:

Knitted Baby Sweater

The pattern for this sweater is Lisa Chemery's "Entrechat Shrug" from One-Skein Wonders for Babies (ed. by Judith Durant, Storey Publishing, 2015, pp. 65-7). 

The yarn is Ornaghi Filati Punto Su Punto's "Bla Bla Bla", a blend of 60% merino wool and 40% acrylic in color number 603.

Back view of the shrug featuring a little peplum.

2017 North Carolina State Fair Winners: Tea Towel Edgings

This year I had two entries for edgings attached to tea towels, one crocheted and one knitted. Both won 2nd place ribbons.

Crocheted Edging

The fabric l used for the crocheted entry was designer Lilyoake's "Watercolor Tea Set" in cobalt blue from Spoonflower. The fabric is Spoonflower's Linen Cotton Canvas Ultra which is 55% linen and 45% natural cotton. I bought this about a year ago along with two other designs which I plan to make into tea towels in future Fair entries. 

The filet crochet design echoes the teapots and teacups in the printed design. The thread is a white size 10 crochet cotton. The pattern can be found in various Pinterest posts (here's one place), but I haven't been able to track down the original source of the pattern. I find that is one of the most aggravating aspects of Pinterest: few posters link back to the source of the photos they pin. If you look at the pattern, you'll notice that I omitted the scalloped edge, opting instead to make the piece rectangular.

Knitted Edging

For this towel I used a ready-made cotton tea towel that I bought at Ten Thousand Villages where I work as a volunteer. This design has been very popular this year in the store. It's made by the CRC Craft Resource Center, a fair trade organization in India.

The pattern is "Fern Leaf" from 150 Knitted Trims by Lesley Stanfield (St. Martin's Griffin, 2007, p. 90). 

I used a vintage thread, Corticelli Mercerized Cordonet, in size 3, color number 356 ecru. 

It's a very stiff thread and required some very firm blocking.

2017 North Carolina State Fair Winners: Tatting Entries

This year I had two tatted entries in the Home Furnishings category: a tatted edging on a pillowcase (2nd place ribbon) and a mounted tatted piece (3rd place ribbon).

Pillowcase Edging

The pattern for the pillowcase edging is Mary Konior's "Bo Peep" (Tatting with Visual Patterns, Lacis, 2002, pp. 32-3). The thread is Altin Basak in colorway number 324 (which I understand is a discontinued color) The thread is a little thinner than size 20 although the label says "50"--not close to what is a size 50 in other brands. The color looks a lot lighter in the photos, but it is closer to a della robbia blue in hue. As I've done in the past, before I sewed on the edging I opened up the pillowcase hem. That way all the edging's "tails" can be hidden inside the hem when it's resewn. It gives a much neater and professional finish to the piece.

Close-up of the edging

Tatted Holiday Tree

This little tree is mounted on a metal stand that I painted with black enamel. The pattern is adapted from a pattern in Tatting Lace by Sumi Fujishige (2005, p. 26). Her pattern calls for tatting two trees that will form a 3-dimensional piece; I only tatted one for a flat 2-dimensional tree.

The threads are all size 20: DMC Cebelia (green tree, no. 699), Lizbeth (gold stars, no. 611), and Flora (brown trunk, no. 226). Small gold glass beads are at the top of the tree, and the beads on the tree branches are white glass with red stripes for a candy-cane effect. Everything is mounted on silver paper. The piece works up very quickly and could also be mounted on  a Christmas card or photocopied to use the design for multiple cards.

2017 North Carolina State Fair Winners: Biscotti

The 2017 North Carolina State Fair opened this week and my daughter and I checked out my entries to see if had I won any ribbons. I wasn't expecting as many ribbons this year, but, nevertheless, I did win several ribbons. (I also had some "also-rans" which I will describe in a separate posting.)

My only 1st place award was not in a fiber craft at all. For the 2nd year, I entered the biscotti competition and beat my last year's 2nd place win with a blue ribbon this year. I baked the Butter-Pecan Biscotti recipe from The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion. 

The recipe called for butterscotch bits along with toasted, chopped pecans, and, to increase the buttery flavor, I used Lorann Professional Kitchen's Butter Vanilla Bakery Emulsion instead of regular vanilla extract. 

Oh my, these were tasty and I will be making them again.

NC State Fair Update

If you've wondered why I haven't posted anything for several weeks, it's because I've been busy working on my North Carolina State Fair entries. Crazy me, I registered 11 fiber-related entries this year. This morning I finished the last of 9 out of the 11. Of the 2 that I'm not entering, one, a filet crochet table runner, is larger than the rules require (I should have read the rules more closely on that one), and the other (a tatted edging on a handkerchief) is because I just ran out of the time and momentum to finish it (maybe I should start on next year's entries next month 😊). Even though I'm retired apparently I still can't stop creating pressure and stress for myself by setting strict deadlines and then procrastinating until the last minute.

I'll be dropping everything off tomorrow morning, and then spending the rest of the day baking my 2 cookie entries.

I'll post photos of everything after October 10th, the day entries are judged, and then photos of any ribbon winners I might have. Keeping my fingers crossed!

Another shawl made from one skein of yarn I bought at the 2017 Carolina Fiber Fest. The yarn is hand-dyed 100% superwash merino wool in 1-ply fingering weight from Iria Yarn Company out of Raleigh, NC. The colorway is "Boho."

The pattern is "Close to You" by Justyna Lorkowska. It's available as a free download on Ravelry at http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/close-to-you

Keeping Busy

Not much to post these days as I am busy working on my ELEVEN! North Carolina State Fair fiber entries, and I don't like to post photos of them until they've been entered in the fair. It remains to be seen if I will be able to complete pieces for all the categories in time, but with several weeks before the fair opens in October, I'm working hard to get things done.

I got a happy surprise this week when I visited the Lace Knitting Facebook group. One of the photos of my butterfly scarf was used as the group's page banner. I had no idea that they would feature the scarf since it is not as lacy as most of the pieces on the page.

Despite all the activity devoted to the fair, I've also signed up to participate in a gigantic art installation Love Across the USA - Raleigh. Dozens of participants will be crocheting 2' by 2' squares that will be assembled into a huge mural that will be installed on the Raleigh convention center in October. It will be the third mural in the series planned by Olek, the artist designing and managing the project.

The design (portrait and quotation) will not be revealed until the mural is installed. The first two murals were Harriet Tubman and Susan B. Anthony in Rochester, NY. I finished my assigned square quickly so I could get back to my fair projects.

June 2017 Knitting: "Butterfly" Scarf

This was an interesting and, for me, a challenging project: each ruffle is knitted on top of the previous ruffle. The last row of stitches of the previous ruffle are knit together with the next ruffle that has been formed...and so on till one side of the scarf is finished. After the second half is finished, the halves are joined together. 

The yarn is Jojoland Melody Superwash in 100% wool in colorway "Lilac Rose." The pattern is "Butterflies Are Free" from Lace One-Skein Wonders edited by Judith Durant (Storey Publishing, 2013, ISBN: 978-1612120584). 

The pattern calls for 700 yards of yarn, but I didn't have that much in my stash. After a bit of measuring and weighing I made some adjustments to accommodate the amount of yarn I did have. Each ruffle is supposed to have 3 repeats of the charted pattern, but I did only 2 repeats. Each side is supposed to have 9 ruffles, but I only have 8 ruffles per side. With these changes I did not run out of yarn, and I think the final result looks fine.

June 2017 Knitting: Lacy Hand-dyed Yarn Shawl

Another shawl made with yarn I bought at the 2017 Carolina Fiber Fest. The yarn is hand-dyed from Iria Yarn Company out of Raleigh, NC. The fiber is a 2-ply lace weight, 60% suri alpaca, 40% merino wool in colorway "Raspberry."

The pattern is "Magenta Mohair Lace Stole" from Lace One-Skein Wonders edited by Judith Durant (Storey Publishing, 2013, ISBN: 978-1612120584).

Latest Blinged Tatting Shuttles

Here's what I've been playing with lately: Bling on a Roll. The "jewels" are attached to a clear strip of sticky tape. You just cut the length you need and attach to the shuttle. I then applied clear protective coats to secure everything.

I bought Bling on a Roll at AC Moore in the scrapbooking department. For a person who does not scrapbook, I sure buy a lot of supplies there.

Here's some closer views of the shuttles

It was hard to get a good shot of the pink one; it looks much better in real life.

June Knitting 2017: Tote Bags

I've been knitting up a storm this summer and neglecting recording the results here in my blog. So I'll try to remedy this in a series of postings. First are two tote bags I knitted, one for myself and one for my sister after she saw the first one.

The one on the left is knit from yarn I bought at Downtown Knits in Apex, NC, at the Spring Yarn Crawl. After my sister said she'd love one I went back for another cone. As you can see they're both black and white (the colorway is called "TV Static"), but due to the source of the yarn there are always variations. 

The yarn is Wool and the Gang's "Jersey Be Good" T-shirt yarn made from factory offcuts. 

The pattern is called "Zigzag Shopper" and is also from Wool and the Gang. It's knit on size 19 needles so it knits up very fast. The resulting piece is rather heavy so I don't think it would be comfortable in a garment. Years ago I knit my daughter a T-shirt out of T-shirt yarn and she found it much too bulky and heavy to wear. (It probably ended up as a charity shop donation.)

Because of the source for this yarn, it apparently does not have the uniformity of most yarns. One thing I noticed when I started the second bag was that the yarn on that cone was wider than the yarn on the first cone, making a much thicker fabric. I was concerned that I would run out of yarn because the cones are measured by weight, not yardage. Rather than risk having to buy yet another cone to finish what is supposed to be a one-cone project, I took scissors to the yarn and split it into two narrower bands. As a result, I have the equivalent of a third cone still in my stash for a later project.

Off the Needles: Eifelgold Shawl

One of my purchases at this year's Carolina Fiber Fest was a kit for knitting Eifelgold, a shawl that has been a popular knit-along project in this area.

The kit included the pattern and 2 skeins of fingering weight superwash merino yarn from The Fibre Studio, out of Charlotte, NC, The main color is 5 ounces in "Noir" and the contrasting color is 3 ounces of "Holly."

The pattern is made up of solid-color areas of garter stitch and two-color areas of a slip-stitch or mosaic stitch, easy knitting since mosaic stitch (unlike fair isle) requires only one color to be carried along a row. 

I did have a bit of trouble getting started: you begin by casting on 8 stitches and make increases on right-side rows. I kept messing up my count in the first 7 or 8 rows partly because the yarn plies split a little and partly because it was hard to see the stitches in the black yarn. I had just about given up hope of getting going with the project when I went to a film class where another knitter had brought her almost-finished Eifelgold shawl. I was dumbfounded at her progress since it was only a week after the Fiber Fest. But she told me that she didn't get the yarn at the festival; it was from a knit-along at one of the local yarn shops and she had been knitting it for several weeks. 

Inspired by her progress, I went home determined that before the end of our class I would have the shawl done and ready to show her my version. And 3 weeks later I had finished all but the blocking. I can't say there weren't still a lot of rows that I had to frog and reknit because of losing a stitch, but overall it was a very satisfying project. It has been a lot of years since I had done any mosaic knit patterns, so it was nice to know that they still give me knitting pleasure.

Blinging Shuttles Continued: Printing Your Own Decorative Paper

During the class on embellishing tatting shuttles and in discussions later with attendees, two ideas came up which I decided to explore.

Idea 1:  Shuttles decorated with Scottish tartan patterns were sold in the 1800s as souvenirs and are now highly collectible. I got into a discussion with my tatting friend Anitra about how it would be fun to find authentic tartan patterns and use them to make our own tartan shuttles.

Idea 2: So if we did find photos of tartans that we wanted to use and if we then printed them using an inkjet printer, would the printed result hold up to multiple coats of decoupage medium or would the ink run, thus ruining the pattern?

There are several books that provide illustrations of the clan tartans, and I suspected, rightly, that I could find many more from online sources. One of the sources I use to search for designs is Spoonflower, a company that is just down the road from me in Durham, NC. Spoonflower allows designers to submit their work and then prints on-demand custom textiles and papers for their customers.

You can search their database for designs by color or by topic. My search using the term "tartan" resulted in 35 screens of designs, probably more than I could possibly find in any book of patterns.

Using a program to capture an image from the computer screen, I saved a sample tartan to a file which I then printed on my inkjet printer at the highest resolution. Once I had the image on paper, I treated it just as I did the origami paper that I usually use. I am pleased to say that even with multiple coats of Mod Podge and Martha Stewart Crafts High Gloss finish, the printer ink did not run or smear.

Here's the final result, Royal Stewart tartan on a Clover tatting shuttle:

More Shuttle "Blinging" Lessons

The tatters who signed up for my "Bling Your Shuttle" class this month were not the only ones who learned new things. I have been working on embellishing plastic shuttles with thicker plastic stickers but finding it tricky to get them to stay on. One of the scrapbookers in the class suggested I first apply a paper layer to the shuttle and then put the stickers onto the paper for firmer adhesion. I'm happy to say that her suggestion does work better when using these stickers. The pink shuttle is my first attemp at applying the stickers directly onto the shuttle, while I first applied purple origami paper to the shuttle on the left before putting on stickers.

For both shuttles I put many, many coats of Martha Stewart Crafts High Gloss Finish to get a nice finish. I'd like to experiment with other glossy finishes so I've been looking for other products in craft stores. It turns out that Mod Podge does make a finish that it says will give a glass-like finish to pieces. However, according to the directions on the bottle the drying/curing time is FOUR WEEKS! I think I'll stick with the Martha Stewart product for now.

Another suggestion I got from the class is to use washi tape instead of sheets of origami paper. Most of the washi tape I found in craft stores is too narrow to cover my shuttles, but I did find this decorative tape that is wide enough. Like the plastic stickers it has a tendency to peel off too easily, but coats of the MS gloss, especially around the edges, seemed to fix the problem. The proof, of course, will come after I use this shuttle for tatting projects.