A Bluestocking Knits

Granny Square Sampler Afghan!

I just realized that I haven't written this up yet, so I "borrowed" the lawn next door for a quick photo session this morning, and here it is!  This is of course the Granny Square Sampler Afghan, following the project led by Blair Stocker in 2012.  (There is also a Flickr group, for more inspiration.)  I really enjoyed this, and learned a lot about crochet -- which was the point, after all. 

There are two different join-as-you-go methods here -- one (demonstrated here by Annette of My Rose Valley)  that is more-or-less adding another round of granny clusters to a square but instead of working a chain st or two in between, reaching up to work one of those ch sts through the ch space in the square you are joining to, and another method (demonstrated here at Carina's Craftblog) in which you work another row of granny clusters but alternate attaching it to the bottom square or the top square, essentially flipping every other cluster "upside down".  I like both of these methods, but I think that with my "crazy" layout, the "flipping" one was much more efficient, and so after joining two sets of four squares with the former, I found myself using the latter method for pretty much everything else.  I think I made it a bit harder on myself by joining the squares free-form, as there are a number of slight wobbles all over, due to fiddling the number (or size!) of clusters, but wool, bless it, blocking disguises any number of irregularities.  If I do another of these -- and why not, it's a great stash-buster, and would certainly never be boring -- I will probably use Adaiha's tutorial for joining squares of different sizes.

I didn't use one of the squares Blair did, and added in some, including "Nana's Latte Square", which I will definitely use again (I love the soft neutrals in solid squares, in the photo from PDKlein on the Ravelry page). I really liked the Granny Wheel Square, so much that I made two in quick succession -- it's interesting how a color change can give a quite different effect.  The "little bit of white" in single crochet on my first one (now towards the upper right corner) isn't really enough, but the speckly line is not uninteresting.  The other "new" square is Granny On Point.  Inadvertently, I didn't really follow the instructions, because I was looking at a photo of someone else's square in the Granny Sampler photo pool at Flickr at the same time, and found myself, to my later amazement -- I don't crochet! really! -- following the photo as though it were a chart of instructions.  It's that light-bulb moment, when after months of not understanding what you are doing or quite what you're looking at when you've done it ("is that a double-crochet or a triple? wait, how do you make a half-double, where's my cheat sheet ...") things finally begin to make sense.  I used different borders on each of them, because I could.

For the edging on my afghan, I used the brilliantly simple variation on granny clusters by Jacquie at Bunny Mummy, which she calls Double V Edging.

Bookmarks for Moms

You'd think that with all of the time on my hands these days I might have started earlier with homemade Mothers' Day presents, but alas, no -- my excuse is that I thought I had another week!  I had decided to make some bookmarks, being eminently mailable as well as useful.  Luckily my "swatch" one was good enough to use for the real thing, so I only had to stay up late last Thursday night madly crocheting another one ...

The one on the left is the Rectangle Granny Bookmark by Deb of Neatly Tangled, in ecru DMC no.8 perle cotton.  This one has a new-to-me method of starting in the center, making sort of ur-clusters in the set-up row ("DC in each of the next 3 chs"), then working the granny clusters along the bottom (chain) edge and careening round the end to work another line of granny clusters along the other edge.  I might wish I'd done this in two colors -- maybe the edging in an elegant white -- but there it is.  It has a handsome plain simplicity this way, at least.  The one on the right is the Pretty Lace Crochet Bookmark by Kara Gunza of Petals to Picots, in I think no.10 crochet cotton (lost the ball band long ago ...) in a lovely light blue.  I'm not sure why the scallops aren't symmetrical -- presumably my own doing, as they look alright in the original photo!

10th Update

Here is the status as of this afternoon of the main projects I've got going.  I usually wake up early most mornings, and so after breakfast I stitch for an hour or so on the miniature Kurdistan prayer rug, before I put in my contact lenses.  I continue to find this an utter pleasure to work.  The strange white diagonal lines are the traveling threads on the back!

Granny Sampler Afghan all stitched together -- at last, she said wearily -- and the border almost finished.  Still have about two-thirds of the ends to weave in, though.  Sigh.  On the bright side, it was looking very, um, extemporaneous for a while, and looks much more cohesive now, so I'm quite pleased with it.

A loaf of Finnish rye bread, from Nigella Lawson's How to be a Domestic Goddess -- amazingly easy, since there was almost no kneading, to my surprise.  Even better that it tastes delicious and used 180g of the rye flour that's been lurking in my freezer for years.  (I might have to buy more now, actually, this is so good.)

Swatching with the KnitPicks "Palette".  I wrote here quite some time ago that I wanted to knit the Victory Jumper with it, and I still think the yarn would suit the pattern well, but I think what was bothering me at the back of my mind so much that I've left it for a full year was that it's just a bit itchy to want to wear against the skin.  What I'm thinking now is something more like this lacy waistcoat/vest from DROPS ...

These faux tiles would obviously look a bit more "realistic" when attached more snugly -- I've started gluing them to a paper base, which is curling a bit when just propped up against the front façade of the tea-shop-to-be -- but I'm just not very happy with them, I'm afraid.  I could live with the uneven surfaces, but the fraction-of-a-fraction difference in sizes is quite glaring at 1:12 scale.  So it's on to plan B, but unfortunately I don't yet know what plan B is.

Still pretty happy with this.  I'm really fascinated by Quaker samplers -- I think what pleases me most about this particular one (aside from the ligatures, of course) is the combination of complex motifs with serene colors.  I've made a few tweaks of the chart here and there, and haven't yet filled in the empty spaces with their smaller motifs.

Tomato seedlings, hardening off the last few days before getting planted.  Some of the seeds didn't sprout along with their brethren, and so I put another seed in those pots -- then lo, up came the first one! and now some of the pots have two seedlings.  With limited space in my two new raised beds, I had ordered seeds of two heirloom dwarf varieties, and then the seed company sent a third packet "similar to my selections" free, so I have eight little pots altogether, the purple cherry tomato "Dwarf Velvet Night" and the bicolor beefsteak "Dwarf  Beauty King," plus "Dwarf Sleeping Lady".  (I think I wrote "Sleeping Beauty" on the stick!)

The arroyo lupines and the lacy phacelia in our front garden are looking a bit decrepit now, since being the first ones to appear they have been setting seed for some weeks, but the mountain garlands are in full glory at the moment -- I think they are what I was most looking forward to, so it's lovely to gaze across the field of them (stopping before one's eye gets to the line of cars perpetually resident along both sides of the street these lock-down days, as so few of our neighbors are going anywhere at all).  Though this photo doesn't really convey the delicious colors (nor the hum of the delighted and slightly drunken bees), I've left the photo full-size, so you can get the full effect!  The shrubs that I can still find (!) are all doing well, and the little California wild rose has buds on it, hurray!

"But in the Leape You Must Add One"

I get the chance to post on February 29 only once every four years, so why not take advantage of it this year?!

"There is always in February some one day, at least, when one smells the yet distant, but surely coming, summer" -- Gertrude Jekyll

The tidy-tips (Layia platyglossa) have now made their appearance in our wildflower garden, mostly clustered with the arroyo lupines and California poppies that have already made an appearance in the northwest corner, and the first happy blooms from an autumn sage (Salvia greggii) which was part of a bribe from that same local wildflower enthusiast I gave the arroyo lupine seeds to last summer, who was eager one afternoon to see our gigantic backyard pine tree up close (he told me that it is in fact a Mondell pine, which is good to know as I was never quite convinced by our first arborist's guess that it is "either a stone pine or Aleppo").  I didn't quite know what to do with the two five-gallon salvias the Y.W.E. offered me -- one a Salvia leucantha like the one I've already got which is drought-tolerant and handsome but isn't really a California native, the other a Salvia greggii still with rather fetching red blooms on it, so they sat on the back deck for a few months until I decided that while the red one is not a California native either, it is appealing enough not to let go to waste, and so I planted it in an anchor spot at the northeast corner of the front yard, where it will get pretty much all of the available sun there is, and I hope add a pleasing note of red to the wildflowers' blues and pinks and oranges.  I'm afraid that it got a bit decrepit while it sat forlornly on the deck, but only a week or so after planting, it began to show new leaves of a shiny reddish-green, and last week the first flowers opened.

I went to the California-natives plant sale at the local arboretum in December, and came home with a select group of sages and penstemons and a California wild rose as the first of what I hope will be in a few years a garden of shrubs and perennials interspersed with annuals.  At the moment, most of them are just sort of "chillin'," as Julia would say, and so I will introduce them here later when they do something interesting.  Otherwise most of the yard is still a field of lacy green wildflower promise --

I put some more things in my two new front-yard kitchen garden beds -- seeds for two different kinds of chives (pink-flowered and white-flowered), one towards the front of each bed, Italian basil, tarragon, and French green beans (the long, thin kind) in a row at the back, joining the savoury, oregano, sage, and flat-leafed parsley striplings planted a few weeks ago.  It all looks rather dreary at the moment, since I mulched it with the last of the leaves I swept up from under the mulberry tree, which hadn't relinquished them until after New Year's (!).  I started some heritage dwarf cherry tomatoes in seed pots indoors, so will plant two -- possibly three, let's see how fearless I am when the time comes, for the beds are only 4' x 4' and I still want to put in lots of cilantro.

Well, I seem to have been crocheting a little too much lately, as I've developed a rather alarming ache along the outside of my left forearm.  David practically shrieked, "Stop crocheting now or it will swell up and you'll be in pain forever!"  I've knitted for most of my life and never had a problem, but clearly there is something different about crochet, either the specific muscles used or where I'm holding the work in relation to my near-sighted eyes.  So, alas, I've rolled up the old sheet with my granny squares pinned to it, to keep it out of temptation's reach for a week or two.  It is just over halfway-assembled, so that the siren call is fierce indeed.  But the New Boro quilt is still wedged into my sewing machine with about half of the first pass of quilting done -- huzzah! -- so I could work on that instead, and Julia has requested a custom-made skirt and top for her birthday in April, which must get started soon.  I decided that I will add to this ensemble a new purse, as the one I made for her three years ago is far too small even for Julia's minimal needs, and she agreed that the Squiffy Sling Bag (sic!) by Mrs. H will fit the bill nicely.  And I want to retrieve my 1:12 shops from the garage, where they were stored when we had the family Thanksgiving here and have not been touched since!

I've also started another sampler, which jumped the queue a bit in order to be a gift for an old and very dear friend who is going through some difficult times -- this is the "Peace to My Friend" Quaker-style sampler by Jacob de Graaf of Modern Folk Embroidery.  It is more than a little curious, seeing the photos on that blog post, as I am more used to seeing the white-on-grey image from MFE's online shop than the periwinkle-on-natural! which is as it happens more like what I have used, some "natural" linen with a slightly-tealy blue floss.  It is wrinkly in the photo because I started it using a hoop, but realized that it's a little too big for that, and moved it to my table frame.  After the riotous colors of the "Froth and Bubble" sampler, this is very quiet and contemplative --

First Colors of Spring

We have been watching eagerly the past few weeks for the first blooms in our front garden this year.  We had one solitary arroyo lupine last summer, and Julia and I gathered quite a lot of seeds from it as the pods ripened, "just in case," but we needn't have been concerned, as while we were not looking, it was gleefully bursting more pods and sending its seeds hither and yon.  I ended up giving most of the jam jar's worth that we collected to a local flora enthusiast, who I think (hope!) scattered them around, oh-so-fittingly, a nearby arroyo.  Amusingly, many of our own volunteer seedlings this year made the journey across the sidewalk to the parking strip, but seem to have lost their nerve once they arrived and stayed right at the very edge.  The only spot where the parking strip is now covered with seedlings is at its lowest point, where presumably the runoff from what little rain we had pooled and filled before running over the curb and down into the street.  (It will be interesting to see if anything comes up in the neighbors' yards!)  That low spot is where our first seedlings came up, in fact, and where this charmer is, which began to show color a week or so ago.  This morning, as I was stepping out onto the porch, I saw a glint of bright orange through the greenery and thought, "tch, someone's left a bit of trash on the sidewalk," but it was this --

It will be interesting to see the effects this spring, as clearly the arroyo lupines, California poppies, and lacy phacelia seeded much more rambunctiously than the others.  I did help it along a bit, with another Payne's #1 packet and also their Hummingbird mix -- because we did the whole area this year -- so watch this space!

In other news, I have been plugging away at the New Boro quilt, piecing a back out of the scraps from the front along with the remains of the coffee-brown Kona, which despite my numerous calculations -- overly generous, surely! -- left not enough to bind the thing, unless I am willing to piece it every few inches, which I am not.  Well, it isn't at that stage yet, any way, as I am still wrestling it into the sewing machine for the quilting part until my arms get tired and I need a break.  When I do, I join a few more squares onto the Granny Sampler afghan --

I decided not to do the central rectangle arrangement that Blair used, but "free-form" it, which is probably much more fiddly, but I'm actually enjoying the randomness of it, contrary to my usual Germanic tidiness (which alas only manifests itself in my knitting).  But if you're going to make a crazy afghan, just go all-out crazy, nicht wahr?!

There are some new squares in there, as I decided that I hadn't made nearly enough, and so looked around for some other patterns, and now I'm going to make another batch of the small three-round squares for filling in the gaps.  I'm using two of the numerous join-as-you-go methods, both of which make granny clusters, one of which goes in a straight line across the edge of one piece while reaching up to grab (via slip stitch) the other piece, and the other of which essentially flips every other cluster's bottom edge up to attach the second piece.  The set of four squares just in from the lower left in the photo uses the first method, and you can clearly see even from this distance that the "chain" across the top of the row forms a distinct chain ridge (in the middle here because I worked clusters around one square before joining the second square to it).  The two newly-married squares (one is a rectangle, actually!) next to it are joined with the second method, which leaves the chain ridge in the middle instead of the top, but because of the flipping back and forth also makes the ridge noticeably less distinct.

I am amused to find myself much more comfortable with crochet now -- which was my actual goal here, the afghan is a bonus -- but I still am not quite sure why my first stitches of the flipping method (no, maybe I should call it something else) don't sit straight, so I am beta-testing, as it were, a slight modification.  Instead of "ch3 in corner of first square, DC3 in corner of second square, DC3 in next ch space of first square," I did "ch3 in corner of first square, DC1 in corner of second square, DC2 in corner of first square, DC3 in next ch space of second square," then continuing to alternate clusters as usual.  Maybe part of this is because here at least I'm not joining corner-to-corner, but corner-to-middle-ish -- that I don't know.  Well, I don't mind the slow progress today, as it is a lovely afternoon, with puffy white altocumulus clouds gamboling across the sky so that the sunlight where I'm sitting in the living room is now pale, now bright, though occasionally I do set down the crochet to go out and admire the way the tops of the camphor trees echo the lacy fluffiness of the clouds.

Granny Square Afghan, Week 14

The fourteenth square for the Granny Square Afghan is a rectangular granny -- the assignment was to make two, but these were like dessert after the relative complexity of the recent squares, and after the first one I didn't need to look at the instructions at all -- I did all three of these in just the one day -- so it was a pleasure to make more than requested.  And I looked at my bag of yarn and thought, "gee, I don't seem to have used up very much ..." so why not?!

Grannies Go Off-Piste

This post was originally titled "Grannies Go Wild!" since the next squares in the Granny Square Sampler afghan are spirals and "whirligigs", but I ended up wandering off on my own for modifications to the squares that Blair uses.

The spiral one didn't speak much to me, I admit.  There is a very similar-looking alternative here that has one more round -- I was also tempted to use the Squaring the Spiral dishcloth pattern instead, but went with the original selection (though I'm sure I'll make a couple of those dishcloths before long!). 

The square for week 13 is called the Whirligig, and to be honest it had my head spinning.  The look of it in the photo wasn't particularly appealing to me, the inevitable lumpiness of it, I suppose, where the rounds of the contrast color meet.  I couldn't understand from the direction in the introduction to "double crochet into the back loop only" how it would produce what I could see in the photo, either -- I have worked this maneuver before, and it makes a sort of little twist or cord running across the tops of the stitches, which is the front loop left clear of the next round.  In my travails with the African Flower square, I had seen a video on YouTube featuring a square which had a very attractive line of what I as a knitter think looks just like a vikkel braid!  This is, I saw, another result of crocheting through the back post, this time in a continuous line -- it sort of folds over the top of the row, so that the "braid" effect shows on the front, though -- wait for it, crocheters! -- I realized when I tried it that using a second color when working through the back post does turn that chain or "braid" down towards the front but it also leaves the loop that has gone around the back post showing below the braid with a distracting (in my case) blip of contrast color.  In another bit of reverse-engineering something that has already been invented, I discovered that if you crochet through what I would call the "purl bump" on the back of a DC stitch, this folds the "braid" down very handsomely with no unattractive blip -- this effect has obviously been long known to crocheters as there are numerous tutorials already out there.  It is called "working through the third loop".

But as I was satisfied with what I had already done, I left it at that!

My gold spiral is essentially the Square Spiral Coaster which to my surprise I quite like.  The surface crochet is simple and neat, though for an afghan square it is a bit stiff because of the "embroidery".  For my grey circles square -- you can see the back in the photo above -- I used the double-crochet square here, with an extra round of the base color so that I could have an odd number of circles, five rounds of the surface crochet instead of four.

Going back to the original pattern and actually working it (!), I realized that, not unlike surface crochet, the contrast color is worked after the background square is completed.  It's a little difficult to see because the photo of Beth's original square uses a black yarn as the contrast color, but I think that her contrast line really does lie flat, unlike Blair's in her top photo, which is kind of turned on its side, though maybe this is a result of her squares curling up at the edges more than Beth's.

That wee grey-and-blue square is essentially the original Whirligig without the added-later SCs in front loop, and with alternating colors starting on the third round -- I was going to keep going the full five rounds, but stopped after the third because I liked it that size.  I did try the SC-into-front loop, and it certainly did want to turn over on its side, even more so when I tried just slip-stitch, so I pulled it off and just carried on with the back-loop DCs, which makes a perfectly usable square.

The Flowering of the Grannies

The next four squares on the Granny Square Sampler afghan are all flowers or flower-ish.  First is the African Flower Granny Square.  I had a lot of trouble with this one for some reason -- maybe I thought it was supposed to be more puffy than it turned out, I don't know.  It certainly needed a lot of blocking for the petals to show up well, as otherwise it was almost completely scrunched up when I tied it off.  Rather pretty, though.

Week 8's square is the Sunburst, with directions from Blair to make two of them that look "quite different from each other color-wise".  I confess that I'm not really wild about this square for some reason -- it's just sort of meh for me.  Part of it may be its openness, which would make an afghan a bit drafty, I suspect.  But I did succeed in making the two completely different from each other, there is that!

(I didn't notice until long after I'd finished it that I accidentally made one of them even draftier than it would have been!)

The square for Week 9 is a novelty, the Three-Dimensional Flower.  There were to be four in my photo, instead of the requested three, because I had a lot of trouble with this square and realized quite early on that the first one was going to be a dud.  One of the mistakes I will own up to fully (besides being sure that I had taken a photo of all four and finding just now that I hadn't), that of somehow copying down the last round incorrectly and thus having a round of single-crochets instead of doubles (!).  The others maybe are just my not quite understanding the directions, or not knowing how I was supposed to work a maneuver that more experienced crocheters do.  Where the instructions say to "work into the stem of the SC in the previous round," I interpreted this as what I later discovered is called "into the back post" because the footnote in the instructions explain that "the stem of an sc refers to the actual part of the single crochet stitch which attaches the stitch to the ch loop or space made in a previous round" and I, being an English major first and crocheter far, far second, interpreted "stem which attaches" as sort of tree-like, stem being not the same as root, thus --

This photo gives you, should you need it, some clarification of where the catch stitch should go.  It amuses me -- now -- to know that my attempts to reverse-engineer the thing ended up using what I was supposed to do in the first place.

I'm not sure now why I was so determined to get it to fluff up, when I wasn't that wild about the fluffiness in the first place, but there it is.  Human nature is very mysterious.  Anyway, my first attempt is apparently already back in the scrap bag, my second square (with pink petals) has something not-quite-right about it, my third square (with purple petals) is pretty much what the thing is supposed to look like (!), and my fourth square (on the far right), is the first square done again properly!

I think I like it a bit better with 4 DCs in the first petals, actually, not 3.  This is what I did on the third square, the one with purple petals, then I thought I should try it according to the actual pattern.  In this yarn at least, the extra stitch makes it more of a kind with the outer round of petals, which have 5 DCs but have a little more space to enjoy them.

Rather impulsively in the midst of all this, I decided to dig out the four packets of Kool-Aid that have been languishing in the back of the cupboard for some time, and dye some of the white yarn I have in the bag for this sampler.  The wool is a partial ball of Dalegarn Falk, in color 0020 unbleached white, or "ubleket hvit" if you want to take a crack at the Norwegian.  The "Blue Raspberry Lemonade" is not only a rather noxious shade of blue but makes the yarn feel stiff and artificial, but that is the only one that is not wholly successful.

And last in the flower sequence is the Popcorn Flower Granny Square, with the assignment to use the ground color (I chose white, since I have so much of it) as the border on one.  This square was a walk in the park compared to the previous one!  I did decide after the first one to modify the last round a bit -- you can see on the first one how it pulls in so that it isn't quite square.  I actually must be getting more confident with crocheting, as I said to myself, "Oh, that needs more height on some of the clusters in the background! and I think I know what to do!"  My revised last round has the first cluster being 3 DCs as in the pattern, but instead of all DCs the second is 3 HDCs, then 3 DCs, and the corner is 3 TCs, ch2, 3 TCs -- this worked perfectly.  After I took this photo, I picked out the last round and did it over again.  (Note the Kool-Aid colors!  Though it looks a bit more subtle worked in this small amount next to the darker "Black Cherry," the "Cherry" is vividly scarlet.)

All of this crochet is making me long to knit something, though.

And in cross-stitch news, I finished the "Froth and Bubble" sampler! but since I used only two initials, I didn't quite like the way the spacing turned out -- the gap between looks too big and the margins too pinched.  So I'm going to pick it out and re-do it -- not as onerous as it sounds, partly because it's just simple lettering and won't be more than a few hours' stitching, and partly because I've enjoyed this so thoroughly that I hardly want it to end ...

Granny Square Sampler Afghan: Week 6

The square for week 6 of the Granny Square Sampler afghan is the "Sunburst Variation" with little flecks of color in the fifth round (the first two rounds use the same yarn).  I like the way it emphasizes the roundness of the center.

(Oh, it is a bittersweet pleasure working with Matchmaker Merino DK.  Sturdy and yet oh-so-soft -- it slips through my fingers like water rippling in a brook.)

More Squares, and an Oval

Since I don't have to wait a week for the next square for the Granny Square Sampler afghan to come out, it may come as no surprise that my turnout is starting to blend together.  Sometimes a new-to-me square takes a while to work, then by the third one it just zips along and I might start the next one right away.  I think week 3's square is one of my favorites -- something about the simplicity of it, perhaps.  It's fun to have the colors changing on each round, but I really like the nearly-solid ones.

Week 4's squares are a subtle variation on the traditional granny square, with a little "V" shape in the second-color rounds.  I realized that it didn't show up very well with the dark green, so on the second one I used a brighter color.

There are two squares for Week 5, and to revel in that, they are nearly circles!  My Circles in a Square are at upper right and lower left in the photo above, and the other two are "Squircles" -- the first has only sort of embryonic corners, and uses the wonderful blocking properties of wool to mold it into a square shape, but the second, while very similar in the middle, uses further rounds of short single crochets in the middles of the edges, then slightly taller half-doubles on either side, with taller-yet double crochets to fill out the corners.  Simple, yet clever.

As for the oval, well, our bathroom mats are getting a bit ratty after, goodness I don't even know how long, possibly twenty years!  I discovered that I could order some truly gigantic balls of Lily Sugar N Cream yarn, and so I bought three, thinking of their Oval Bath Mat free pattern.  But it isn't really oval, is it, with the increases stacked directly on top of one another -- though I suppose "Elongated-Octagon Bath Mat" doesn't sound as appealing -- so I just sort of improvised for a while, moving the increases here or there, then when it started getting big, I put safety pins around the curved ends in the spots I wanted the increases to go, so that I could see them.  I'm pretty happy with the shape, not so much with the jog where the rounds end, so if I do another one in an oval, I will try a spiral.  Still, it's much more pleasant to look at the floor in the bathroom now!  And the balls of yarn were so huge that I'm pretty sure I have enough for at least one more mat!