Suzann’s Textilefusion

Oh. My. Gosh. These last few months have been very busy for me! Our earthen house-building project has become intensely busy, and I think we will be able to move in by summer. And I’m writing another book.

With all this activity, some of my projects are sliding, and unfortunately, one of them is writing for my blogs. I hope to be posting more frequently and regularly by the beginning of June.

In the meantime, please have a look at this photo album with pictures of our progress on the house: http://tinyurl.com/earthen-house.

My college-bound daughter Eva photographed the heart-shaped cow hoof-prints in the snow. My fourth-grade daughter Ella made the lovely yarn, button, and pompom Valentine’s Day bag. The flowery heart belongs to my Mom. A young man in her home village of Sorg, Germany, made many of these little sweetnesses, and gave her one.

“Look Eva,” I said to my daughter. “This is for my Picot class at the Knit & Crochet Show.”

I pronounced it “PEEK-oh.”

She said, “Awww!” in that adorable teenage way that I have tried to copy, but can’t.

“See all the picots?” I said. “It’s picot…, um, picot…?”

“Picot-MANIA!” Eva said.

It seemed a great name for this trim: Picot-Mania Trim. It looks really elegant around the lower edge of a lampshade. Hmmm. I see a home décor project in my future.

Where can a person find a pattern for Picot-Mania Trim? For the moment, it’s only available to the wonderful crocheters who signed up for my Picot-Rama class at the Knit & Crochet Show in Reno next month.

There’s still time to sign up! More information here:
http://www.knitandcrochetshow.com/

What in the world can a person do with bunches of buttons?

My friend Sonja, who owns the “Two Olde Yoyos” shop on Etsy, knows! She made this wreath wall hanging in the penny-rug style, then added hand-made polymer clay buttons (by me!).

It is so pretty, I bought one for myself. At the moment I write this, there’s one more penny wreath wall hanging at Sonia’s Etsy shop. She also has lots of mini-quilts and more, at very reasonable prices.

“But wait,” you may be saying, “How can I get hold of some hand-made polymer clay buttons?”

You can make some! In fact, there’ still time to sign up for my polymer clay button workshops at The Knit & Crochet Show next month in Reno, Nevada. For more information, please visit this site: http://www.knitandcrochetshow.com/

With the TNNA show behind us, my daughter Eva and I had a day for shopping in Columbus, Ohio. We went to the famed Short North Arts District on High Street, where the shopping was quirky and fun.

We traipsed into gift stores, fashion stores, and antique stores. One store window had a pretty plate with Turkish-style motifs. Oh. My. Gosh. It was an entire store of Turkish handcrafts! I love Turkish handcrafts!

Judging from some Turkish ceramic ware I have seen online, I thought I would never be able to afford Turkey’s traditional blue, red, green, and black motifs on white china. But at Karavan Treasures from Turkey, we found hand-painted Turkish bowls for a very reasonable price.

“These are çok güzel!” I said to the owner of the store. That means “very beautiful.”

We got to talking and I told him I was interested in the needlecrafts of Turkey, especially crochet. He knew exactly what I was talking about.

“Most people,” he said, “don’t know what goes into a crocheted piece. They don’t understand the time it takes to make.”

“Well, I understand,” I said.

He showed me this necklace with crocheted flowers. “A school-teacher made it,” he said. It look great with my denim top that is embroidered with pink roses.

The other necklace, made by a lady in a village (I don’t know which), is needle-lace, made with thread and a needle with an eye. The little knots are tied over and over to create the two- and three-dimensional flowers. The colors and patterns are bright and happy.

* *

Obviously, I need to go to TNNA again next year, not only for the yarny fun, but also so I can eat at the fabulous restaurants in Germantown and shop at Karavan Treasures. See Karavan Treasures’s website: http://www.karavancolumbus.com/

Sparkling, thick-thin, and furry yarns offered a very optimistic view of the yarn industry at The National Needlework Association Summer Trade Show in Columbus, Ohio, last month.

The look of yarns goes in cycles, like all fashion-related products. We’ve gone to the conservative side in yarn design for the last few years. Time for a change! While manufacturers still offered basic yarns in brilliant new colors, I was happy to see crazy-fun novelty yarns, as well.

TNNA has a “Great Wall of Yarn,” with samples of new yarns from many manufacturers. I had already taped a bunch of samples in my notebook, when I saw the thoughtfully prepared yarn-sample books provided for participants. Next time I’ll know to look for those first!

You can probably tell from my sample choices which yarns I like best—SPARKLY!

This t-shirt yarn at right is very cute with its little black stripe. I love matte sequins. They add a subtle sparkle to this lavender yarn.

Zen Yarn Garden’s yarns, above, were deliciously saturated with color. This picture doesn’t do the yarn colors justice. The orangey-red one is “Blood Orange” Serenity Silk Single. It has incredible depth and color, all in a slender yarn!

Skacel’s Luxair is a bulky, fuzzy, sparkly yarn that would knit up fast on large needles. I can imagine a fabulous muffler in this yarn.

Walking around the booths and displays at TNNA made me think how FUN it would be to knit these great new yarns!

Yarn shop owners, yarn manufacturers, and needlework professionals are getting pretty excited about The National Needlework Association Summer Trade Show, this coming weekend in Columbus, Ohio.

Dale of Norway Yarns is hosting a book-signing for Crochet Garden, at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, June 23. We’ll have a limited number of books to give away. And you can see this pretty Trillium Flower Cloth Scarf up-close and personal.

If you’d like to read more about TNNA’s show and find links to the organization, please visit my other blog.

Hope to see you there!

In the days of my youth, I heard actual people say in all seriousness, “It’s too hot in Texas to knit.” It’s true—that they said that, I mean.

I didn’t understand at the time how it could be too hot to knit. Now, at a much advanced age, I still don’t get it!

One might assume it was too hot and humid to knit in Florida as well, but the knitters of Tallahassee obviously don’t think so, because Tallahassee supports three yarn shops!

Charles and I visited the lovely, green, tree-ful city of Tallahassee in May, when the white crape myrtles and jasmine were in bloom. While he attended an archeology conference, I went yarn shop hopping.

Yarn Therapy was my first stop, where Marianne (she’s in the photo) gave me a quick tour of her great sock yarns. She has several brands, including some that are custom-dyed for the shop. I had to buy Pagewood Farm Denali Hand Dyed Sock Yarn in the Watermelon colorway for some socks for myself. I love those colors together.

I managed to slip in a mention of my crochet books. Marianne and Heather wanted to see them, and I happened (!) to have some copies in the car. We took pictures, and they posted the photos on the internet right away. Technology can be so much fun.

After a delicious Thai lunch, I went to the Railroad District for more yarn shopping at Really Knit Stuff. Paula gave me a big Texas greeting when I walked in. She’s from Texas, but hasn’t lived there in a while. I can see why she wanted to settle in Tallahassee. I loved her hairstyle, which was a long braid with yarn as one third of the braid.

She stocked Classic Elite Yarns Liberty Wool, a long-repeat variegated yarn. She cleverly provided knitted-up samples, so customers could see the range of colors in a skein. I left with some Liberty Wool to make a flower-cloth scarf of Russian Picot Daisies from Crochet Garden. Here’s the beginning of it.

The Railroad District has quirky and colorful shops and workshops, including the flower building above. Outside the bookstore there, I saw evidence of Tallahassee’s hospitality for dogs. Our hotel had a similar spread.

Tallahassee looks small from the air, because the many trees hide the buildings. It’s a good place. I would visit again.

When someone mentions the name “Interweave,” I think of fine publications about fiber and textiles.

It’s a prestigious name!

So you can imagine how very excited I am to be teaching for Interweave Knitting Lab New England, October 4-7, 2012 in Manchester, NH!

I’m leading several workshops that are full of information. Workshop participants will see lots of samples and practice the techniques as well.

• Color, Texture, and Structure with the Elusive Slip Stitch (all day, October 4)
• Color Composure (all day, October 5)
• Knit Mosaic Patterns and Chart Your Own (morning, October 6)
• Seamless Argyles in the Round (afternoon, October 6)

I’m also giving a talk, illustrated with a colorful slide show, that shows how “TextileFusion” began and has developed over the last nearly 20 years:

• TextileFusion: A Knitting of Art (evening, October 4)

For more information, please visit Interweave Knitting Lab New England at http://www.cvent.com/d/7cqpz4. I hope to see you there!

On Tuesday evening, at the girls’ piano lesson, I sewed the last button onto my Quilting Ladies’ Group Valentine’s Day Quilt. I tried to sew more buttons on, but when I put them tentatively on the quilt, the quilt said, “Enough already!” Usually, I can find a place to tuck in one more, but all my attempts were rejected.

So it was finished! Yay!

This quilt combines old and new and bits and pieces that will remind me of friends and fun times. Like this pretty quilted heart will always make me think of Peggy.

The yellowy flower is a Twirl Center Rose from Crochet Garden.

These yellow and white applique daisies are from my mother-in-law’s sewing collection. She was a lovely lady named Mary Eugenia Frederick. She went by ‘Gene,” but we thought Eugenia was a beautiful middle name for our younger daughter.

Rachel made the fabric flower with the red center. Our older daughters like to go adventuring together and talk about music. Gail Hughes made the green buttons that serve as leaves for Rachel’s flower.

Three pink heart buttons from Hazel are surrounded by flowers from Crochet Garden: Begonia (lower left), Turkestani Star with a button from Gail Hughes, and Any Color Pinks at the upper right.

For Donna’s quilt, she asked us each to sign a piece of fabric, which she incorporated in to her quilt. The spool charm is from Donna.

This heart, cut out of an antique quilt, is from Mindy. Both green buttons and the crystal topped button on the heart are by Gail Hughes. Hazel’s buttons are the red heart-shaped ones hidden next to the big heart.

This quilt is full of love!

Polymer clay buttons are so much fun to make! They’re colorful and pretty. They’re machine-washable and dryable. Button-lover that I am, I have enjoyed making these little beauties since the 1980s. The buttons started accumulating. How could I display all those buttons? A button cloth!

Since there were so many colors of buttons, I needed a colorful button cloth. Borrowing a color-meandering technique from quilter Jinny Beyer, I arranged the hues of the rainbow in different shades and tints.

Using the wonderful Ultimate Sweater Machine and yarns from my collection, I knitted blocks of color, alternating with cream and white, and with black and gray at the beginning and end of each strip. I used the join-as-you-knit method to add new strips of color blocks.

After blocking the knitting, I added quilt batting and fabric backing. Then I quilted it and added binding all around.

Now to sew buttons onto the cloth! It took a long time to work through my backlog of buttons. After that, whenever I made a new button style or color-way, I sewed a sample onto the cloth right away.

It’s such a fun piece to show. I always take it to my button workshops. People are surprised to learn that all the colors are the colors of the clay—no paint!