A Bluestocking Knits

Counted Stitch, Crochet, Gardening, Sewing

“But in the Leape You Must Add One”

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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

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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

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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

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Bluestocking

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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

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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 …
Blankets, Throws, and Afghans, Crochet

Granny Square Sampler Afghan: Week 6

Published by

Bluestocking

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1st February 2020

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.)
Blankets, Throws, and Afghans, Crochet, Knitting for the Home

More Squares, and an Oval

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Bluestocking

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31st January 2020

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!
Blankets, Throws, and Afghans, Crochet, Travel

Granny Square Sampler Afghan, Week 2

Published by

Bluestocking

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21st January 2020

Part of the appeal of this sampler project is that working it a few pieces at a time, squares can be finished in an hour, and I did mine in odd moments here and there. Week 2 asks for the traditional granny square again but this time with only three rounds — the smallness of the square means that you can make quite a lot of them fairly quickly, and the request is for "10-14 squares" with the proviso that if you've chosen a ground color — the cream Paton's Classic, in my case — at least four of the squares use that color as the third round.

(So glad I decided to finish and block the squares as I go!)

I made the last batch and wove in the ends watching the first two episodes of "Great Canal Journeys" with Timothy West and Prunella Scales. It's not only a lovely travelogue around Britain, of course, but a tender and moving story of a couple celebrating fifty years of marriage by doing something that they love, both of them long-time narrow-boaters, and at the same time coping with Pru's slowly-advancing dementia.
Knitting in the Movies

Knitting in the Movies: “Knives Out”

Published by

Bluestocking

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17th January 2020

I haven't seen "Knives Out" yet, but had to laugh when I read an article in the "New Yorker" this morning about the mania over the Aran sweater worn by Chris Evans as the spoiled grandson of the murder victim.

Then the film’s costume designer, Jenny Eagan, started giving interviews that built up the mythology of the sweater. She said that she could not remember who made the sweater (she vaguely remembers purchasing it, but does not recall if it was new or vintage or one of a kind), and that it was now missing. (Evans claims to have swiped much of his wardrobe from the set.) So far, no manufacturer has piped up to claim the glory. A fashion credit that could have launched a thousand shipping boxes is now lost to the ether, which has also allowed every knitwear retailer on earth to pounce on the demand. If you Google “Knives Out sweater,” dozens of shopping results pop up. There’s this one, from Orvis (now sold out!); or this one, from Huckberry; or this one, from the Irish Store; or this one, from the Aran Sweater Market. Really, any bulky garment the tint of Taleggio cheese could be the One True Sweater.

Well, it's interesting the way that Eagan has used her costumes to comment on each of the characters in the movie (I'm sure anyone reading this will notice the holes in the Aran almost immediately!), and pleasing to me to hear that Arans are "in" again — but really, people, you don't have to go crazy trying to buy one! You could learn to knit!

Of course, it might be just as much the way he wears the sweater as the sweater he's wearing —