New needlework blog

Sorry about the mess, but I'm doing so much  knitting and sewing these days that I thought I'd put it all in place where those of us who enjoy such things can wallow together. Meanwhile, those for whom the word crochet recalls the abomination of  70s macrame owls, Fair Isle tank tops, fitted bathrooms in puce and avocado, and living rooms dominated by noxious purple, brown, green or orange wallpaper in interlocking geometric patterns...... well, it's changed a bit since then, but I understand that - like me - you may never fully recover from the trauma. So you just go away and lie down till you feel better, and maybe pop back here from time to time. I tend to pop in during school holidays and then disappear for another three months, so you've got time.

That's right, put your feet up. Breathe. Soon be all better.

Happy New Bed

We've got a new bed: 135cm x 190cm, with a storage base. WoooooooooHOOOOOOooooooooo! I have dreamed of this day. (Actually, it was the day before yesterday. Yesterday was a public holiday, and I spent it rearranging STUFF, and filling the bed base with - oh - a spare duvet.... some extra cushions... and felt, cloth, embroidery materials, beads, rug canvas, yarn, the accumulated and - until now - crammed and less-than-accessible accumulation of years of making things. And half-making things...) I have a confession to make: In the last five years, I have gone from messy (always) to almost pathologically untidy. But I now have reason to believe that I can put a lid on it - or more precisely, a hinged 135cm x 190cm mattress base. (See previous WoooooooooHOOOOOOooooooooo! and double it, adding ridiculous skippy dance in middle of miraculously clear floor.)

I would just say that that I'm also very good at tidying up. I crave order and a sense of spaciousness, and in fact, if these were all I required of my living space, I might well live happily ever after in magnolia-walled, glass-fronted, built-in contentment. However, I love beautiful design and hand-made things around me, and I won't, can't, settle for neutral at home. It may take some time, and I might sometimes wish I could just settle, but that ain't the way it works. And I do have fun. And it nourishes my rather frazzled soul, reassuring me that there's more to us than the sorry shamefulness of what makes the headlines. Art (even art I don't like) speaks to me of human creativity and individual restless questing. In craft traditions I recognise the soul and sense of belonging and sharing. And then there's the broad, shifting Everyman's Land in between, which the academic border guards cannot keep people out of!

In Tony Hillerman's novels about Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn of the Navajo Tribal Police, he writes about the Navajo concept of Beauty, and a way of life informed by the sense of harmony between all things. Clearly, this can be a tad tricky for a police officer (and central character in a crime novel!) but there is a Beauty Way ceremony for when someone needs to restore this harmony.

Walking in Beauty:  Closing Prayer from the Navajo Way Blessing Ceremony

In beauty I walk

With beauty before me I walk

With beauty behind me I walk

With beauty above me I walk

With beauty around me I walk

It has become beauty again

Today I will walk out, today everything negative will leave me

I will be as I was before, I will have a cool breeze over my body.

I will have a light body, I will be happy forever, nothing will hinder me.

I walk with beauty before me. I walk with beauty behind me.

I walk with beauty below me. I walk with beauty above me.

I walk with beauty around me. My words will be beautiful.

In beauty all day long may I walk.

Through the returning seasons, may I walk.

On the trail marked with pollen may I walk.

With dew about my feet, may I walk.

With beauty before me may I walk.

With beauty behind me may I walk.

With beauty below me may I walk.

With beauty above me may I walk.

With beauty all around me may I walk.

In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, lively, may I walk.

In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, living again, may I walk.

My words will be beautiful…

(Brought up Roman Catholic, I was reminded of

Christ be with me, Christ within me,
         Christ behind me, Christ before me,
      Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
         Christ to comfort and restore me,
      Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
         Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
      Christ in hearts of all that love me, 

         Christ in mouth of friend and stranger. 
.. which I have just found out is from a long poem called Lorica, or St Patrick's Breastplate)

Anyway, while I am a bilagáana, the Navajo equivalent of a guíri, I see beauty above me, when I'm out and about in the city with the sky overhead. You can't beat the sky for beauty; even in the past week, when it has seemed best to view it from behind glass, wrapped in a shawl, and sustained by numerous cups of tea. Then there are trees. (Pause for quiet, reverent wow...)

And beauty beside me in the man-made details of thoughtful architecture: planes and angles, windows and doors, patterned brickwork, wrought iron, roof tiles, plasterwork. And the quirky, human happenstance of people's ordinary lives expressed in balconies of strange cacti, laundry, cagebirds singing their hearts out all day long, and solitary chairs and stools angled to catch the sun or shade. And pensioners walking their dogs, and parents pushing toddlers on swings, and the greengrocer who polishes every piece of fruit as he builds his pavement display each morning. More than enough to distract eye, ear and heart from the regular patches of spiritless and bland, and occasional outbreaks of full-on ugly. (O... M... G...!!!!!) Oops. Bad case of urban - beauty within me is always the tricky one, but the others help.

So, can I have beautiful please?  Personally, I lack the spark that makes the artist, the skill and confidence that marks the artesan, and the discipline of either. Forever the amateur, driven by enthusiasm, but hampered by two and a half thumbs and limited time and patience, my progress through painting (acrylics, water colours), drawing (pencils, pastels), needlework (dressmaking, quilting, embroidery, knitting, crochet, weaving), handicrafts (metal sculpture, origami, paper engineering, clay modelling) and gardening (pots, allotment, garden, balcony, terrace) resembles a long series of handbrake turns, or a world record number of driving lessons. Sigh. So, yes, my greatest natural talent appears to be that of creating chaos out of order, like a puppy in a wool basket - Woofdidoo! But now... 135x190... =D

Still, I know what I like, and I like a lot of things. I have a very good eye for colour, line and form. My eyes, ears and skin appreciate texture. So do my nose and taste buds: when my husband emerges from the kitchen in the evening, the fragrant steam rising from plates of home-made pie and gravy - or  salmon, tiny green peas and  dill-speckled sauce - or beer-battered chish & fips - or yesterday's bolognese sauce reworked as chilli con carne on a bed of white basmati - ooh... I succumb...

However, when I aspire to beauty at home, that's when the trouble starts, because as is apparent, I don't just look, I like to make. Now, if I did have real talent or skill (and a sense of direction...), we'd be fine, because I would have a studio for my mess, or would have developed tidy habits over time. But no. Almost inevitably, I start at one end of the sofa, with ideas, assorted materials, and a book or two; subsequently colonising the rest of the sofa, the footstool, sometimes the dining table, and occasionally the sewing machine and ironing board too; bashing away enthusiastically, and gradually narrowing it down to a central idea. I usually get a beautiful result, in the end, but getting there is an object lesson in how much mess one person can generate in a living room in a short time, and then sustain for - oh - however long it takes to work out where she's going, and how to get there. I think I've probably got worse since I  discovered Ravelry and crochet, and the amazing possibilities of a deceptively easy  handicraft that has been hammering at the doors of Art for decades now. Who knew? Oh, only thousands and thousands of people all over the world. Ooh! Freeform! Ooh! Irish crochet! Ooh! Russian crochet! Ooh! sock yarns! hand-dyed yarns! plastic! wire! Working on my skills, reading up, consulting...... If a butterfly took speed... Maybe I should change my user name to What-a-mess.

But storage permits organisation, and organisation permits order, and out of order may just come beauty.

Next time, though I want one of these!

Ravelry makes me happy

In December 2009, I joined Ravelry 'a knit and crochet community'. Online. Now, I have a rather awkward relationship with the virtual world. As a source of information, especially English language information, it's very, very useful for me. But in my experience the word 'community' is frequently hijacked by commercial and political bodies to leverage new markets, or as a useful buzzword for disguising cuts to social funding. And what is communal about staying in, facing a screen?

Ah, but.

Ah, but, when genuinely community-minded people have the vision, skills and taste for hard work to boldly go into the virtual world and create the conditions for a welcoming, inclusive, mutually supportive and downright inspiring community - a community where people from all over the planet can come and grow - even I am won over, no, delighted and excited. And that's what Ravelry is about. Much as Jess envisaged in a blog seven years ago this month.

Running parallel to and enriching my 'real' life I now have this 'place' where I can encounter other people with the same or related interests, who share their knowledge, triumphs, messes and learning curves, people I wouldn't otherwise meet because they live in the UK, or Norway, or Mexico, or the US. It's just like a 'real' club, except it doesn't matter if you have to work late, or you've only got ten minutes, or you can't get a babysitter, or you've no money for the bus, or that you live in a different time zone.

It reminds me a bit of when we were in Dubai, where there's much more of a social mix of cultures, professions and levels of seniority than is common elsewhere in more permanent, and therefore homogeneous, societies. A twelve year old American schoolgirl got in touch. Great-grandmothers who are knitting for new babies. Men Who Knit. OK - that's more common than it used to be. But, Men who Crochet? Yes! People in their fifties and sixties dyeing yarn and selling it through Etsy. Full-time designers and makers. Many blog, some do podcasts, several have books out.   And there are professional and amateur spinners, and weavers, and-and-and-.

And in between, we're at work, or school, or looking after our families, in Russia or China or Estonia or Ireland. It's great. And if you don't speak the language that that wonderful pattern is written in, often someone has translated those instructions from French, or Japanese, or German. It's awe-inspiring, really, how it works.

I must admit, I've only recently moved from lurking, 'favoriting' and leaving the occasional comment, to chats and participating in forums, but I've learnt such a lot - I'm learning all the time - and I've been touched by so many people's enthusiasm for their particular skill, or tradition or discovery. I'm having a ball! I even manage conversations in Spanish, without the pressures of real time dialogue in a second language. And there are groups for teachers and theatre luvvies and gardeners - even a dedicated group of composters who knit and crochet!!! Of course I've joined!

So, here are some of the things I've made and am pleased with. The big discovery for me has been the extraordinary scope and versatility of crochet. I've always been a knitter, and never could get my fingers and thumbs round crochet until a couple of winters ago. Since then, though, I've progressed from fat 5mm diameter hooks and fat, cheap, reasonably stretchy acrylic yarn in stripes and rounds to granny squares and flowers and to snowflakes on 2.5mm hooks and fine cotton - not fine fine, on 1.25mm and 0.6mm (?!?!) hooks, you understand (Never gonna happen.) - and simple tops, to basic Irish crochet, and looking at alternative materials like string, plastic and wire.

Perhaps best of all, my virtual life feeds back into my real life. I'm not talking about my unevenly increasing skill and knowledge, but about discovering how many colleagues do their own thing outside work. It turns out that some of my colleagues are also into crochet or knitting, or working with paper, or making jewellery, or baking or sewing or basketry or clay-modelling. It's nice to know. There's a sense of understanding and being understood that adds another dimension to our relationships. And it makes a change from Facebook.

 

 

Happy Birthday, Ravelry!

Still hot

I've been sitting in this exact same place for days. It's too hot to move. It's also too hot to stay still, but I'm trying not to run the air conditioning all the time. Not all the time...

Anyway, the crochet is coming on a treat. There's a lot to be said for embarking on a big, repetitive project when you're a relative beginner. Turning a ball of yellow yarn into forty flower centres, and then turning a couple of balls of white into circles of petals around those centres, gets tedious after a while, but I'm already a lot faster than I was, and don't have to focus on every stitch as a I did at first. I made 32 nuggets during last Wednesday's Barcelona-Madrid match!

(Incidentally, does anyone else think Mourinho should be fined and put on notice for bringing the game into disrepute? He's a sour piece of work. Imagine having to work with him.)

And my technique is improving, as is my understanding of the mechanics of making stitches. After struggling to copy either of the two ergonomically correct grips, I decided to stop fretting, on the basis that if I could handle a pen, a knife, a knitting needle and a screwdriver, the grip for a crochet hook should quietly evolve, if I concentrated on making the stitches. And it did. It turns out that you (OK, I!) hold it like a salt pot. There! That didn't hurt at all.

I can see the difference between my first batches and the current one, too: more even tension, better shaped centres - and all the right way up!

Obviously, this isn't ideal, but I am not about to unpick every mistake. My policy is - damage limitation. If I spot an error in the round I'm doing, I unravel it and rework, but if I only spot it when I realise there's something awry in the next round - it stays, and I skip the extra chain space, or squidge in another, so that I don't end up with either nine or seven petals. Martha Stewart, I ain't. I've also decided that my flowerbed will have ladybirds, and perhaps the odd butterfly. Who's to know that the adorable ickle ladybirds hide a small, but perfectly formed mishmash of yarn, or that the butterfly masks a bigger mishmash? Clearly, if I have to resort to Amazonian beauties, or the finished coverlet looks like a testament to biodiversity, I shall review this policy before embarking on my next project, but I am hopeful that I will get away with my disgraceful approach to quality control.

But I'd better order Lesley Stansfield's 75 Birds, Butterflies and little beasts to knit and crochet, just to be on the safe side.

I've currently got 38 fried eggs and 5 golden nuggets, which will soon sit on 43 patches of purple, red, green and yellow, to even up with the blues and salmon. With the other 74, that puts me almost halfway to the requisite 288. Yay.

Howsoever, brain has now recovered from academic year plus summer camp. Or it had until today. I'm working on a story that originated in an EFL project I created around a fictional robbery from an art gallery. As usual, having hit knowledge barriers, I'm following white rabbits down all sorts of fascinating interconnected tunnels. Cornish history and legend. The British peerage. Japonisme. Restorers and forgers. Woman Bathing, by Mary Cassatt

a forged Goya

Van Gogh, after Hiroshige

Every so often, I pop up and do something that affects the word count.

But this patently isn't it.

How d'you like your eggs?

Weird Crochet, Hyperbolic Crochet, Happy Crochet

I misunderstood an instruction, so instead of doing clusters of stitches, I did cluster stitches, and got these incredibly bulky flowers.

Flipped over, they could be anemones, or coral.

They remind me of the Order of the Garter, or the badge on Sergeant Dixon's helmet (Dock Green - when I was little!) It doesn't help that I made them before I figured out the correct way to do a starting circle, hence the mish-mash in the middle.

Which reminds me: Anyone for a little science project? I came across an article on the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef last year. Once you get past the apparent insanity of the idea, you realise that crochet really lends itself to modelling marine lifeforms - coral, of course, but what about barnacles? Anemones? Seahorses, for goodness sake! (Maybe when God put her feet up on the seventh day, she got her crochet out, and knocked out a couple of seahorses, a blowfish, a few tiger prawns and half a dozen starfish. Picture these creatures, and you'll realise that I could be right...)

There's a link (I LOVE THIS!!!) to the satellite projects around the world. Check out the Flickr photos from the Melbourne Reef show. But, here are some of organiser Irene Lundgaard's photos of the Irish Satellite Reef. Because I love looking at them.

Oh yeah! I've wanted a marine aquarium ever since the pet shop in Horwich installed one in about 1990. It was about five feet long, and four feet high, and just wonderful.

Crochet! The answer!

Doesn't leak or need cleaning.

Doesn't mind a power cut.

Doesn't get hungry or ill.

N0-one ever had to find someone to crochet-sit before going on holiday.

And no worries about how all the little finny things get on with with the knitted dog, the crochet cat, the plush guinea pig or the macrame owl.

So that's a plan, then. Excellent.

Looking for Purple

You see the magenta outline around the lightning forks? And the dark purple clouds? OK. Now try and picture a shade of purple between those two colours - reddish, not bluish - and that's the colour of the yarn I used for my pansies.

Can I capture it with my camera? Nope. Indoors, outdoors, morning, afternoon, increasingly random jabbings at -2 something to +1.7 something, assorted light settings, all I get is some very beautiful shades of blue, lavender and slate, and washed-out-life-is-pointless-bluuurgh.

So I went a-Googling, (ho-li-daaaaaay....) as I do, for pansies of the colour I've used. None.

I googled 'purple flowers'. Not a one. But feast yer eyes, anyway! And the iris comes from an enchanting flower blog.

Perhaps my zingy synthetic purple dye does not exist in nature, unless..... down in the depths of the ocean, where everything glows in the endless darkness.....

And that search led me, via this fella, ..not quite, but...

to Purple Dreamy and this fella! but no...

This? Nearly...

And this - almost! That bright, rich shade in the centre!

What about birds?

Oh! definitely getting warmer with

But the closest is, the sun-polished, iridescent sheen of this handsome creature.
My mother used to make beautiful needle tapestries, drawing on years of gardening, and a faultless eye for colour. The only flower she ever almost gave up on was the iris, because of the difficulty of finding an embroidery silk of the exact purple she needed. I've been reminded of this as I've ransacked Google to locate 'my' synthetic purple in nature.

Anyway. Two pansies, one made on a 3.5mm hook, and one on 4.5. Also a briar rose in the same gold and purple, but though it looks cheerful, I found it frustratingly fiddly to make, and I don't think I'll try another two-layer flower for a while. The big one's lush, but too big to use right now. The little one, though, looks delightful on my waistcoat, opposite the knitted poppy that set me crocheting in the first place. Not that you can tell from this photo, but never mind. Just as long as you know -

That slate blue? It's a purple!

Primroses and folding chairs (first two days of the holiday)

I can crochet! I mean, I've got the hang of it again, having learnt last winter, and done nothing since. I made these yesterday, sitting outside with a whole series of cups of tea, hooking (and unhooking), and hooking (and unhooking) and......... until - Ta daah!

OK, crocheted primroses may not be your cup of tea. (I'm not entirely sure they're mine...) but I think the yarn works very well for their matte leaves and petals. And I'm tickled pink with managing a 2.5mm hook for the first time - and single crochet, half doubles, doubles and triples. Fascinating to see the forms develop on the hook from this list of code. (Meanwhile Keef, poor thing, was up to his ears in Java Script or some such.)

I'm going to have a go at a pansy and a briar rose today. If I can keep my tension loose enough on the 2.5mm hook, with finer yarn, I'm going to try crochet cotton next - even thinner, and no stretch, so quite a challenge for me, but I want the sheen and delicacy of cotton for flowers. Poppies. Love 'em.

This morning I took a couple of old pairs of jeans and replaced the perished upholstery on a folding chair that I found when we moved in. Denim's so strong, and jeans only ever get worn out at the crotch and hems, so it was a cheap and cheerful exercise. I'd love to call the result shabby chic, except that shabby chic doesn't do a thing for me. Let's call it cack-handed kitsch. (Keef's been very restrained.)

But it'll do for this summer, and now I know what I'm doing, I'm going to check out the end of season sale at muy chichi Tejidos Julián López on Gran Vía for some fab deckchair canvas, and do it over again for next year - together with this 18€ folding chair with drinks holder, book pocket and canopy that I bought from my favourite Chinese bazaar for supervising kids at the pool in July.

Stylish, or what?

Breathing space

Back in 2004, my very dear friend Karamah gave me Carol Phillipson's Cross-stitch Designs from India for my birthday. This is a delicious book, full of patterns derived from Indian textiles, metalwork, leatherwork and architecture, from art, and even from travelling theatre.

No, I haven't made anything from it yet, but since we moved into our new flat, which has space to do stuff, space to store stuff on shelves rather than in stacked boxes, space to pull out books and materials, spread out, and not have to put everything away again before you can eat / sleep / scratch your nose, space - space - spaaaaaaaaaaace!!!!!! - wheeeeeeee!!!!! (Did I mention that in our new flat, we've got space?) life is so much more enjoyable. Nesting again.

Mostly, since the first phase of sorting out where things go and resuming old life in new layout, I've been digging through folders and workboxes; sorting and shelving magazines, books, wools and fabrics; and placing, repotting and re-arranging plants as I get to know our new microclimate. The trees have had to go on the rooftop terrace because we have no balconies here, but the enchanting red-stemmed curly leaved willow is right here in the living room, flanked by honeysuckle tendrils, a tall, blunt spear of rosemary, and a peace lily (Spathyphyllum) which, having survived freak hail, plunging temperatures, and savage emergency cutting back and repotting, is just beginning to unfurl new glossy spring leaves - yay! Another heroic survivor is the Aloe Vera: battered but game, it has put forth an inch-long spire between its two remaining wings. Bless.

Meanwhile, back at the sewing box, I'm getting my hand and eye in again. So rusty. I've been looking at two styles of embroidery from Gujarat: kantha, and abhala, both of which incorporate shisha glass. I loved the fine quality Arab and Indian shisha embroidery I saw in Dubai, and we have two patchwork hangings, a black one made up of yokes and cuffs worked in gold and silver threads, from the abayas worn by Muslim women in the UAE; and the other predominantly red and orange, framed in black, and covered in red, black and green chainstitch. I also have an incredibly heavy cotton skirt covered in abhala work, which I adapted as a beanbag because it is just too heavy to wear - but also very hard-wearing.

Here, we have four wicker dining chairs that need cushions , four 50cm feather cushions that need new covers, and our sons's old bedroom curtains - very faded on one side, but a beautiful cornflower blue on the other. I thought I'd experiment with applique, kantha and abhala, keeping the same colour fabrics and threads throughout, but trying something different on each one. I'm quite pleased with my first cushion cover, which has an appliqued bird adapted from a kantha embroidery pattern in Caroline Crabtree's World Embroidery*, and a vine with leaves worked abhala style, in herringbone stitch, with falls of yellow blossoms in french knots. Hmm. Separately, both vine and bird work, but together, they're out of balance: the exotic bird completely at odds with a vine which owes more to English tea trays than Indian door hangings.The other covers need less gentitility and more verve. And then I'll rework the first one.

By the way, Caroline* has written or collaborated on several books on embroidery and needlework. For some reason, there is no online image of this one book! The aesthetic in Munni Srivastava's Embroidery Techniques from East and West takes a sense of colour and texture combines the colour sense derived from growing up in Benares, in northern India, American or European crazy quilting and, though I found that Carol Phiilipson and the Caroline Crabtree and the two .

However, I have now joined the ranks of the women I used to envy: I have a fabric stash. Sorted by colour groups. On shelves. In a store-room with a light switch and a plug socket, so it may well become a workroom one day. Hally-bloomin-looooooya! My stash is not sophisticated, but it's personal: a mix of dress lengths, remnants, old sheets and cut-up favourite old skirts, shirts and jeans: one benefit of being 50+ is that I know what I like, and have done for a long time, so everything I've got stashed pleases my eye and goes with almost everything else. Also, when it comes to re-using old favourites, almost everything is cotton and colourfast, so I can mix anything I like,and know that it will wash: worn denims, sequinned translucent kurtas, fancy dress satins, prints and nets, faded velvet curtains, my hot pinks, yellows and oranges, Keefie's soft blues, greys and greens: past and future stacked up.

Home life.

Etsy

I keep coming across craftspeople who sell their work on Etsy. I can do Amazon, but get very nervous about Ebay, and have never tried it. And Etsy? No clue. Pie in the sky.

I found this today:

Ahhhhh. Now I get it.

Felt Bird of Happiness

The other night, I wandered onto the website of Tamar Mogendorff. Go see! Inspired by her birdies, I've been playing with felt, and having a wonderful time.
I'm not satisfied with the upturned tail or the pot belly, so of course I'll have to make another one. I enjoyed playing with the position of the black bead and scrap of yellow felt to get not just the position of the eye, but also - unexpectedly - an expression in it (mostly wry resignation this time, which I think is appropriate). And when I was tying off the stitching on the beak, I realised that I could also retract the beak slightly - basic needle sculpture. Obviously these things also mean that I need to make another one!


So all good fun, if a world away from the style and originality of Tamar Mogendorff's work, which ranges from the most elegant or funky soft toys, to art with a needle, conveying something essential about the nature of her subjects.

All wonderful!

Oh, and while I'm on the subject of people with actual talent, Habibi's been drawing, but is dissatisfied with the outcome. Apparently he's out of practice, so these are not much good.




Right.........................