Radio Knitting 1
Audiobooks and classic radio shows, especially detective shows, are a favorite way to occupy my mind while my hands crochet, knit, darn in ends—you get the idea. Most of the radio shows on SiriusXM Classic Radio originally aired between the 1930s and 1960s, though there are outliers. You might be pleasantly surprised how often those shows refer to knitting and crochet.
I was darning in ends on last year’s Halloween projects, when the April 12, 1950 episode of Richard Diamond, Private Detective aired on Radio Classics (SiriusXM). The story opened with Richard Diamond waiting for clients—please, any clients—to show up at his office. His girlfriend Helen phones up. She calls him Dick.
They chat, and Dick says, “Remember when you said I ought to take up something to keep me busy in the office?”
Helen remembers, and he continues, “…you remember you mentioned knitting?”
She says, “Oh no!” You can tell she’s amused.
“Oh yes,” he says, “I’ve dropped more stitches than a cross-eyed surgeon.”
Helen is laughing by this time, and tells him she was only fooling about him learning to knit.
“Don’t laugh. I was making Francis a pair of screaming argyles,” he says. Francis is Helen’s butler.
“Keep with it, Strongheart,” she says. “You’ll win out.”
“You’re darn right I will. Oh…what I just said—’darn.’ Get it?” Dick says.
Helen got it, but didn’t think it was that funny. They make plans for the evening and hang up.
Dick gets back to his knitting, and like many knitters, talks to himself about it: “Now let’s see. I gotta take out one, two, three…five rows!”
Police lieutenant Walter Levinson calls. He’s a former colleague of Dick’s. Walt calls him Diamond. And that leads me to wonder if argyles were a sneaky reference to the name Diamond…get it? (Yes, of course you do, and I know I know, it wasn’t that funny. 🙂 ) Anyway, the powers that be told Walt he had better find the perpetrator of a string of murders or his job will be in jeopardy. He is not happy.
“You should see me!” says Diamond. “I’ve gotta take out five whole rows just to pick up one lousy stitch!”
Too bad Mr. Diamond didn’t know how to knit seamless argyles! Oh well, my seamless argyle workshop (now retired) and I were not even born yet. Here are some pics of student work from that workshop.
But Walt urgently needs his help, so Diamond agrees to come to the police station, “I’ll be down as soon as I finish this heel. If you must know, I’ve taken up knitting.”
Walt scoffs, and Diamond jokingly warns that Walt might rethink his remarks when the weather turns cold and he needs some handknitted socks or sweaters.
The case proceeds and is solved without further mention of knitting. Late that night, when Diamond shows up at Helen’s apartment, she counts as she laboriously stitches “knit one, purl two.” She is making him a gift.
The episode ends as usual with a song or two. Diamond starts with “There’s an Old Spinning Wheel in the Parlor.” Helen objects. He goes on to less sentimental songs, and finally to a little smooching.
The April 12, 1950 episode of Richard Diamond, Private Detective
was titled “The Butcher Killer.” The song “The Old Spinning Wheel” was composed by Billy Hall and published in 1933. You can find recordings and sheet music for the song online. ALERT—the song mentions a song by Stephen Foster about an old man named Joe.
And Justice for All
Most of us who grew up in the US have pledged our allegiance to the flag of the United States of America hundreds of times. We pledge our allegiance to the flag of a nation with liberty and justice for all.
That means liberty and justice are not exclusively for the people we like best, but for everybody else in the United States as well.
So let’s honor our pledge by voting for candidates who will protect liberty and justice for all, because we have pledged our allegiance to that concept over and over again.
All means all.
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A filet crochet panel featuring the Liberty Bell and the dates 1776 and 1918 inspired this quilt, And Justice for All. I crocheted the “AND BEYOND” piece.
I peeked into a possible future, where the United States has 52 states. How would the 52 stars be arranged on the blue background on the U. S. flag? The arrangement of our current fifty stars is lines of very cleverly-spaced stars: 6 + 5 + 6 + 5 + 6 + 5 + 6 + 5 + 6 = 50.
What would a flag designer come up with for 52 stars? Hmm. Fifty-two equals 4 times 13, so I looked no further than the Great Seal of the United States, with its star made up of 13 smaller stars. The 13 stars and other items on the Great Seal refer to the 13 original colonies. I went with that design.
Normally I use buttons in a row or in other ways that don’t have to be precise. What to do? Make a template! I don’t remember whether I used Adobe Photoshop® or if I drew it with a ruler. Anyway, I punched a hole for each star, arranged the punched template on the quilt, and used chalk to mark the button locations. Luckily the chalk marks lasted until the last button was sewn in place, and possibly beyond, but at this point whatever chalk marks may remain are hidden under the buttons.
I tried to represent ALL people, or at least as many as possible, through my choice of colors.
And Justice for All was finished in 2023. Techniques used were patchwork, quilting, crochet, and embellishment. Materials used were cotton fabric and thread and buttons.
For more information on the Great Seal of the United States, visit The Great Seal at the National Museum of American Diplomacy website.
Available Immediately: Home for Heinzelmann Family
Years before we built our earthen house, we bought a carved stone alcove in anticipation. We eventually embedded it in the northeast corner of the living room, where it waited even more years for the next thing to happen.
The next thing was to furnish the alcove for a Heinzelmann. Heinzelmännchen (that’s more than one Heinzelmann) are German elves or spirits that come in at night to finish the chores that don’t get done during the day. They are mostly associated with the city of Cologne (Köln), where the townspeople messed up and lost their Heinzelmännchen forever.
In hopes of welcoming a Heinzelmann family to our home, I furnished the alcove with a crocheted rug, two pillows, and a basket with a light blanket.
The light blanket seemed too thin for winter, so I knitted a garter stitch blanket with the thinnest needles and finest wool in my collection. It was handspun, but not by me.
Spring rolled around. The woolen blanket was stored away, and we added a potted plant constructed with a wooden hot sauce lid and a rolled up green leafy decoration from a sushi meal. For winter, we brought the blanket out again and exchanged the plant for a china vase.
No evidence suggests that our cozy alcove has attracted a Heinzelmann family to our house. Yet.
Read a story about Heinzelmännchen, with sweet pictures, at German Girl in America.
The rug, pillows, and basket were crocheted with No. 10 crochet cotton.
Snowflakes Create Avalanches
Early voting for the 2026 midterm election started yesterday in Texas and quite a few more states. Charles and I voted this morning. My fellow U. S. Citizens, have you voted yet? If so—yay! If not, look up where your polling place is and when it is open, decide when you are going to vote, and do it.
But you might worry that your vote won’t matter. Well, of course it matters!
In rural Texas, a candidate can be elected to office by a one-vote margin. Let’s say seven people vote in a two-candidate race for a position on the local schoolboard. When one candidate gets four votes, that candidate wins—by one vote. It happens. Never assume your vote doesn’t matter, even if you don’t live in rural Texas.
When a candidate wins by a great majority, we traditionally refer to that win as a “landslide.” In the late 2010s, “snowflake” was a name used to describe people who cared about our beautiful Earth, and about the health and rights of others. Poor snowflakes—so delicate, so liable to melt in the slightest puff of breath.
But when enough snowflakes move together, they create avalanches. An avalanche is like a landslide, only it is made of snow instead of mud. That is what this quilt, Snowflakes Create Avalanches, is about.
The crocheted snowflakes in this piece were made by my mother, Anna Wirth Thompson, by me, and by unknown crocheters.
Snowflakes Create Avalanches was finished in 2019. Techniques used were patchwork, quilting, crochet, and embellishment. Materials used were cotton fabric and thread, buttons, and beads.
Halloween Crochet
Two of my friends love Halloween.
It wouldn’t be going too far out on a limb to claim that Alissa has more Halloween decorations than decorations for Christmas. She is fond of the skeleton aesthetic. During COVID times, my daughters stayed in her house for a short vacation. They were surprised to find a skeleton in the kitchen, reaching out to open the fridge.
My friend Peggy likes witches. She pieced together and embellished a collection of stunning Halloween-themed quilts featuring witches. When I say she pieced together a collection of quilts, I mean she got out fabric, cut it up, and pieced it back together to form quilt tops.
Last year I crocheted a Halloween gift for each of them. The skeleton doily is “Postmortem” by Ann Wanamaker. It’s so gruesome and surprisingly delicate-looking, I couldn’t stop with just one. Now we have a Postmortem doily at our house, too. Ann has lots of skull and skeleton crochet designs, which you can see on her designer page on Ravelry.
The witch is from the pattern “Ms. Mum Crinoline Girl Doily” by Cylinda Mathews. Cylinda designed a different crinoline lady for each month of the year. I changed the colors and altered the Ms. Mum pattern here and there to fit my vision of a crinoline-style witch.
Both doilies were fun to make, especially because I knew Alissa and Peggy would appreciate them. Postmortem arrived at Alissa’s in time to be displayed during a tour of homes. The witchy Crinoline Girl features in the newest addition to Peggy’s witchy quilt collection. Its title is History Repeated, pieced and embellished by Peggy DeLaVergne, quilted by Claire McConn.
Last Year at This Time: Flowery Crocheted Bookmarks
About one year ago, I did the last bit of admin work (sending an invoice) for Quarto Publishers, who published a little book of eleven of my crocheted flower bookmarks as part of a crochet kit called Crochet Botanical Bookmarks.
The time between contract and deadline was short, so I ignored all other projects to design and crochet bookmarks for about three whirlwind weeks. Aside from the actual designs and written patterns, I was responsible for providing step-by-step photos. That was actually great, because it gave me an opportunity to re-crochet and re-proofread my patterns.
My editor and I were in touch during the process. She made suggestions, and I adjusted designs accordingly.
I enjoyed the challenge of distilling a flower design into a small size, while keeping it recognizable. Coming up with finial designs was fun, too. They are the little doodads at the end of the stem, opposite of the flower, that keep the bookmark from sliding out of the book. Crocheters can use the suggested finial for each flower, or the finial of their choice.
Once I finished my part of the job, the long wait began. Months later, in the spring of 2026, I saw an ad for Crochet Botanical Bookmarks. So exciting! A few weeks after that, my author copies arrived in the mail. This was the first time I was involved in designing for a kit, so it was even more exciting to open the box. The kit contained five colors of yarn, a crochet hook, a yarn needle, and a book with crochet instructions, step-by-step photos, and more.
Crochet Botanical Bookmarks is available to buy direct from Quarto, and from other fine online or brick-and-mortar retailers.
Celebrate Doilies and Texas Crochet Heritage Exhibits at Rockport
In March and April 2026, Texas Crochet Heritage and Celebrate Doilies were the first exhibits ever in the brand new Aransas County Community Center on N. Live Oak Street in Rockport, Texas. Exciting times!
Jennifer Day of the Rockport Cultural Arts District, along with her talented colleague, Pam, decided to display the panels of Texas Crochet Heritage on table-top easels. The exhibit has forty-five panels in all. Community quilts and family heirlooms from Rockport added color and a touch of home to the exhibits.
Pam spent a great deal of time working out how to display my quilts on wall-panels to their best advantage. “Arranging art exhibits used to be my superpower,” she told me. Pam. It still is your superpower.
On the exhibits’ last day, Sandi Horton and I gave our Crochet Connections presentation. It’s a slide show with music, where we talk about how crochet connects people over time and miles. Some connections seem almost spiritual. There’s one doily story in which I can’t quite decide what is happening. I asked the audience, “What do you call this? Coincidence? Synchronicity? Or what?” A lady in the audience exclaimed, “That was destiny!”
Taking down the exhibit was way quicker than putting it up. So not long after our talk, Sandi and I were on the road with a car full of quilts. We stopped for lunch before heading on to our rendezvous with Sandi’s husband. Then I drove alone for another couple of hours and arrived home before dark.
Very Bright Spots at Ella’s
The year 2020 was like no other in our lives. Many died. Many of the rest of us were lucky (?) enough to stay home to try and avoid catching the COVID virus.
My husband Charles went to work, because completing his geoarchaeological work was considered essential for state and federally-funded projects, like dams and roads, to proceed. Our daughter Eva started a new job in the northeast and worked for about three weeks before employees were sent away from the office to work from home. Our daughter Ella, a junior in high school, was enjoying her spring break, when the school phoned students to announce the break would be extended for another week. Maybe by then, they reasoned, the COVID scare would be over. She and her classmates didn’t return to school in person for the rest of the 2020 and beyond.
At our place, Charles sprinkled poppy seeds in his vegetable garden. They sprouted and bloomed beautifully. Ella and I went out frequently to admire them and take pictures. The poppies were a very bright spot during those dark and stressful times.
One of the poppy photos inspired a TextileFusion wall hanging for Ella. Its title was A Very Bright Spot in 2020. (Ella’s elder sister Eva already had a wall hanging by me, called Fishy Cento.)
A Very Bright Spot in 2020 followed Ella to the university dorm and to a couple of different apartments, to land most recently at a sweet house that she and a friend are sharing. The family got to see Ella’s new place over the weekend. I noticed two very bright spots. First, the wall hanging:
…and second, doilies and more doilies:
I’m very, very happy that my daughters love crochet and knitting!
Doily Heaven in Lampasas
The Trading Post, a good sized antique mall in Lampasas, Texas, has doilies all over the place! It seemed to me like an organized effort by the vendors there, to put their antique and vintage lamps, candlesticks, vases, and china on doilies. It was so pretty!
This checkerboard crochet doily was in, like, the third booth I walked into. “Better take a picture, otherwise there might not be enough doilies to blog about,” I thought.
I needn’t have worried because, like I said, the doilies were plentiful. There was even a knitted one. Finally, I came across the vintage linens booth, and sorted through the basket full of doilies and some other thread creations. It was a good visit.
The Trading Post is at 406 S. Live Oak Street, across from the County Courthouse in Lampasas, Texas. It has a long mural above the entrance.
It’s Time to Register!
It’s time to register to vote!
…unless you are already registered, of course. In that case, YAY!!!
In Texas, our deadline to register to vote in the November 2026 midterm election is October 5, 2026. If you are already registered in Texas, it’s a good idea to confirm your registration by visiting VOTETEXAS.GOV, and find the link to “Am I Registered?” in the third paragraph. VOTETEXAS.GOV is an official website of the Texas Secretary of State.
Some important dates for Texas voters:
- Deadline to register to vote: October 5, 2026
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Early voting starts: Monday, October 19, 2026
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Deadline for vote-by-mail applications to arrive at county elections office: Friday, October 23, 2026. If you want a mail-in ballot, request one now. More information at Voting By Mail at VOTETEXAS.GOV.
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Last day to vote early in person: Friday, October 30, 2026
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Election Day: November 3, 2026
I’m not familiar with voter registration in other states, but you should be able to find out online by searching how to register to vote in your state.
The quilt pictured here is called What to Do in a Democracy. I made it in 2019 to liven up our voter registration booths at various locations around the county.
Read more about the quilt at this blog post. It shows a closeup of the “O” made from a crocheted edging.
