A Bluestocking Knits

Art, Knitting and Reading in Art

“Alexander Carse with his Mother and Sister”

Published by

Bluestocking

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20th March 2020

Alexander Carse (c.1770–1843), "Self-Portrait with Two Women (Presumed to be the Artist's Mother and Sister)" (1795), National Galleries of Scotland, Scottish National Portrait Gallery.

I received a postcard yesterday that was the cover of the Penguin edition of Persuasion, with a detail of a very Austenian painting which the caption informed me was Alexander Carse's "The Visit of the Country Relations". Little seems to be known about this earlyish Scottish genre painter, whose Wikipedia article is a decent length but manages to say not very much except a few details such as that he may have painted the earliest-known depictions of football (!) and that the "Country Relations" painting is regarded as his best work.

It is like a little novel in itself, so I'm very interested to see it in better detail and in color. Curiously for it being regarded as his best work, I can find only one single black-and-white image of it, with no indication of its whereabouts — but I did appreciate finding another painting of someone reading, so I will have to be satisfied with that for the time being!
Miniature Needlework, Miniatures – Street of Shops

Beginning a Miniature Kurdistan Prayer Rug

Published by

Bluestocking

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18th March 2020

In the interests of not overdoing any one craft for the next few months — the recent episode of repetitive-stress strain took me by surprise, I must admit — I'm giving myself a free pass on multiple projects while we're homebound. We are all still well, but I'm sure that not being bored will help at least a little with not getting on each other's nerves!

Emily's Mudjar carpet from Frank Cooper's book — Oriental Carpets in Miniature — drew me back to my shortlist of Cooper's charts, and realizing that I have only a smallish piece of gauze left, I decided on the Kurdistan prayer rug. Here is the original of Cooper's miniature, from the late 18th-early 19th century, in the McMullan Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (accession no.1970.302.8) —

The Met writes, "This tapestry-woven prayer rug is an example of the fine production of Sanandaj, a center in the province of Kurdistan in northwestern Iran. The tapestry technique (kilim) makes it lighter and more fragile than a knotted pile rug, and such objects were often used as decorative wall hangings. The change of colors in the densely patterned rows of flowers enlivens the otherwise simple composition of an arched mihrab, or prayer niche, filled with flowers within and outside the niche."

The original rug is 64 1/2 in. long by 48 1/4 in. long (163.8 x 122.5cm), so that working it on 40-count gauze will come pretty close, at 5.5 x 4 in. (14 x 10cm), to 1:12 scale. I actually like Cooper's colors better, so in addition to thinking that he did an admirable job of scaling down the design, I'm happy with his choices of colors, as well! My translation of Cooper's Paternayan wool colors into DMC floss went a little further in the direction of cool dark blues and garnet than the warmer buff and orange-reds of the original, but that's okay too. This one has been high on my list since I got the book some years ago, so I'm looking forward to it!
Counted Stitch, Gardening, Miniatures, Quilting

Hunkering Down

Published by

Bluestocking

on

15th March 2020

“So it turns out now is a good time to spend more time at home. On the bright side, that means nobody will judge you for canceling plans and spending all day at your sewing machine! And there’s nothing like creative thoughts, beautiful things, and busy hands to bring peace to the stresses of life” — From the Missouri Star Quilt Co. newsletter for 14 March 2020

I liked this quote, its calm lightheartedness and sensibility in these trying days of uncertainty and sometimes panic. It had already occurred to me that if we were required or even decided to hole up at home for a few weeks, or even a month, we might run out of milk or toilet paper but I would have quite enough things to keep me from being bored! If nothing else, I've been steadily acquiring books faster than I can read them, so there is always a stack at hand.

I was going to do a quilting of criss-crossed diagonals on the New Boro quilt, but I stopped after one pass, and only partly because it was such a pain wrestling the thing into my sewing machine — I rather like the single diagonals against the strong horizontals and verticals of the stacks. I am also pretty happy with the piecing on the back, its unstudied air. The binding is purchased, I admit, and is more sapphire than navy blue, I would have said, but isn't usually as bright as it looks in the photo, and it was, frankly, easier at this point than making my own. I've got it all sewn on and am about a third of the way along in tacking it down on the back by hand.

I went to an estate sale of a member of a nearby miniatures group last week. Estate sales are always bittersweet — sometimes you can find really wonderful things, but of course it's sad to think of going through someone's belongings after they've died. More than one of the folks there was heard to murmur, "This will be what happens to my things after I'm gone." I hope the lady would have been glad to know that, for one, this charmer will be loved by me —

not to mention the miniature Martha Washington cabinet just like my grandmother's full-sized one that I still have and use. The seller's label on the doll says "Kewpie with flowers" but it's nothing like a Kewpie except in her little-girl tummy, so if anyone knows her maker I'd be very grateful to hear. Her clothes appear to be stuck on pretty firmly, so I can't tell if there's a name underneath. She has the look of some of the Hertwig Limbach dolls, to my untrained eye.

I put together this kit for a toy train by Gary Handschug of Magic Touch Miniatures — maybe this was a souvenir at some NAME house-party, as it was clearly meant to be completely assembled by the purchaser, but everything was already glued together except the dividers and the silk-ribbon hinge on the box, with a note on the instructions saying that he'd already done the assembly. All I had to do was sand it and paint.

The cars don't actually link together, but the illusion is certainly there at this tiny scale, so I'm quite charmed regardless. I roughed it up a bit to make it look like it has been played with!

Tomato seedlings getting a bit bigger indoors before I put them into the ground.

And of course there's my Granny Square Sampler afghan still waiting. I have to finish it this year, I've already made a date block! —

It is a glorious day today after quite a lot of rain — very welcome rain, mind you!

The wider photos don't convey the vivid blue-purples of the arroyo lupines and the orange of the poppies!

Stay well, be nice! We are all in this together!
About the Bluestocking, Counted Stitch

The Librarian and the Ligature

Published by

Bluestocking

on

8th March 2020

One of the things that appealed to me about the "Peace to My Friend" sampler is the beautiful old-fashioned alphabet with its unusual inclusion of a selection of ligatures, something that is rarely seen in samplers, old or new. As I approached it, though — working as I am from the top downwards — I thought, "Now, why aren't those ligatures in alphabetical order, I wonder."

And of course, the closer I got to them, the more I wondered until, princess-and-the-pea-like, I realized that I would find it that tiny bit niggling forever — and more importantly, my friend would too, being of a similar turn of mind. And looking at the chart, I began to see other little details that puzzled me — the missing dot of the i in the long-s-plus-i combination, the lack altogether of a bar of any size on two of the ligatures …

Now, I am not as learned as it might sound from this, but I do know where to at least start researching, and in this case I chose Wikipedia, the article on ligatures. Much of this article was lost on me, truth be told, but much I appreciated very much. Isn't this a thing of beauty?! —

Ligature "Th" in handwriting font Taumfel, illustration by Nikolai Sirotkin on Wikipedia

Ordinarily, the lower-case h would have a loop for its ascender in this cursive-like font, but that looks a bit clumsy coming right after a capital T, so it has been adjusted to have a single-stroke ascender, with the addition of that delicate turn at the top that is like the difference between John Curry and, oh, even a second-place skater, really.
Ligatures "Wh" and "Th" in handwriting font Taumfel by Nikolai Sirotkin on Wikipedia

Not long after this, I also opened up a window with the article on the long s, and decided that, although I am told that the long-s is found with its "nub" or without, it seemed to me that consistency was called for in a single document, and I should choose one or the other. Since it had already been established in the lower-case alphabet that the long-s has its nub, I went with that rather than have to go back and pick out the earlier instance (!). (Further research seems to indicate that the barless long-s is in fact the italic version, so would presumably appear in its barless or uncrossed form only in an italic font….)

I was concerned that the descender of the lower-case j in the line above would be obscured by the numerous ascenders in the line below, but as it happened, it all went together quite smoothly and the sometimes-impulsive changes that I made gave it a nearly-perfect amount of space to be enjoyed and appreciated for the small-but-graceful detail it is. I changed my mind as I stitched, and re-inserted the space in the ff ligature as the white space wasn't as glaring as I thought it would be, after all, and that after some more research I made the crossbar in the fi ligature connect all of the way across as it should do, and does in the original ffi ligature.

For further amusement, should you desire it, may I recommend "An Excellent Original Project Designed to Reduce Ignorance of the Long S" and, in case somehow you should think that librarians don't have a sense of humor, "fociety for the Reftoration of the Long f" ….
Counted Stitch, Crochet, Gardening, Sewing

“But in the Leape You Must Add One”

Published by

Bluestocking

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29th February 2020

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 —
Crochet, Gardening, Quilting

First Colors of Spring

Published by

Bluestocking

on

21st February 2020

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.
Quilting

And Now For Something Completely Different —

Published by

Bluestocking

on

8th February 2020

Now — the new Boro quilt, which has been sitting on my sewing machine while I crocheted! I have finished sewing together the top, this one using coffee-brown Kona Cotton for sashing and edging. I ended up with five strips left, after making two quilt tops, all of which strips are that light tan but a few different designs — I'm not sure now why I didn't just fit one each into the five "stacks" in this second quilt but there it is. I also have the three full fat quarters that were already "patched", which seemed to me might look more muddled than anything else if cut into narrowish strips, so I think I will piece together some irregular strips for the back, incorporating the five tan strips and the three fat quarters …
Blankets, Throws, and Afghans, Crochet

Granny Square Afghan, Week 14

Published by

Bluestocking

on

7th February 2020

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?!
Blankets, Throws, and Afghans, Crochet

Grannies Go Off-Piste

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Bluestocking

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6th February 2020

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.
Blankets, Throws, and Afghans, Counted Stitch, Crochet

The Flowering of the Grannies

Published by

Bluestocking

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4th February 2020

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 …