A Bluestocking Knits

Long Time, No See

Oh dear, it has been a very long time indeed since I posted anything.  In my defense, my computer -- which was at least ten years old -- has been fading fast this past year, and around Christmas-time the top row of the keyboard just stopped working.  I debated with myself whether to try writing posts without using those letters, and in my younger days I might have enjoyed the challenge, but, well ... no, I just couldn't face it!  (No "e"!  That alone is 12% of the words in English!)  I then got a lovely new laptop that seemed every day to have some different bug -- I still can't print anything double-sided -- and didn't have any photo-editing program.  On the bright side, I was extraordinarily happy in the meantime stitching the "Pomegranate" sampler, despite some at-the-time-horrendous mistakes on my part, and so I was quite content to stitch and make sympathetic noises while David fussed over the new computer.

It wasn't until the third row of the blue alphabet, for instance, that I realized it was supposed to be eyelet stitch, not cross-stitch, so I had to pick it out and do it again.  More poignantly, I had been so very pleased with the overdyed threads, and as it turned out, almost one by one, I thought, "no, that color just isn't working" or "well, there's a bit too much variation in the overdye there," and ended up using only two of the eleven that I had chosen.  I took the above photo just after I decided that the color of the "green" pomegranates was too bright -- and too blue -- and so I picked out one of them and tried a different color --

-- which I liked much better. 

One of the intriguing things about this particular sampler was the satin-stitch border -- quite unusual.  I had a slightly different color of linen than the original, and it seemed to me that the original color was getting a bit lost, and so at the same time that I auditioned some similar shades I also tried O'Steen's tip -- from her book, not unfortunately from the chart for this sampler -- to work it with a single thread run through twice, instead of a double thread, because the two-at-a-time threads have a tendency to twist and overlap each other as you work.  You can see this in the section at the bottom (which is worked in the original color) --

Each of these four satin-stitch areas has two threads per hole, but the bottom one is worked with both of the threads in the needle at the same time, while the other three are worked with a single thread, working essentially two stitches in each hole.  This takes twice as long to do, obviously, but the result was clearly so much tidier that there was no question about which to do!

It surprises me that I haven't taken pictures of the finished sampler yet, but I will do that soon and make a separate post.  In the meantime ...

I said to Julia one afternoon not long ago, "Let me teach you some basic crochet, so that you will always be able to make yourself a supply of dishcloths," and to my pleasant surprise, she agreed.  ("Someday I might want to do some Irish crochet," she said thoughtfully.)  I couldn't find the hook I usually use for dishcloths, so she had to use a size smaller -- I went smaller rather than larger just because the cloths tend to stretch out a bit when they get wet, and we tend to like them a bit snug.  The first one, at the bottom, is single crochet, and the others are double and half-double.  It's kind of funny, because I remember the girls' bits of knitting -- fifteen years ago! -- that were all wobbly and full of holes, and Julia I think didn't even get an inch knitted before she decided that she wasn't interested at all, and now she worked a row or two with me showing her what to do, then she went off by herself and focused intently on it, after a few wobbles at the start keeping the stitches perfectly uniform.  That is what a year or two of making bobbin lace can do for one's concentration and standards!

(That, by the way, is pretty much exactly how I learned to knit, getting the basics from my mom, then going off by myself to work at it until I figured out how to get it all going smoothly!)

My New Year's resolution this year -- yes, the only one -- is to finish my three 1:12 shops.  I don't know why I was so uninterested in them the past few years -- well, not uninterested, it was just that other things were more interesting, I guess -- but there it is.  But to that end, I bought a few new-to-me things to inspire myself, including these little charmers for the tea shop, which are from Old Bell Pottery -- I love that the teapot even has that little steam hole in the lid! --

Saturday

Not long ago, David needed to go down to San Diego to collect some tool or other that he was buying from a friend, and said, "Let's have a little road trip," and so he and I went to Temecula and visited the Temecula Quilt Company shop which has been mentioned rather frequently here of late, and which is going to online-only in the next few months.  I had thought, "Gee, what can I do with all of these mini quilts once I sew them up" as I'm not really the quilt-on-the-wall type, and eventually I thought, "Duh!  Placemats!"  And so I came away from the shop with one each of their last two mini quilt kits, a booklet of doll quilt patterns (which are often about the same size as placemats ...), and some pre-cuts of TQC fabrics.  After lunch in San Diego, we stopped off to visit some friends who recently moved to the wilds of the Santa Ana Mountains -- had a good visit and a delicious dinner, with the bonus of a gorgeous sunset -- so all in all, an excellent day.

I sewed up the first mini quilt kit in an afternoon, deciding to arrange the squares randomly instead of in four-patch. The kit is of the same high quality as the others, with a generous selection of fabrics and clear, concise instructions.  I backed this with some navy Kona Cotton and hand-quilted it, pleased to see that I'm getting a bit better at the latter, though that may also have something to do with the batting being thinner that what I used previously, and thus easier to manipulate the needle through!

I'm glad I started with this one, as it was thus clear to me early on that for placemats, I think I will want most of them slightly longer than the 16" here.  I've sewn up the pinwheel kit, and will start quilting it soon.

I do have -- of course -- another distraction --

which is Mamilou's charting of an antique sampler which I found almost accidentally while I was researching French samplers.  I decided, since I had some linen that has quite a loose weave, to experiment with three strands of floss instead of two, to get that rather "thick" look that so many antique samplers have, usually (I guess) from the original stitcher using wool and not modern cotton floss.  It's actually quite a success, I think! and because of the loose weave isn't at all too much.  I was originally thinking that I would veer towards a "re-creation" and follow Léontine's mistakes as well as the now-missing stitches, but the chart has a few "corrections" and I've made a few mistakes of my own (!), so it is Léontine as well as a soupçon of both Mamilou and me!

And I do, I assure you, still knit, although it may not seem like it!  I like this wool and think this will make a fabulous scarf, but I cannot knit it during Zoom meetings, as I lose track of which row I'm on and find after an hour that I worked a plain row when I should have worked a pattern row, or vice versa, and have to rip out all I've done since then.  This is the longest it's been yet! --

A Little Bit Here, a Little Bit There ...

Well, it has been over a month since I posted, and I didn't even realize it.  I finished the "Honeysuckle Sampler" ages ago, enjoyed it very much despite the egregious number of queen-stitch flowers in that border (!) -- haven't blocked it yet, though, obviously.  I made some very slight changes, re-positioning the signature line a little, and centering the date by moving it down a single thread -- feeling a bit of an outlaw as I did so, as nobody ever seems willing to suggest that sort of thing even though sometimes a motif looks quite strange with two two-thread rows below it and only one above.  (I think I made the "J" a stitch wider as well -- and why not?!)  These thread colors look very well against the natural linen, I think!

Also unblocked, "Samplings IV" by Ellen Chester, from her "Quaker Samplings series.  This is on the 36-count Edinburgh linen that I coffee-dyed over the summer.  I enjoyed working this little sampler very much, and the thread is quite handsome -- Gentle Art's "Brethren Blue" -- and so I look forward to the rest of the series, which I will do in a selection of different colors.  I've started the "Samplings V" -- in Gentle Art's "French Lilac" but got distracted ...

I got a new phone for free so felt entirely justified in splurging a bit on a new case, the first one I've ever bought, since all my others were hand-me-downs.  Some folks might recognize the place names as being in the Lake District, others might realize, from, say the campsite just there near the compass rose, and the Amazon Boathouse across the lake, that it is actually Swallows and Amazons!  It makes me happy every time I see it, and that's the first time I've ever said that about a phone, to be sure, so well worth the extra few dollars.  And it has prompted me to start rereading the series -- I'm now in the middle of Pigeon Post, so about halfway along.

I had a bag of Jaeger Baby Merino in the bottom of a box, that I kept passing over because while the yarn is delicious, the color was just kind of meh.  I debated with myself for months about overdyeing it -- what if it went badly? aaugh -- but a few weeks ago, I said to myself, "Right, just do it."  I wound into skeins and dyed it with one envelope each of grape-flavored Kool-Aid, and was pleased to see that everything turned out rather well.  It's a bit more mottled than I was expecting -- that was really the only surprise. 

I had been half-planning to make a Christmas-present afghan with it for Laura -- whose favorite color is purple -- and I liked the "Modern Classic Baby Blanket" by Kirsten Holloway, though I've stalled a bit after working the first end section.  It seems to me that the mottled color of the yarn obscures the intricacy of the design -- the purple is a bit darker in real life than in the photo -- ironically, the yarn and the pattern would most likely have suited each other better with the yarn in its original state.  The stitches are on the complex side, and it took me a while to puzzle through some of them, but it worked out well -- but the other thing that is giving me pause is that it's very yardage-hungry, and this bit alone used up a whole ball and a good portion of another, and I've got only ten!  So my choices are to forge ahead and hope for the best, to try out the "plain" panel and see if the yarn goes further, as I could omit the inner fancy-work, or try something else altogether.  Ten skeins sounds like a lot; I can hardly believe that I couldn't make a lap blanket out of ten skeins!

In my indecision, I came across this "Japanese View" cross-stitch chart, available free at Smart Cross Stitch, and thought it also might make a good present for Laura --

and so as I have accumulated a considerable stash of 28-count Monaco in the past few decades, I thought, "Go for it!"  But I have had the dickens of a time with it -- counted wrong and somehow couldn't figure out where, picked out all of the mountain bits I'd done, got off again and picked it all out a second time (luckily not so far along as before), ran out of the medium-purple (of course, half of it was in shreds on the floor), did it a third time using a couple of in-betweens I had in my needle case as re-positionable guide lines.  Now at last I feel like I'm getting somewhere and it looks like the beginnings of a mountain view instead of a bunch of random specks, which is encouraging.

(Why multiple presents for Laura?  She has just gone off for her first year away at university, after spending her post-high-school years thus far at the local community college.  She is still in the same time-zone, but far enough away that I know she isn't living at home any more.  The compulsion to make things for her is especially strong.)

Lest you think I do not knit anymore -- I have been working on this scarf (which is "Camptown Races"), albeit for what seems an eternity.  I might rename it "Grandmother's Footsteps" as I keep finding that I've been daydreaming and lost track of which row I was on, so that some of the sections have far too many stitches, and I have to rip back to the point where it went wrong.  It's very nice yarn and lovely to knit with, thank goodness, and doesn't seem to mind my two-steps-forward, one-step-back.  If we take the train to visit Laura, this will be a perfect carry-along!

And there is the binding on my "Persuasion" quilt, which binding is very long (somewhat over queen-sized), but of course would probably be finished already if I didn't keep getting distracted ...

Night Light

"Night Light" quilt, designed by Joy Hoffman (the pattern seems to be more-easily found under its original title of "Shimmer").  I used fabrics from Pam Buda's "Forevermore" and Jeanne Horton's "Country Soiree" collections, augmented by a blue and cream print I had in my stash, and Kona Cotton solids in Delft and Cadet blues, and Bone for the solid stars.  It was both a challenge and fun to make, sometimes both together, and after I settled into a rhythm, I quite enjoyed my first experience of hand-quilting (which is a simple outline of the stars and along-the-seams). 

I think if I were to make this again -- and I wouldn't write off that possibility -- I would be daring enough to try working out how to make that set of star points that uses a pair of half-rectangle triangles with one piece of the patterned fabric, so that there isn't a seam through the middle of it.  I almost wish that the smaller stars were "wonky" too ...

"Oarweeds, Devil’s Aprons, Sea Tangles"

"Giant Kelp Forest" by NOAA Office of Response and Restoration on Flickr (Attribution 2.0 Generic [CC BY 2.0])

I must admit that the idea of a kelp-forest quilt is strangely intriguing.  Julia has a serious interest in sheep, of course, but when I asked her about the other, she said, unexpectedly dreamily, "I would live in a kelp forest if I could."

(The title of this post comes from Rachel Carson's The Edge of the Sea: "In the lowest pools the Laminarias begin to appear, called variously the oarweeds, devil’s aprons, sea tangles, and kelps. The Laminarias belong to the brown algae, which flourish in the dimness of deep waters and polar seas.... To look into such a pool is to behold a dark forest, its foliage like the leaves of palm trees, the heavy stalks of the kelps also curiously like the trunks of palms.... One of these laminarian holdfasts is something like the roots of a forest tree, branching out, dividing, subdividing, in its very complexity a measure of the great seas that roar over this planet.")

"Kelp Forest at Monterey Bay Aquarium" by Vadim Kurland on Flickr (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0])

The top photo is actually fairly close to what I saw in my mind's eye at the thought of "kelp forest quilt", just sideways thus --

There is an intriguing tutorial on piecing curvy strips from Kathleen Loomis here -- and the other day I bought the pattern for a "Color Work Table Runner" by Jean Wells that on the kelp-forest-quilt scale comes about halfway between basic "wonky strips" and Loomis's free-wheelers.

But I have to admit that the idea of piecing all of those curves -- because they'd have to be lengthwise, wouldn't they! -- on a full-sized twin bed quilt makes my heart sink to my boots.  There is also Purl Soho's "Prism" free pattern, say done in a combination of kelp-y batiks and ocean-y solids ...

Celestial

I've been urging Laura for some time to find a hobby or two, something creative to reduce stress (to which she is prone, poor thing, but she comes by it honest, as my grandma used to say).  Last week she said, out of the blue it seemed, "Mom, I want to do some cross-stitch."  I nearly fell over.  "Okay," I said casually, "do you have something in mind?"  "No," she said, then gently so as not to hurt my feelings, "I'm not really big on alphabets, though."  "Fair enough," I said, "well, there are a lot of free charts of all sorts of things on the internet for you to get your feet wet, as it were."  A few days later, she said, "I found these on the DMC website," two small vignettes of the Earth and Mars, and Jupiter and Saturn.

I had enough threads already for the Earth and Mars, and so she started with that, the only change being that I suggested a shade lighter yellow for the stars (743 instead of 742).  She picked it up satisfyingly quickly, and to the pleasant surprise of both of us she enjoyed it enormously -- she has shown little interest in hobbies, really, not an interest that "takes," at least.

The chart's Jupiter didn't look quite right to my eye, so I offered to tweak it a bit for Laura, and came up with this --

Laura had already looked up, in the middle of Earth and Mars, and said, "I could do all of the planets, and frame them in a group!" and so I took the liberty of making charts for Mercury and Venus, and for Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto.  Since the original DMC charts are free, it seems only right to add mine to what's available for the general public, in case anyone else wants the whole solar system! --

• Stars 743 (a change from the original charts' 742)
• Venus beige stripes 754, pink stripes 760
• Mercury light brown 426, medium brown 420

• Stars 743 (a change from the original charts' 742)
• Pluto 800
• Uranus 798, rings 415
• Neptune 799, spots 800

2020, We Hardly Knew Ye

 

Well, I didn't get much Christmas-ing done this year -- no cards even though I bought some on sale in January last year, no we-are-still-well newsletter even though I started planning one in October or thereabouts (we've never done one before but having missed so much family news this year it seemed a good idea), no decorated mantel over our fireplace/bookshelf even though we raided -- with permission! -- the trimmings pile at the tree lot, no cut-paper snowflakes in the big living-room window, a rather Cratchit-like Christmas dinner though in all fairness that was mostly on purpose as it was just the four of us and not a dozen as usual, no "12 Days of Christmas Carols" series which I've enjoyed doing here in years previous.  It isn't for lack of Christmas spirit, mind you, just that weird sense of time shifting and turning just outside the door but rarely actually inside or at the same time as oneself.  But there it is -- 2020 has been a bit of a bust, to say the least, and Christmas has been as weird as pretty much everything else.  (Even my search engine doesn't know what day it is -- the other day its calendar had the 28th highlighted, while the taskbar on my computer said it was still the 26th.)

(I can't tell where this graphic came from, but it's brilliant and I wish I could credit the artist.  Its days not only melt Dali-like and disintegrate more with each week, but the numbers get increasingly out of sequence, or even non-existent, very like the surreal normality, or the new-normal surreality, that has been 2020.)

I couldn't help noticing that the Los Angeles Times's year-in-review section in Sunday's paper was 27 pages of their top columnists mostly in a sort of "WTF?!" daze and one page at the end of "well, there were some good things, though".  There has been a lot of stress and disappointment just here in our house, and none of us has been sick so in comparison with others we've had it pretty easy.  But I thought it would be good to say goodbye to this year on a positive note, so here are some of my "Best of 2020" lists --

Best New-to-Me Recipes (in no particular order)

• Skillet Turkey Chili from Smitten Kitchen (now a regular go-to meal)
• Finnish Rye Bread from Nigella Lawson's How to Be a Domestic Goddess (Nigella's version of recipe isn't online, but here is a slight adaptation)
• Bien Cuit's Salted Chocolate Buckwheat Cookies (do read and follow at least some of the advice in the comments, though, especially the one about refrigerating the dough overnight before baking; mine didn't look at all like the photo but tasted amazing)
• Honey Wheat Rolls from King Arthur Flour
• Cream of Celery Soup (and we hate celery!)

Best Escapist Fiction

• Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series and Arthur Ransome's "Swallows and Amazons" series tie for first, partly because they are both wonderfully transporting into their respective worlds, and partly because there's a whole series of each and so therefore all the more immersive.  As Emily Dickinson said, "There is no Frigate, Sloop, or Sailing Dinghy like a Book / To take us Lands away"!
• D.E. Stevenson runs a close third only because I'm reading The Young Clementina along with the DES list at the moment, and it's rather sad for much of the middle of the book
• Molly Clavering deserves an honorable mention for Near Neighbours (1956), a charming novel in which "nothing much happens" but everything turns out satisfyingly well

Best Needlework for Daydreaming Over as well as Potentially Actually Doing

• Darlene O'Steen's counted-stitch samplers
• scrap quilts (Amanda Jean Nyberg -- whose book I got for Christmas -- and others)

Best Old Song that's Suddenly Pertinent Again

"And the Vase and the Flowers Were the First Motif"

The first motif on the "Quaker Virtues" sampler, finished this morning.  I didn't find it as jarring as I thought, switching back to the soi-disant "Danish method" of working all half-crosses in a section, then going back to make them full crosses, so I probably could have worked on both at the same time, but as it happens the stitching on "Anna Ohman" is finished --

-- and as I said, has been a pleasure every moment.  I'm delighted with the color and the ThreadworX floss, and the linen from R&R Reproductions, and even more with all of these together.  I "signed" it with my initials and the year in half-cross using a beige-brown strand -- of I think DMC 840 -- very similar to the background so that it would clearly not be an antique sampler but wouldn't jump out at you.

It has been good to have these calm, almost serene pieces to work on, these days.  David was called back to work a few months ago, which was a great relief though of course these days few things feel particularly secure, and then this past Monday he was told that along with most of his department he is being furloughed again.  It is what it is, of course, and we are all healthy, there is that.

I am still knitting, though admittedly not much at present, but when the weather turned suddenly cold last week, I decided it would be a good time for that Copilot cowl.  I haven't got very far yet, as the rows are extraordinarily long, but the wool is deliciously soft, like knitting a cloud --

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!

Bits and Bobbins

There are plenty of old projects still on the go to keep me busy during the coming year, but of course one can hardly help adding new ones to the queue.  There are so many wonderful projects out there ...

I found myself last summer rather taken by the Gladiolus Vest by Robyn Chachula -- to my surprise, as it's crochet!  Well, you never know.  It's in a worsted weight yarn, rather heavier than much of my stash -- until I thought of the bag of Jaeger Extrafine Merino that David bought for me in Hong Kong some years ago. 

(The top square is blocked and the bottom one isn't!)  It worked up in the swatch quite nicely, and feels delicious of course, but it's a rather dark blue, and try as I might, I couldn't seem to picture the vest in a dark color.  I set the swatch aside to think about for a while, and of course months passed.  I had for some reason the other day thought of a bag of a Japanese wool/silk blend I bought for myself in Hong Kong (!), in a pale pink -- I'd asked Laura if she would like something made out of it, and she said, "Well, it's pretty, but ..." then suddenly last night at some ungodly hour when I was still awake, I thought, "Oh! I should try the silk yarn on that crochet vest!"  It also works up into the crochet square beautifully --

The only problem is that I have 10 40-gram skeins, and by my calculation this is exactly the amount called for, which in my experience usually means not quite enough.  Do I carry on and risk it?  The problem is that being crocheted squares, you cut the yarn at the end of each square, so that if I end up not having enough of the yarn, I'm left with eighty or ninety lengths of yarn, instead of ten.

I am using up the rest of the strips of Moda "Boro" fabrics, which are, to my delight and horror both, enough to make quite a large second Chinese Coins quilt.  (Horror because, gosh, why did I cut all of them? and delight because now I'll have a Boro quilt of my own.)  I have sewed most of the remaining strips into five "stacks" and now must hunt down some coupons and get fabric for sashing and backing.  And I also now have a charming stash of two Karen Styles collections from Marcus Fabrics, "County Clare" and "Meridian Stars".  I really like this version by Sandra Clemons of the traditional "Cross and Crown" block, and was delighted to find that it's available for free.  The two fabric collections play well together, too, I think, and there will be less of a contrast between reds/browns and pinks/blues when they are interspersed --

On one of our recent trips to Pasadena for Parade rehearsals, David and I spent a few hours at Vroman's -- as one does -- and I came away with Blair Stocker's Wise Craft Quilts.  The book impressed me not only with its collection of beautiful quilts, but with Stocker's gentle emphasis on artistry and creativity as well as meaningfulness, and that it isn't just "here's how you do it" but also "here's why you do it," how to balance light vs. dark colors, or odd shapes, and so on.  I was delighted to find that Stocker also has a blog, with lots of beautiful things to look at and make.

And I must say I'm rather taken with her Granny Square Sampler afghan project ...!  She has provided patterns or links to patterns for a variety of granny squares of different sizes and textures, and, like the quilts in her book, tips for piecing them together into a quirky afghan.

Oh, yes -- and Rose Parade, of course!  This will be Julia's last year (aging out at 17!), so it's a little bittersweet.  But what a stirring sight they were!

Some time ago, Julia said, apropos of nothing it seemed, "Mom, I want to learn how to make bobbin lace."  Julia, my intelligent and deft yet rather defiantly undomestic teenager wants to learn a centuries-old needlecraft!  "Hm," I said, trying not to let my delight show, "well, let's see what we can do."  And not long after that, we happened to come across a demonstration by a group that holds monthly meetings -- so we went, and then took a day-long class.

This is my first sample piece, in a stitch called cloth stitch -- this particular one happens to have "winkie" edges, I'm told, those little picot-like bumps that occur when you wrap the weaver threads around the next pin in the sequence.  I did a fairly long length during the class, trying to keep the threads snug and the tension even, and then the next day when I worked on it some more, I had to laugh when I saw that I had been snugging up the weave quite a lot more the second day!

Lace has taken a bit of a back-seat lately, though, as I am still enchanted with the "Froth and Bubble" sampler, and finished the bottom panel last night.  I started in the middle, so have two panels left!