Suzann’s Textilefusion

Our Irish Crochet Lovers group over at Ravelry is doing an Irish Crochet Doily Crochet-Along through March. We’re mostly working on different doilies, since we have some beginners and some experts and some in-between.

I chose a plate doily from a 1911 book called Irish Crochet Lace (Revised) by Sara Hadley. You can download it free from Antique Pattern Library.

This project is definitely for confident crocheters. Let’s just say the instructions are not up to the standards of the twenty-first century. Luckily the photos are clear enough that one can count.

It has two rounds of flowers around this center, with sixteen traditional Irish Crochet roses and sixteen flat flowers. It’s the perfect portable project!

My Irish Crochet sample is growing, slowly but surely. I had to redo some sections of the background several times before I was pleased with it. See the pink line in the photo? It shows, more-or-less, the direction of the very simple background mesh I am crocheting between the motifs.

Inside the turquoise circle at the right, you can see how the background isn’t quite level with the corresponding rows elsewhere in the sample. That’s one section I will pull out and redo. Keeping rows even and level will get easier with practice.

One of my favorite tricks is to crochet a good-sized sample of the background stitch. It helps me get used to the stitch pattern for one thing. Also, I can use the sample to help me visualize how the ground will meet the motifs.

Here’s a photo of the background sample lying on top of the actual piece. In the pink circle the sample lines up with the background I have already crocheted. In the turquoise circle, you can see how the stitches might meet up with the flower motif. I will use this as a guide to help me place the stitches when I get to that point.

Speaking of Irish Crochet, I have been working on some class proposals for the Knit and Crochet Show in July 2010. One of the classes is about Irish Crochet. Wish me luck!

We usually pass through Mora, New Mexico, very early in the morning on our way home from the Taos Wool Festival. For the first time this year, I drove through Mora at exactly the right time to visit the tantalizing Tapetes de Lana (Carpets of Wool) gallery.

The walls of this large gallery are lined with hand-woven rugs, looms stand along one of the room, and the center is filled with hanks of yarn and handcrafts made by people who live around Mora.

Most of the rugs are woven in the subtle colors of natural wools and naturally-dyed wools. They looked timeless and elegant, but I was drawn to a rug in stripes of bright red, forest green, and yellow. The lady who was minding the gallery said with a smile, “That rug is made of acrylic yarn. Some of our ladies still prefer to shop at Walmart for their supplies.” I didn’t mind—sometimes I buy yarn at Walmart, too. And the colors–wow!

The gallery lady was Carla (she didn’t give me her last name), the founder of this non-profit organization. Tapetes de Lana and its associated mill help small ranches to bring their wool, mohair, and alpaca to the market. In addition, local craftsmen can sell their work in the gallery.

Carla offered to show me and two other customers around the mill. It was built within the last few years, from the ground up, with funding from a grant. The mill sometimes buys fiber from small ranches, but it also does custom millwork.

Our tour started just outside the door, where employees skirt the fleeces, picking away the badly soiled or felted areas. Inside we saw mechanical pickers which separate and loosen the fleeces, washing vats, and a tumble dryer that takes its own sweet time, spinning at one half revolution per minute (1/2 rpm).

The carder was at least 20 feet long and 8 feet wide, with multiple drums ranging from very coarse to very fine. It produced ropes of roving, which were fed into the spinning machine. The industrial plying machine was mesmerizing. I could have stood there watching it for a long time.

I think all the equipment in the mill was second-hand. The carder came from the bankruptcy sale of a well-known mill in North Carolina. Some other equipment was handed down from Brown Sheep Company, after they upgraded their mill in Nebraska. Go to the Tapetes web site to see pictures of this amazing collection.

“You must be very proud to know that you are responsible for all this,” I said to Carla when the tour was over.

“It was exciting at first, but then it turned into a lot of work,” said Carla. She looks forward to a day when it isn’t quite so intense, when everyone doesn’t have to multitask so much.

That day may come soon. Carla and her colleagues are developing a yarn that they hope yarn stores will want to stock. In the meantime, they sell small runs of yarn in the gallery, including special blends like alpaca/merino.

The lure of the shop’s soft alpaca blend yarns was strong, but the natural sheen of this indigo-dyed and natural Cotswold wool yarn was too much for me to resist.

If you’re driving on Highway 518 in New Mexico, I hope you’ll stop by Tapetes de Lana and the Mora Valley Spinning Mill. Or if you would like to buy or retail some unique yarns from fiber produced by small-business ranchers, please contact the Mill at:

Tapetes de Lana and the Mora Valley Spinning Mill
Highway 518, Junction 434
P O Box 1135
Mora, NM 87732

The second day of our Irish Crochet class at the Taos Wool Festival, I waited, seemingly innocently, until everyone left for lunch. Once I was certain they were all gone, I tiptoed around and took pictures of a few of the class samples.

At this point, we had sewn our motifs (made on the first day) to a fabric foundation. Then we bagan crocheting the background that fills in the spaces between the motifs, as well as joining them.

Making Irish Crochet motifs is fun, because they’re so beautiful. Many people, including myself, are not quite so happy about working the crochet background between the motifs. It’s kind of free-form. I usually have to take rows out and re-crochet them several times before I like them.

Luckily, practice makes even the most uncomfortable task easier. Now I just have to finish my own sample. I have a special mantra for times like this: “Begin. Keep going until you’re finished… keep going until you’re finished… No, don’t get up and get a snack… keep going until you’re finished… ”

Stitches Midwest was relaxed and pleasant at the Schaumburg Convention Center. The market was smaller than at other Stitches events, but the yarns and books and tools were just as tempting.

By the time Sunday afternoon rolled around, everyone was tired and suffering from information overload. It was the perfect time for Seveness Knitting—a class where we prepare our pattern by flipping a coin, and then we knit.

Seveness stands for “Suzann’s Sensational Similar Shade Scrap Stripe System,” which uses up scraps of yarn without looking like a scrap project. A former student said, “It’s like you’re creating a luxury fabric.” Well put!

Our Stitches Midwest class did such a great job, I’m thrilled to show you every single swatch they knitted.

Stitches Midwest is next week! My friend Gail Hughes will be there with her wonderful buttons. Please stop by her booth. It’s a feast for the eyes!

This reminds me that I never showed you the final stage of the Red Sweater Renovation. It was the most fun stage, because I got to go through Gail’s buttons and choose the best one for the project. They were all great, with their completely different looks. I especially like the ones with gold sparkles.

I settled on the ones below—they’re not the boldest, but once you notice them camouflaged on the red sweater, you can’t take your eyes off them. Spots are the best!

You may remember Bob from a previous post. Eva crocheted him. Bob was very popular at the local middle school. This year he makes his debut in high school.

Bob travels to band events and goes on other school outings. He sleeps in a drawer in Eva’s room, which is fitting, because she slept in a drawer for several weeks after she was born.

This summer, Bob acquired a family! Here he is with his niece, Bobette. She has thick orange hair, which is swept back into a ponytail.

Eva crocheted her for Ella. While Ella is at school, Bobette sleeps in her backpack. Just having her near helps Ella feel a little less lonely in first grade.

Bobette was Eva’s first foray into the world of crocheting with No. 10 crochet cotton. Now she knows why people love to crochet doilies.

In our part of Texas, people love metal cut-outs to decorate indoors and out. Blanton and Russell Jones, owners of Custom Iron Art, cut designs out of steel in their workshop near De Leon, Texas. We went to see a demonstration of the craft last weekend, and Blanton was kind enough to let me take pictures.

The father and son team work with customers and computers to come up with the perfect design, often combining ready-to-use artwork with images that customers bring in. Russell is the computer expert, scanning, composing, redesigning, and resizing designs until they meet with the customer’s approval.

The result is a computer graphic file that looks like a line drawing. Using specialized software, the Joneses place the design onto a screen that represents a sheet of steel, which is lying on a cutting table a few feet away.

At the press of a button, the laser cutter positions itself to make the first cut. The sparks fly!

A few minutes later, the design is cut. Then the finishing work begins. With a home made tool, Blanton knocks steel bits out of all the holes in the design.

The laser cutter leaves irregular lines of slag, which Blanton breaks off with his tool.

He smooths the edges with a power polisher and touches it up by hand. Often, Blanton paints the finished cut-outs black to prevent rusting. We liked the plain steel finish of our hummingbird, and knowing that it will soon have a patina of rust on it, we proclaimed it finished.

You can find more of the Jones’s work at their website: http://www.ciaoftexas.com. Or drop by and see them, on your way through Texas—but call first!

I’m posting on the advice of the famed Knit Doctor, Karen Frisa, who is available for consultation at all Stitches events. For me this means two blog posts in three days. I hope she has a remedy for a pulled blog muscle!

At the end of the last post, the knitted churro rug was in the washer. Its fate was unknown. Would it turn out well? Or would all that knitting have been in vain?

And now…read on for the exciting conclusion to our story.

After the first washing, the rug looked good, but it wasn’t felted enough. Back into the washer it went, this time with a bunch of dark towels. I set the water temperature on hot wash/cold rinse instead of hot/hot, because the hot-cold contrast is supposed to shock wool fibers into felting better. I forgot about that the first time around.

The washer finally spun to a stop. The lid took ages to unlock. I pulled out all the towels, trying to avoid looking at the rug. Only when the towels were hung out in the heat of the day, did I go back for the rug.

The wool felted even better during the second washing. Just about perfect! And I discovered a new rule about felting things in the washing machine:

Never wash your felt project with a new, pink beach towel.

I laid the rug on top of a big towel, on the floor. I straightened the edges and the stripes, and then spent about an hour picking pink lint off of it. The pink pills are still surfacing. Maybe they’ll all be gone by the time October rolls around.

It looks great. I’m very, very happy with it.

Borders are just amazing! With its mitered border and lovely corded trim, my churro rug looks very, very handsome. Yes, that’s the best word for it. Handsome.

Ella wrapped the finished rug around her waist, struck a pose, and said, “Mom, you need to knit me a dress with that same pattern.” In softer yarn, it would be a perfect lap blanket.

But now we enter the great unknown. It’s time to felt the rug. As I write, hot water is filling the washing machine, where my rug is sandwiched between a brown towel and some dark sheets. I learned my lesson when felting the swatch:

Never felt dark colors with white laundry!

There were white pills all over the surface of the felt, which took ages to pick off. Luckily, with the addition of a little vinegar to the wash, color bleeding wasn’t a problem.

So in a half-hour or so, we’ll know the truth. Did the rug felt well? Stay tuned.