Tag: Franklin Habit

The Adventure of the Transparent Excuse to Show You More Pictures of My Adorable Dog, Part Five

For an introduction to what goes on in this column, click here.

For the first part of this adventure, click here.

We now resume the knitting of a new sweater for Rosamund–this is Rosamund–

which has been by far the longest-running “Fridays with Franklin” adventure to date.

We’re nearing the end, though. Take a look at what finally popped offa my needles.

Is it a dog sweater? Or did some demented worm from outer space shed a cocoon on my work table?

I know. It’s a lousy photo. But it was so late, y’all. So late. You should see what I looked like at that hour. No, you shouldn’t.

Anyway.

You may remember I was so dubious about this stitch pattern that I didn’t bother to measure my first swatch before ripping it out. Just my luck that most of you voted to make it the basis of the sweater.

I had to grit my teeth to get past the ugly duckling stage. Most knitting projects have one, have you noticed? It’s a point at which you are well begun, with a several inches complete, and you suddenly feel with sick certainty that the finished project won’t be worth the bother.

I mean, look at this. Bleah.

Now, I teach motif design to knitters. I stand in front of every class and say the same thing: don’t judge your fabric until there’s enough there to judge it fairly. A repeating motif will almost never show itself to advantage until you let it repeat, and repeat, and repeat. That’s where you find the power, the beauty, and the interest. Maybe I should listen to myself.

That simple square, multiplied

becomes something greater. I need to put the sweater on Rosamund to make the final call, but I can say with certainty that I’m happy to have worked with the more unusual motif. It doesn’t look like something I’ve seen a million times before. It sure doesn’t look like something I’ve made a million times before–and that alone is worth the time spent.

Rosamund’s last sweater had only a tiny bit of short-rowing to make the top longer than the bottom. This time, I wanted to be sure to give her back more coverage with a much extended tail, as in the sketch.

Tail End

I could have done that by working in the round to the back flap, then working the flap itself (including the shaping) flat. Many patterns for the “shirt-tail” sweaters that become popular now and again do just that.

The potential problem is that most knitters (myself included) will find that even with the same needles and yarn, their flat gauge differs significantly from their circular gauge. More than likely, the fabric of the tail wouldn’t have matched the body unless I took the time to mess around with different needle sizes, and that’s annoying.

Also annoying? Purling wrong side rows in stranded color work. Can I do it? Yes I can. Do I enjoy it? No I do not. Is life too short to spend it knitting stuff you don’t want to knit? Yes it is.

So, seeing as I already had two steeks in this thing–one for each leg hole–why not add a third? When I reached the beginning of the tail, I put the live stitches for the lower (tummy) half of the sweater on a piece of scrap yarn,

and then used a simple backward loop to cast on a bridge of seven stitches

to form the basis of the steek that, when cut open, would allow the tail to lie flat.

(For more on steeks and how they’re constructed, click back to The Adventure of the Warm Puppy, Part Three.)

With the bridge in place, I could keep knitting in the round, decreasing as desired on either side of the bridge to shape the flap.

Of course, the knitting itself starts to look bizarre. This, however, is temporary. It’s also an asset if you’re the sort of show-off knitter who likes confused strangers to come over and ask what the hell you’re making.

What’s left now is the cutting, the fitting, and the finishing.

The fitting, of course, can’t happen until after the cutting–and there, I must admit, lies the rub in working with steeks. Because you can measure and measure and measure again–and I did–but you can’t really try the thing on before you cut. And while cutting isn’t difficult, un-cutting rather is.

So I’m off to get the scissors. I invite you please to stop by again in two weeks. And then, oh then, I do hope we will have sewn this puppy up. So to speak.

Tools and Materials Appearing in This Issue

Simpliworsted by Hikoo® (55% Merino Superwash, 28% Acrylic, 17% Nylon; 140 yds per 100g skein). Colors: 033, Red Hat Purple; and 013, Violette.

addi® Turbo 16-inch circular needle
About Franklin

Designer, teacher, author and illustrator Franklin Habit is the author of It Itches: A Stash of Knitting Cartoons (Interweave Press, 2008). His new book, I Dream of Yarn: A Knit and Crochet Coloring Book has was brought out by Soho Publishing in May, 2016 and is in its second printing.

He travels constantly to teach knitters
at shops and guilds across the country and internationally; and has
been a popular member of the faculties of such festivals as Vogue
Knitting Live!, STITCHES Events, Squam Arts Workshops, Sock Summit, and
the Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat.

Franklin’s varied experience in the fiber world includes contributions of writing and design to Vogue Knitting, Yarn Market News,Interweave Knits, Interweave Crochet, PieceWork, Twist Collective; and a regular columns and cartoons for Mason-Dixon Knitting, PLY Magazine, Lion Brand Yarns, and Skacel Collection. Many of his independently published designs are available via Ravelry.com.

He is the longtime proprietor of The Panopticon,
one of the most popular knitting blogs on the Internet. On an average
day, upwards of 2,500 readers worldwide drop in for a mix of essays,
cartoons, and the continuing adventures of Dolores the Sheep.

Franklin lives in Chicago, Illinois, cohabiting shamelessly with
15,000 books, a Schacht spinning wheel, four looms, and a colony of
yarn that multiplies whenever his back is turned.

 

Interlude: Into the Hoods

For an introduction to what goes on in this column, click here.

 

 

Twice a year I turn over the accumulated samples in my chest of drawers and make tough choices.

There are months when I feel like all I do is swatch. Yet the finished objects pile up. And up. And up. On one hand, it’s good to have evidence of productivity. On the other, it’s nice to not die trapped under a avalanche of small woolens.

At the bottom of a chest I found one end of Scarf That Ate the World, and after five minutes of pulling had got the whole thing out into the light.

It wound up buried because I couldn’t stand to look at it, or to have it sitting around staring at me.

It was ridiculously long: twelve feet. And so very candy-colored. Not a bad piece of weaving, sure. But unless I were to make the acquaintance of a six-foot-tall toddler with a chilly neck, what was it for? It took up a lot of precious storage space to be so useless.

The fabric itself–that wasn’t bad. Made from three colors of HiKoo® Rylie, it had drape, drape, and more drape; and felt deluxe in the hand.

Now, a nice thing about weaving is if there’s too much of it here or there, you can chop it to size. There wasn’t quite enough to make two good scarves, but I thought about trimming it to make one scarf of less monstrous proportions.

Then I’d have a length of handwoven to throw away, which seemed a shame. Why not do a little trimming and a little sewing, and transform almost every bit into something useful?

Stage One: Cut and Sew

After taking some measurements…

I found I had the right amount of fabric to turn the scarf into a hood.

The first stage was staystitching (simple sewing to prevent unraveling) followed by cutting, as shown below:

A sewing machine would have made quick work of the staystitching, but as my sewing machine needs to be hauled out and set up for every new project I elected to just backstitch by hand. Backstitch is quick–each seam took about seven minutes. Setting up the machine takes thirty.

The cutting was fun. There is something intrinsically thrilling about this sight.

Next, I turned and sewed quarter-inch hems that hid the staystitching on both pieces of fabric, using a matching pink thread.

Stage Two: Sew and Sew

Now I had two pieces–one long, one short–and turning them into a hood was ridiculously simple.

First, match the center of the long piece to the center of the short piece like this.

Pin them together.

And sew the seam, which will become the top of the hood. I used Color 088 (Guava) and whip stitch, figuring this piece was rustic enough that visible seams would be an asset. (For more on whip stitch, see Adventure of the Stealth Blanket, Part Two).

Then, sew first one side of the hood back, then the other. Same yarn, same whip stitch.

That could have been the end, but I’d also found in my stash a ball of HiKoo® Rylie in Color 124, a deep purple that didn’t appear in the weaving.

I used it to make a blanket stitch edge all around the hood opening,

where I was tickled to find it tempered the cutesy-wutesy effect of all those Necco wafer colors. (You know the party is a little too WOOOOOOOOOO when purple comes in and settles everyone down.)

I liked the purple so much in the hood that I decided to use more of it…

….to make four tassels…

And these I attached firmly to the bottom corners with a bit more sewing. Tassels aren’t just decorative here–the added weight should help keep the tails in place if they’re worn thrown back over the shoulders.

The Scarf That Ate the World is gone, and in its place is a hood that I hope will bring a big smile to dear girl who lives in the snow and wind of coastal Maine. I don’t know, because she hasn’t seen it yet. I’ll keep you posted.

Tools and Materials Appearing in This Issue

Hikoo® Rylie (50% Baby Alpaca, 25% Mulberry Silk, 25% Linen), 274 yd/100g skein. Colors: 086 Periwinkle, 087 Freesia, 088 Guava, 124 Purple

About Franklin

Designer, teacher, author and illustrator Franklin Habit is the author of It Itches: A Stash of Knitting Cartoons (Interweave Press, 2008). His new book, I Dream of Yarn: A Knit and Crochet Coloring Book has was brought out by Soho Publishing in May, 2016 and is in its second printing.

He travels constantly to teach knitters at shops and guilds across the country and internationally; and has been a popular member of the faculties of such festivals as Vogue Knitting Live!, STITCHES Events, Squam Arts Workshops, Sock Summit, and the Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat.

Franklin’s varied experience in the fiber world includes contributions of writing and design to Vogue Knitting, Yarn Market News,Interweave Knits, Interweave Crochet, PieceWork, Twist Collective; and a regular columns and cartoons for Mason-Dixon Knitting, PLY Magazine, Lion Brand Yarns, and Skacel Collection. Many of his independently published designs are available via Ravelry.com.

He is the longtime proprietor of The Panopticon, one of the most popular knitting blogs on the Internet. On an average day, upwards of 2,500 readers worldwide drop in for a mix of essays, cartoons, and the continuing adventures of Dolores the Sheep.

 

Franklin lives in Chicago, Illinois, cohabiting shamelessly with 15,000 books, a Schacht spinning wheel, four looms, and a colony of yarn that multiplies whenever his back is turned.

The Adventure of the Transparent Excuse to Show You More Pictures of My Adorable Dog, Part Four

For an introduction to what goes on in this column, click here.

For the first part of this adventure, click here.

 

The votes are in!

Last time, I asked you to decide whether I ought to move forward with Option A or Option B…

…as the fabric for a new sweater for Rosamund..

(This is Rosamund.)

More than 500 of you voted (thank you!) and it was a landslide for Option B, 73 percent to 27 percent.*

Which meant–shall I tell you what that meant? I’ll tell you what that meant.

That meant I had to re-knit the swatch for Option B all over again, because I didn’t take gauge measurements from it the first time.

I think it was then that I realized if I could stitch together all the false starts and swatches associated with this sweater, I’d have enough fabric to make Rosamund a set of billowy Auntie Mame hostess pajamas with a matching capelet.

As a seasoned professional, I try not to let such thoughts become obstructive. When they bubble to the surface, I find it’s best to shove them down, down, down into the deepest recesses of the most remote crevasses of the outskirts of my soul. There they remain until, years later, they re-emerge under medically supervised hypnosis as a series of harrowing, apocalyptic shrieks.

It works for me.

Planning for Growth

Knitting a shaped, patterned fabric means planning the shaping so it plays well with the patterning.

You don’t necessarily have to hide your shaping stitches; but if they’re going to show, I find it’s wise to consider what effect they’ll have on areas around them. Otherwise you’re almost certain to find the areas of transition are a muddle, and it’s those areas that often draw the eye.

In the first sweater, which was plain, I put the increases at the shoulders. That made the increase stitches themselves something of a feature.

I could have done the same again. Why not, though, try to find a way to keep that grid of garter stitch flowing with as little interruption as possible?

It seemed to me I could begin the increases right under Rosamund’s chin, on either side of a center stitch, gradually forming a triangular panel across her chest.

According to my calculations I needed an increase of 44 stitches from the neck to the shoulder, over a distance of seven inches–or, at my gauge, 42 rounds. Very convenient: I could simply increase two stitches in every other round. Sure, it wasn’t a perfect fit–but it was well within the fudging limits that knitting allows us.

Some designers can keep all this stuff in their heads and rush into the knitting. Me, I have to make myself charts and drawings to figure out what I want to do. In chart form, the triangular panel (here abbreviated so it will fit the page) looked like this.

The question remained of how exactly to treat each of those stitches.

It would have been possible to work out a completely different stranded pattern for this area, but frankly time and logistics were against me. This is the busy season for a traveling teacher, and I will be at retreats or festivals almost every week throughout January and February. This would therefore be an on-the-road knit, and for the sake of my sanity I decided to do this.

The chart’s been turned point-down now, of course, so it’s oriented in the fashion it would be knit–beginning at the neck.

What you see above is a series of stockinette panels which are, as in the original swatch, bordered by garter stitch. Within the garter borders, the light and dark yarns alternate stitch by stitch and round by round.The horizontal garter bands occur in the same rounds in the chest panel as they do in the rest of the fabric. In theory, it should all flow together.

It’s not revolutionary, but it’s something I can work without a chart on a bumpy airplane. In fact, that’s exactly where I knit most of what you see in this hasty progress shot.

The chest panel is emerging pretty much as I hoped.

However, this is the awkward adolescent phase of the project, when it’s bunched up on the needle and nearly
impossible to photograph without it looking more like a dog’s dinner
than a dog’s sweater. So I choose to reserve judgment until I have knit quite a bit more, and can perhaps get it home and have a preliminary fitting on the model.

In the meantime, I’ll be doing something we haven’t done before–revisiting and remaking an old project from one of the first series of Fridays with Franklin. Drop by in two weeks to see what I’ve been up to.

*Fans of Option A, don’t despair. I still like the chart and have filed it away. Today’s rejected idea is tomorrow’s…well, something. It’ll become something, some day.

Tools and Materials Appearing in This Issue

Simpliworsted by Hikoo® (55% Merino Superwash, 28% Acrylic, 17% Nylon; 140 yds per 100g skein). Colors: 033, Red Hat Purple; and 013, Violette.

addi® Turbo 16-inch circular needle
About Franklin

Designer, teacher, author and illustrator Franklin Habit is the author of It Itches: A Stash of Knitting Cartoons (Interweave Press, 2008). His new book, I Dream of Yarn: A Knit and Crochet Coloring Book has was brought out by Soho Publishing in May, 2016 and is in its second printing.

He travels constantly to teach knitters
at shops and guilds across the country and internationally; and has
been a popular member of the faculties of such festivals as Vogue
Knitting Live!, STITCHES Events, Squam Arts Workshops, Sock Summit, and
the Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat.

Franklin’s varied experience in the fiber world includes contributions of writing and design to Vogue Knitting, Yarn Market News,Interweave Knits, Interweave Crochet, PieceWork, Twist Collective; and a regular columns and cartoons for Mason-Dixon Knitting, PLY Magazine, Lion Brand Yarns, and Skacel Collection. Many of his independently published designs are available via Ravelry.com.

He is the longtime proprietor of The Panopticon,
one of the most popular knitting blogs on the Internet. On an average
day, upwards of 2,500 readers worldwide drop in for a mix of essays,
cartoons, and the continuing adventures of Dolores the Sheep.

Franklin lives in Chicago, Illinois, cohabiting shamelessly with
15,000 books, a Schacht spinning wheel, four looms, and a colony of
yarn that multiplies whenever his back is turned.

The Adventure of the Transparent Excuse to Show You More Pictures of My Adorable Dog, Part Three

For an introduction to what goes on in this column, click here.

For the first part of this adventure, click here.

Rosamund (this is she)…

…is not the only creature in residence here who is known on occasion to chase her own tail.

That, my friends, is exactly what I feel I’ve been doing since we last met.

In the inaugural “Fridays with Franklin,” I wrote about the meandering path creativity often takes, but I left something off the map.

It can happen that in working out an idea, even an idea I think is good, I find myself in a place where the fun little meanders and switchbacks turn into a sort of maelstrom. Or do I mean merry-go-round? Hamster wheel? At any rate, something that goes round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and gets exactly nowhere.

This is not fun. Perhaps it would be if I were a hamster. I’ve never seen a hamster on a wheel who looked unamused.

But I am not a hamster.

To recap, I first thought I’d use this as the chart for the stranded color work dog sweater,

until I decided it was too boring and replaced it with this

until I decided it was too busy, so I ripped it out.

That’s where we ended last time.

I turned to my original sketch

for a refresher. I didn’t necessarily want to cover the fabric in checks, no. It doesn’t do to take a sketch too literally. What I had imagined something crisp and bold.

So I went back to square one (ha) and charted this.

As I swatched, I thought, “This is a very, very simple chart. What if I jazzed up the fabric by knitting the borders between the little checked squares as garter stitch?”

Here’s what happened.

I got as far as you see here before taking one snapshot. Then I decided this looked clunky and ripped it out.

After a walk around the block with Rosamund, who was still not wearing the new sweater I had now been swatching for a month, I sat down and charted this.

It ain’t much. But in my Knitted Tessellations class, I’ve taught thousands (it’s a popular class, thank you) of knitters how to start with an unassuming niblet like this and apply various forms of symmetry.

Do that, and it could turn into:

And that could turn into:

And now, it seemed, I was cooking.

I cast on yet another swatch, only to find that in reality my choice of colors gave me something I hadn’t seen in the chart: very pedestrian Xs and Os. Yippee.

That chart, though. It was so promising. What if I flipped the colors and knit it again with light as dark and dark as light? Since the stitch count was identical, I decided to work out that idea on the same swatch.

Here came another bend in the path, because what made me perk up was the change from one section to the next. That was interesting. What if I knit the chart in alternating bands–one repeat with purple (in this case, 033 Red Hat Purple) as Color A; and the next with lilac (specifically, 013 Violette) as Color A? Reverse, repeat.

So I kept swatching.

I was feeling pumped. No, it wasn’t the bold, crisp pattern I’d had in mind. But I thought it would–once propagated across the full sweater–have a pleasant shimmery complexity.

Then I showed it (and the previous swatch) to a trusted colleague–someone of reliable taste, and dear enough to me that I can bear his unvarnished opinion; and what he wrote was, “The first one [meaning the garter/stockinette combination] is much more interesting. The second one is kinda muddy.”

Huh.

Looking at it with fresher eyes, perhaps that first fabric did have merit. The garter stitch borders reminded me of quilting, certainly desirable in a cold-weather garment. And it was closer to the original geometric image in my head. Was it the better motif?

I dithered for a few hours, then showed pictures of both to the one other person in my life who is sometimes invited to weigh in. He said, “I don’t know. The first one. No, the second one. I don’t know. They’re both fine. Which one do you like?”

At which point I began to feel like a hamster in a maelstrom.

Have you ever seen a hamster in a maelstrom who looked happy to be there? No, you have not.

I was about to flip a coin–something which has helped me many times to stop spinning and start moving forward again. Then I thought, no. No, let’s do something more fun than that.

I want you, friends, to do the choosing. Please.

Since I can’t decide,** tell me which you would prefer as the starting point for Rosamund’s sweater–either Option A or Option B. (These, please understand, are the only options I will entertain. I am already befuddled enough for a whole maelstrom* of hamsters.)

To vote, click here or on the image above, and you’ll be taken to a polling page.We will keep the voting open until noon, United States CST, on Monday, January 2, 2017. Only votes submitted here will count.

To find out what happens, please come on back in two weeks.

*Is a group of hamsters called a “maelstrom”? If not, I feel it should be.
**Before you suggest it, I did ask Rosamund which she prefers. She said this one or that one, only do get on with it before spring thaw.

Tools and Materials Appearing in This Issue

Simpliworsted by Hikoo® (55% Merino Superwash, 28% Acrylic, 17% Nylon; 140 yds per 100g skein). Colors: 033, Red Hat Purple; and 013, Violette.

addi® Turbo 16-inch circular needle
About Franklin

Designer, teacher, author and illustrator Franklin Habit is the author of It Itches: A Stash of Knitting Cartoons (Interweave Press, 2008). His new book, I Dream of Yarn: A Knit and Crochet Coloring Book has was brought out by Soho Publishing in May, 2016 and is in its second printing.

He travels constantly to teach knitters
at shops and guilds across the country and internationally; and has
been a popular member of the faculties of such festivals as Vogue
Knitting Live!, STITCHES Events, Squam Arts Workshops, Sock Summit, and
the Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat.

Franklin’s varied experience in the fiber world includes contributions of writing and design to Vogue Knitting, Yarn Market News,Interweave Knits, Interweave Crochet, PieceWork, Twist Collective; and a regular columns and cartoons for Mason-Dixon Knitting, PLY Magazine, Lion Brand Yarns, and Skacel Collection. Many of his independently published designs are available via Ravelry.com.

He is the longtime proprietor of The Panopticon,
one of the most popular knitting blogs on the Internet. On an average
day, upwards of 2,500 readers worldwide drop in for a mix of essays,
cartoons, and the continuing adventures of Dolores the Sheep.

Franklin lives in Chicago, Illinois, cohabiting shamelessly with
15,000 books, a Schacht spinning wheel, four looms, and a colony of
yarn that multiplies whenever his back is turned.

The Adventure of the Transparent Excuse to Show You More Pictures of My Adorable Dog, Part Two

For an introduction to what goes on in this column, click here.

For the first part of this adventure, click here.

 

Sometimes when you know where you want to go and plan how to get there, you still end up in a ditch.

We ended last time with a peek at the swatch for Rosamund’s new sweater.

(This is Rosamund.)

I swatched with the usual good intentions:

• To determine my stitch and round gauges.
• To test the drape and appearance of the fabric.
• To test the motif.

I also washed and blocked my swatch. Yes, I did. Oh boy, did I feel smug.

The swatch was promising. Cuddly drape. Firm enough to be warm in a Chicago winter chill. The motif was fine.

When I sketched the sweater, I had in mind something bold and clean and crisp. A repeating motif, probably geometric. Not a large motif, though. Large repeating patterns are a tricky proposition on small garments, because there’s usually not enough space for them to breathe.

The construction would be the same as that of the first sweater–neck down, in the round, with steeks. Familiar territory.

That motif, though. That motif. It bugged me.

Would you look twice at that if it ran past you on its way to chasing a squirrel? No, you wouldn’t. Not even with that rich purple in the mix. So pedestrian.

I decided to mess around with pushing stitches here and there, and at some length had jazzed it up into this.

Repeated, it looked very promising in the chart.

No need to swatch again, right? Nah.

Wrong.

I got this far

and realized that I didn’t like it at all. This patterning is less crisp, clean, and bold than the first version; all those little changes made it feeble. Muddy. From a distance, it’s barely visible as a pattern.

So what to do? Rip. Reconsider. And swatch.

See you in two weeks–at which time I intend to have something more interesting to show you. Dang it.

Tools and Materials Appearing in This Issue

Simpliworsted by Hikoo® (55% Merino Superwash, 28% Acrylic, 17% Nylon; 140 yds per 100g skein). Colors: 033, Red Hat Purple and 013, Violette.

addi® Turbo 16-inch circular needle

About Franklin

Designer, teacher, author and illustrator Franklin Habit is the author of It Itches: A Stash of Knitting Cartoons (Interweave Press, 2008). His new book, I Dream of Yarn: A Knit and Crochet Coloring Book has was brought out by Soho Publishing in May, 2016 and is in its second printing.

He travels constantly to teach knitters at shops and guilds across the country and internationally; and has been a popular member of the faculties of such festivals as Vogue Knitting Live!, STITCHES Events, Squam Arts Workshops, Sock Summit, and the Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat.

Franklin’s varied experience in the fiber world includes contributions of writing and design to Vogue Knitting, Yarn Market News,Interweave Knits, Interweave Crochet, PieceWork, Twist Collective; and a regular columns and cartoons for Mason-Dixon Knitting, PLY Magazine, Lion Brand Yarns, and Skacel Collection. Many of his independently published designs are available via Ravelry.com.

He is the longtime proprietor of The Panopticon, one of the most popular knitting blogs on the Internet. On an average day, upwards of 2,500 readers worldwide drop in for a mix of essays, cartoons, and the continuing adventures of Dolores the Sheep.

 

 

Franklin lives in Chicago, Illinois, cohabiting shamelessly with 15,000 books, a Schacht spinning wheel, three looms, and a colony of yarn that multiplies whenever his back is turned.

The Adventure of the Transparent Excuse to Show You More Pictures of My Adorable Dog, Part One

 

For an introduction to what goes on in this column, click here.

 

We’ve yet to see snow (he whispered, nervously) but winter has arrived in Chicago. This means that my friend Rosamund, shown here

has taken to sleeping at night wrapped in both the duvet and the electric blanket with her cold nose buried in my warm armpit.*

I can’t blame her. I have more fur on my chest than she does, poor darling.

Her first sweater, which I wrote about in this adventure, has been in service almost every day for the past two weeks.

This sweater was intended as a pilot project. First, to see if I could custom fit a garment to a four-footed model. Then, to observe how said garment would perform in the real world. So, how did it go?

I’m very impressed with the performance of Hikoo® Simpliworsted when subjected to heavy use by my cannonball of a dog.

Sauntering, trotting, running, jumping, twisting, bounding, rolling, and frenetic repeat performances of the “I See a Rabbit Polka” have done nothing to harm the yarn; it hasn’t faded, stretched or even pilled. Solid stuff, this.

It went through the washer and dryer after Little Miss Mudpie flopped in a puddle near the construction site on the next block. The sweater came out looking no worse for wear. Rosamund, being Hand Wash Only, was somewhat tougher to clean.

The Final Cut

I knew the “finished” sweater was going to require one more alteration.

When Rosamund goes for a walk she wears the purple harness we jovially refer to as her sports bra.

Now, I could have adjusted the harness to fit over the sweater, but that would have spoiled the look and been less comfortable. I wanted her to wear the harness underneath, which means the sweater needed an opening in the center back for the leash to pass through.

I could have planned for this during the knitting; but remember that I was unsure of exactly how the fit was going to work out. I didn’t know if the sweater would sag or ride up, stretch or twist. I couldn’t have known with certainty where to put the opening.

So I let her run around in both for a while, on several different days, to see how the two pieces interacted. When I felt confident about where the leash loop and the sweater needed to align, I marked the top and bottom of that spot with a pair of locking-ring stitch markers.

You know what’s coming next, don’t you? Don’t you?

A steek.

Don’t be so melodramatic.

Steeks were quite the feature of the original adventure, and I wrote about them at length here–reassuring you that they don’t just happen, you usually plan for them.

That doesn’t mean you can’t decide after the fact to put one in, which is what I did.

After counting the stitches across the back to make sure I was exactly in the center, I moved my markers to indicate the top and bottom of the center (cutting) column of my intended steek.

Then I used some more of the knitting yarn and a hook from my addi® Colors Crochet Hook Set to secure the pairs of stitch columns to the immediate right and left of the cutting column with chain crochet. (Again, for a full discussion of the technique, see The Adventure of the Warm Puppy.)

Then I cut the opening.

A crocheted steek gives such nice, neat edges that frankly I could have left that hole as it was. But my late grandmother’s voice echoed in my head, saying, “This opening is a stress point, and therefore subject to extra wear. Furthermore, those edges are raw and unfinished.”

My grandmother would have no more permitted me to send my dog out into the world with unfinished cut selvages showing than she would have attended a meeting of the Ladies Altar Rosary Society in her nightgown.

“Raw edges must be finished,” continued the ghostly voice, “and stress points must be reinforced, unless you want your poor grandmother to cry in heaven. Did I raise you right or did I not? OOOOoooOOOOOooooOOOOO.”

Fine, fine. Easy enough. I picked up and knit stitches (making sure I had a number divisible by four) around the opening…

…on a set of double-pointed needles, then worked k2p2 ribbing to match the ribs at the legs and collar. I made the ribbing long enough to be turned over and sewn down on the wrong side, completely encasing the cut edges.

It looks odd all by itself, yes. But now the sweater and harness work perfectly in tandem, and my grandmother’s ghost can go chill out with a beer.

In the evening we went for another walk around the neighborhood. I took a packet of stitch markers, and as we trotted along I noted where on the finished sweater the top of her front leg really sits (Point A), and put a marker there.

And I also noted with a marker how deep the too-large leg opening on the original sweater needed to be snugger fit (Point B).

With the alteration points marked, I could now revise my measurements and prepare for the project that will be the heart of this new adventure.

Another Rosamund sweater in Hikoo® Simpliworsted, but this time, in…

stranded color work.

Meet me back here in two weeks and I’ll tell you all about it.

*Does this make her…an armpit bull? Hahahahaha. Ha.

 

Tools and Materials Appearing in This Issue

Simpliworsted by Hikoo® (55% Merino Superwash, 28% Acrylic, 17% Nylon; 140 yds per 100g skein). Colors: 611, Earth and Sky (sweater); 033, Red Hat Purple and 013, Violette (swatch).

addi® Steel double-pointed needles, 8 inch length

3.5 mm hook from addi® Colors Crochet Hook Set

About Franklin

Designer, teacher, author and illustrator Franklin Habit is the author of It Itches: A Stash of Knitting Cartoons (Interweave Press, 2008). His new book, I Dream of Yarn: A Knit and Crochet Coloring Book has was brought out by Soho Publishing in May, 2016 and is in its second printing.

He travels constantly to teach knitters at shops and guilds across the country and internationally; and has been a popular member of the faculties of such festivals as Vogue Knitting Live!, STITCHES Events, Squam Arts Workshops, Sock Summit, and the Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat.

Franklin’s varied experience in the fiber world includes contributions of writing and design to Vogue Knitting, Yarn Market News,Interweave Knits, Interweave Crochet, PieceWork, Twist Collective; and a regular columns and cartoons for Mason-Dixon Knitting, PLY Magazine, Lion Brand Yarns, and Skacel Collection. Many of his independently published designs are available via Ravelry.com.

He is the longtime proprietor of The Panopticon, one of the most popular knitting blogs on the Internet. On an average day, upwards of 2,500 readers worldwide drop in for a mix of essays, cartoons, and the continuing adventures of Dolores the Sheep.

 

Franklin lives in Chicago, Illinois, cohabiting shamelessly with 15,000 books, a Schacht spinning wheel, three looms, and a colony of yarn that multiplies whenever his back is turned.

The Adventure of the Fallen Flowers: Part Four

For an introduction to what goes on in this column, click here.

For the first part of this adventure, click here.

 

My friend Euclid

is always going on about how a straight line is the shortest distance between two points. I usually just tune it out, but staring at this length of free-form crochet really brought the point home to me.

Here I was in week eight of this project, and from tip to tip the fabric measured 38 inches long and about seven inches wide. While most of it was worked in a fingering weight yarn (Schoppel Wolle Zauberball®), that was not a lot of acreage for the amount of work involved.

I hadn’t taken Euclid’s advice. I’d worked from point A to point B (if this is even B, it might be A-and-a-half) in little linked-up circles that meandered in hither and thither.

Now I was going to go back to Point A with two other yarns

to add more detail.

Euclid shook his head. “Hey man,” he said. “You do you, okay?”

First Pass: Deep Purple

The odds in my game had been slanted in favor of the gentle browns and creams of the Zauberball®, but there was still a lot of the pale purple Hikoo® Tiara (Color 74: Amethyst) scattered through the fabric. The effect was nice enough, but a piece worked entirely in muted colors runs the risk of looking a little sleepy.

I decided to pepper the whole thing with tiny jolts of Hikoo® Simpliworsted in Color O33: Red Hat Purple. That is a PURPLE!!!! Purple, as deeply saturated as the Tiara is subdued. When you put brilliant and muted versions of the same color near one another in the same fabric, the effect can be a handsome shimmer–something the Fair Isle knitters of Shetland have known for generations.

My first thought was to make teeny pistils for the purple flowers with chain crochet, and I soon saw that the effect was…

horrid.

I was hoping for elegant charm. This looked more like bad soft sculpture. The blossoms were all soft-edged and suggestive, like a pastel sketch or watercolor painting. These nubbins looked more like something from a cartoon. So I ripped them out.

Still, I really wanted that kiss of brilliant purple in the center of each Tiara flower. I worked a few more fiddly bits of crochet, none remotely successful. Then, before giving up, I tried a few simple, straight embroidery stitches taken from the center out.

Huh. Not bad. Good enough to move forward, anyhow.

Second Pass: Second Layer

My goal with the Hikoo® Rylie (Color 124: Urchin) was twofold: to add texture and to add a third purple to the mix. I wanted to make a second layer of scattered blossoms to sit on top of this first layer–an idea I got from talking to Edie Eckman when I called her to ask permission to use Connect the Shapes Crochet Motifs in this series.

I had noticed a project, a tote bag, illustrated in the book and asked how she had achieved such a deep, sculptural surface. “It’s not hard,” she said. “You can always go back and add more where you think you need it. Those were made separately and tied on.”

Well, okay then.

I used my smaller hook–a US size D (3.25mm), which I’d been using with the Zauberball®–to work out this variation on the blossom from Edie’s book.

Begin with sliding loop.

Rnd 1. Ch 1, 4 sc in ring, join with slip st to first sc.

Rnd 2. Ch 2, 6 dc in same st. *Sc in next sc, 6 dc in same st. Rep from * around, join with sl st to first sc.

Fasten off.

This gives a ruffly little four-petaled flower with two yarn tails sticking out the center of the wrong side. I spent a very enjoyable hour turning out a pile of them.

The yarn tails are used to tie the flower to the main fabric as desired. In a move than I am afraid will get me sent to the free-form crochet penalty box, I decided in advance where to put them all, and pinned them into place.

It was quick work to tie them down with a couple of double knots on the wrong side, and clip the tails to tiny ends.

Parting Shots

I began this series by comparing free-form crochet to one of my sketches; and the more I worked on the floral fabric the more true the comparison became. With both, part of the process is knowing when to stop. Theoretically, you never have to–unless the materials themselves collapse under the weight of the accumulated work.

Is this finished?

I suppose it is. I feel that it is. I’m ready to move on.
I’ve learned a lot in working on it, and what’s more, I’ve enjoyed myself. No, free-form crochet is not the most efficient way to produce fabric. But who cares how long it takes, if you have a good time?

I really wanted to show you this piece on a model; it looks best that way. Sadly, Marie-France partied a little too hard last night and so I must ask that you accept a substitute.*

Sorry.

Coming Up…

So ends this adventure.

See you the Friday after Thanksgiving week, friends. The cold weather is drawing in, and I’m at work on a new sweater.

*Personal to Vogue Knitting magazine. You have my number. Call me.

Tools and Materials Appearing in This Issue

Connect the Shapes Crochet Motifs by Edie Eckman (Storey Publishing)

Schoppel Wolle Zauberball® (75% Superwash Wool, 25% Nylon), 420m/100g ball. Color: 1993 (Chocolate Cream)

Hikoo® Tiara (10% Kid Mohair, 5% Wool, 49% Acrylic, 22% Nylon, 10% Bead, 4% Sequin), 188 yd/100g hank. Color: 74 (Amethyst)

Hikoo® Rylie (50% Baby Alpaca, 25% Mulberry Silk, 25% Linen), 274 yd/100g hank. Color: 124 (Urchin)

Hikoo® Simpliworsted (55% Merino Wool 25% acrylic 17% Nylon), 140 yd/100g hank. Color: 033 (Red Hat Purple)

addi® Olive Wood Crochet Hooks

About Franklin

Designer, teacher, author and illustrator Franklin Habit is the author of It Itches: A Stash of Knitting Cartoons (Interweave Press, 2008). His new book, I Dream of Yarn: A Knit and Crochet Coloring Book has was brought out by Soho Publishing in May, 2016 and is in its second printing.

He travels constantly to teach knitters at shops and guilds across the country and internationally; and has been a popular member of the faculties of such festivals as Vogue Knitting Live!, STITCHES Events, Squam Arts Workshops, Sock Summit, and the Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat.

Franklin’s varied experience in the fiber world includes contributions of writing and design to Vogue Knitting, Yarn Market News,Interweave Knits, Interweave Crochet, PieceWork, Twist Collective; and a regular columns and cartoons for Mason-Dixon Knitting, PLY Magazine, Lion Brand Yarns, and Skacel Collection. Many of his independently published designs are available via Ravelry.com.

He is the longtime proprietor of The Panopticon, one of the most popular knitting blogs on the Internet. On an average day, upwards of 2,500 readers worldwide drop in for a mix of essays, cartoons, and the continuing adventures of Dolores the Sheep.

Franklin lives in Chicago, Illinois, cohabiting shamelessly with 15,000 books, a Schacht spinning wheel, three looms, and a colony of yarn that multiplies whenever his back is turned.

The Adventure of the Fallen Flowers: Part Three

For an introduction to what goes on in this column, click here.

For the first part of this adventure, click here.

 

So began the rolling of the dice and the oh-so-gradual emergence of my carpet of crochet flowers.

By freeform standards, my form was not all that free. I was using one motif; albeit in two different weights with two different yarns, the finer of which (Schoppel Wolle Zauberball®) was gradually changing color.

Even so, I struggled.

My earliest blossoms were lopsided and scrunched, with a tension that could be kindly described as clenched.

I elected to use the “flat join” from Edie Eckman’s Connect the Shapes Crochet Motifs, which allowed me to join as I worked, and more importantly discouraged me from ripping out too much. I told myself the rustic nature of the Zauberball® helped to disguise that, and from time to time almost believed it. There’s even a mutant flower in there with five petals (or was it six?) instead of four. I can’t seem to find it now, but I know it’s in there.

But this is a freeform piece, so I elected to let it go. Nature mutates, so why not my crochet?

That sounds so laid back, doesn’t it? Que sera sera. Laissez-les bons temps rouler. So terribly Zelda Fitzgerald leaping into a fountain.

In truth, it was forced out through a clenched jaw. I had no idea of my innate attachment to uniformity until I tried to let it go.

In spite of my best efforts, I’d pause and note that my “random” blossoms were still lined up in neat rows and the edges of my scattered carpet were frustratingly even.

Still, I pressed on.

I thought of a society dame in an old New Yorker cartoon by the legendary Helen Hokinson, putting the finishing touches on her flower show display and saying with exasperation, “I am trying to achieve the effect of a sombrero carelessly thrown down!”

There is a lot of blather about knitting and crochet being forms of meditation. For the first time, my needlework really reminded me of meditation. Specifically, my earliest attempts at meditation, when that hour spent on a cushion full of buckwheat hulls felt like a month in a pit full of vipers.

Still, I pressed on.

I felt like this thing I was making might truly stink, but I wasn’t going to write two columns about it only to present you with a finale showing a bunch of cut up flowers and the caption, “Nevermind.”

It grew slowly, but it grew.

My tension relaxed and steadied.

My joins grew more adventurous.

I began to break away from the unconscious habit of working in parallel rows.

Without knowing when or how, I relaxed into the work.

When the fabric had reached dimensions that might serve as a cowl, I paused to assess.

Now, it’s okay. I don’t hate it. I also don’t love it–yet. I was going to bring the adventure to an end here, but after rummaging around in my stash I’ve found some Hikoo® Rylie and Hikoo® Simpliworsted, and with those I’m going back to work it over a little more. I think it needs variety.
I’ll have put four very different yarns all in one piece. I’ve never done that before.

This, however, is freeform–so I am free to do it. Exciting.

See you in two weeks.

Tools and Materials Appearing in This Issue

Connect the Shapes Crochet Motifs by Edie Eckman (Storey Publishing)

Schoppel Wolle Zauberball® (75% Superwash Wool, 25% Nylon), 420m/100g ball. Color: 1993 (Chocolate Cream)

Hikoo® Tiara (10% Kid Mohair, 5% Wool, 49% Acrylic, 22% Nylon, 10% Bead, 4% Sequin), 188 yd/100g hank. Color: 74 (Amethyst)

Hikoo® Rylie (50% Baby Alpaca, 25% Mulberry Silk, 25% Linen), 274 yd/100g hank. Color:

Hikoo® Simpliworsted (55% Merino Wool 25% acrylic 17% Nylon), 140 yd/100g hank.

addi® Olive Wood Crochet Hooks

About Franklin

Designer, teacher, author and illustrator Franklin Habit is the author of It Itches: A Stash of Knitting Cartoons (Interweave Press, 2008). His new book, I Dream of Yarn: A Knit and Crochet Coloring Book has was brought out by Soho Publishing in May, 2016 and is in its second printing.

He travels constantly to teach knitters
at shops and guilds across the country and internationally; and has
been a popular member of the faculties of such festivals as Vogue
Knitting Live!, STITCHES Events, Squam Arts Workshops, Sock Summit, and
the Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat.

Franklin’s varied experience in the fiber world includes contributions of writing and design to Vogue Knitting, Yarn Market News,Interweave Knits, Interweave Crochet, PieceWork, Twist Collective; and a regular columns and cartoons for Mason-Dixon Knitting, PLY Magazine, Lion Brand Yarns, and Skacel Collection. Many of his independently published designs are available via Ravelry.com.

He is the longtime proprietor of The Panopticon,
one of the most popular knitting blogs on the Internet. On an average
day, upwards of 2,500 readers worldwide drop in for a mix of essays,
cartoons, and the continuing adventures of Dolores the Sheep.

Franklin
lives in Chicago, Illinois, cohabiting shamelessly with 15,000 books, a
Schacht spinning wheel, three looms, and a colony of yarn that
multiplies whenever his back is turned.

The Adventure of the Fallen Flowers: Part Two

For an introduction to what goes on in this column, click here.

For the first part of this adventure, click here.

 

It probably speaks volumes about me that even my freeform crochet adventure had to start with some kind of plan.

Attitude Adjustment

The more I thought it over, the more the idea of creating a delicate fabric of scattered blossoms appealed to me. It was, for one thing, the opposite of the crochet I’d known growing up. That crochet came in two flavors: the zigzag afghan and the daisy place mat.

It may be that you recall zigzag afghans and daisy place mats with a fond smile. I’m sorry that I do not.

I recall the former as being worked always in three or more colors of stiff yarn so plastic it smelled like Tupperware. My memory kicks in around 1976, the American Bicentennial; so zigzags in red, white, and blue were the home accessory du jour along with colonial style console televisions and floor lamps in the of shape butter churns. My mother, never a slave to fashion, made our afghan in a range of rusts and browns that didn’t show dirt because they already looked like dirt.

The daisy placemats in vivid white, yellow, and orange thread may sound cheerful; but these were not the sunny, nodding, butterfly-kissed daisies of the open field. These scratchy daisies marched in regimental rows across the Formica dinette with all the charm of an invading army. Their pinched faces and lurid coloring make me think now of women I met years later while living in an unspeakable Boston suburb: identical dead eyes, fake tans, and secret fears that somewhere in Middlesex County someone might be having a good time.

What both specimens had in common, I now realize, is that they were textiles you wouldn’t want to touch. They looked nasty and felt nastier. All they had going for them, really, was that they were easy to clean. You could just throw them in the wash. Hell, you could lay them in the driveway and hose them down. They were impossible to destroy.

I thought for years that this must be the nature of crochet: to be, in a word, unpleasant.

It wasn’t until the very recent past that the work of designers like Cécile Balladino, Sophie Digard, Jenny King, and Kathy Merrick (this is but a partial list) began to open my mind.

That is absolutely crochet, yet it positively begs to be touched. The color mix is masterful. It’s beautiful.

So at last I had learned a funny thing about crochet: if you work it tightly in ugly yarn, it comes out tight and ugly. If you don’t–it doesn’t. Just like knitting.

Loosen Up

If I wanted my carpet of flowers to drape, the experts I spoke with all gave pretty much the same advice.

1. Choose yarn that drapes well.

2. Work it at a gentle gauge.

3. Keep your individual freeform units on the small side.

I’d already chosen my yarns–Schoppel Wolle Zauberball® and Hikoo® Tiara–before thinking much about that first point. They seemed drapey enough.

As to numbers two and three, I was only too happy to work with a light touch and a small motif. A small motif, it seemed to me, offered fewer opportunities to screw up. On a quiet afternoon not long ago I set off into the heart of a baroque nineteenth century hexagon full of picots and doubles and half-doubles and double-doubles and double-trebles and layovers and whoopee-doos; and got so lost I had to be airlifted to safety.

The Motif

I turned to Edie Eckman’s Connect the Shapes Crochet Motifs,

which I mentioned in the last column and which had by now become my guidebook for this project.

Edie’s larger motifs are often matched with tiny “fillers” that act as decorative joins. It was one of these–a four-petaled flower–that caught my eye. Cute, simple, and contained no stitches I didn’t already know how to do. Winner!

For those who’d like to play along, Edie has graciously allowed me to share the pattern with you here:

Begin with sliding loop.

Rnd 1. Ch 1, 8 sc in ring, join with slip st to first sc.

Rnd 2. Ch 1, Block Stitch in same st, skip 1 sc, *Block Stitch (see below) in next sc, skip 1 st; rep from * around, join with slip st to first sc.

Fasten off.

Block Stitch: Sc in st or space indicated, ch 3, 3 dc inside of sc just made.

Two rounds and done. I can handle that.

Now, some folks will say that if I’m only using one motif, even if I’m attaching pieces at will and changing both colors and yarns, I’m not really creating freeform crochet. To those folks I can only say

The Rules of the Game

With yarn, hooks, sketch, and motif all in order, I still couldn’t jump in.

This was becoming embarrassing.

So I fell back on a tool in my knitting kit that I’ve used almost as much as my tape measure. Here it is.

When I’m at a crossroads in a piece of work and just can’t make a decision, I like to give it up to chance. To make it into a game.

Here are the rules of my game:

Roll 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5: Work the blossom with Zauberball®.

 

Roll 6: Work the blossom with Tiara.

 

A new blossom may be attached to any part of the fabric any number of times.

I stacked the odds heavily in favor of Zauberball® since I wanted the Tiara to be an accent sprinkled around the fabric. So, provided my die wasn’t loaded, only 1 in every 6 blossoms would be purple.

Now I was ready.

See you in two weeks…

Tools and Materials Appearing in This Issue

Connect the Shapes Crochet Motifs by Edie Eckman (Storey Publishing)

Schoppel Wolle Zauberball® (75% Superwash Wool, 25% Nylon), 420m/100g ball. Color: 1993 (Chocolate Cream)

Hikoo® Tiara (10% Kid Mohair, 5% Wool, 49% Acrylic, 22% Nylon, 10% Bead, 4% Sequin), 188 yd/100g hank. Color: 74 (Amethyst)

addi® Olive Wood Crochet Hooks

Six-sided die from, I dunno, must have fallen out of an old Yahtzee set or something

The Adventure of the Fallen Flowers: Part One

For an introduction to what goes on in this column, click here.

When I was drawing I Dream of Yarn: A Knit and Crochet Coloring Book, my friend and frequent collaborator John Mullarkey visited the studio and asked to watch as I worked over a piece from rough sketch to finished art.

I’ve seldom had someone spy on that process, which usually starts with a very light and wobbly sketch in pencil…

…followed by increasingly bold lines made by repeated goes with the pencil and a great deal of erasing…

…followed, with luck, by the slow process of inking the lines to make them permanent and printable.

John was struck by how many layers lay under what (I hope) appears to be a polished, unified final image.

Not everyone who draws follows that path, but I always have. Every finished drawing is the sum of a dozen unfinished drawings, one atop the other. To be terribly honest–honesty being a goal of these columns–one of the things that always drives me nuts about knitting is that it doesn’t usually lend itself to that multi-layered process.

Yes, you can swatch for knitting. And yes, I do. I also sketch and I plan–as I did for Rosamund’s sweater in our last adventure.

But when the sketches and swatches give way to the final piece you move from start to finish in a mostly linear fashion. You can rip back. And yes, I do. Boy, do I. Usually about a dozen times. For a hat.

But once a knitting project reaches an advanced stage, you can’t decide casually that it would be sweet to toss in a little cable action at the shoulders or move that stripe up four inches or narrow the color motif by two stitches without re-knitting the dang thing.

Please Feel Free

That’s one reason I love trying my hand at different fiber arts. Sometimes the nature and structure of knitting are precisely what I crave. Sometimes not. Sometimes I feel like messing around, changing directions, experimenting, reserving the right to go back and edit, add, and elaborate without a ton of ripping.

With that in mind I started checking out the freeform work that is the passion of artists like Australia’s Prudence Mapstone, whose designs are known internationally as the vanguard of the field.

Freeform pieces don’t follow a pattern in the commonly accepted sense of the word. You may have a template or a sketch; but aside from that, you just…go. One improvised motif or fragment or what-have-you (Prudence evocatively calls it a “scrumble”) of knitting or crochet leads to the next, and to the next, and the fabric grows as it will. Or rather, as you wish it to, bit by bit.

Prudence works in both knitting and crochet (often combined, as in the piece above). As I had just finished a mess of knitting I felt the pendulum in my brain swing from needles to hooks.

Inspiration from Edie Eckman

Then, at this summer’s edition of Stitches Midwest, I ran into Edie Eckman at the Makers’ Mercantile booth in the Marketplace. Edie was one of my first needlework teachers, back when I decided to try taking classes after a lifetime of learning on my own. Now we’re friends and colleagues, which I find both miraculous and humbling.

She was there to sign her crochet books–which are excellent, numerous, and famous (everyone who crochets should have The Crochet Answer Book)–and I decided to pick up a copy of Connect the Shapes Crochet Motifs.

I had admired the book since the year it came out, when Edie appeared at Stitches Midwest wearing this remarkable  one-skein snowflake shawl from the patterns section.

I was tempted to mug her and run away with it, since at the time my crochet skills weren’t up to making one myself. Now, having got granny squares under my belt, it might be possible to try something that complex on my own.

In Connect the Shapes, Edie dwells briefly on the topic of working
freeform. I wondered if I might select an
hors d’oeuvres from her extensive buffet of motifs, then multiply and vary it to make an improvised fabric.

“Do you think I could do it?” I asked Edie.

“You can do it,” said Edie firmly. “And if you have questions, call me.”

Yarns, Hooks, and Plans

The more I thought about the idea of freeform, the more excited I got. My first impulse was to reach for Schoppel Wolle Zauberball, color 1993 (Chocolate Cream) – a series of slow shifts from warm black through cream by way of milky cocoa and tan.

Then I realized that nothing prevented me from mixing not only a different color, but an entirely different yarn. It could be a different fiber, a different weight, a different texture. Maybe all three?

This skein of Hikoo Tiara in color 74 (Amethyst) had been sitting here staring at me for ages.

This yarn is quirky. It blends kid mohair, wool, acrylic, and nylon with beads and sequins. I liked it as an art object, but couldn’t figure out what the heck to do with it. Frankly, I’m not a fellow who goes in for sparkle and fuzz. It might be useful, though, as a striking change of pace from the quiet rusticity of the Zauberball.

Should I? Beads? Sequins? Why not? In for a penny, in for a pound.

As to hooks, I will admit without hesitation that one of the reasons I chose to make this a crochet adventure was the chance to work again with the addi® Olive Wood hooks that I mentioned in the last column.

They’re pretty to look at and dreamy to handle. Can you blame me?

So I put everything on the worktable, poured myself a cup of tea…and froze.

Could I really charge forward without any kind of plan at all?

As much as I would love to make this a truly out-on-a-limb adventure, in which I crochet the day away without a second thought as to what I’m doing, I am not that person. I never have been that person. At my age, it is unlikely that anything short of being sucked onto a flying saucer in which long-fingered green aliens neatly switch my brain with that of Indiana Jones (or Prudence Mapstone) will turn me into that person.

And so we come full circle this week–back to my paper and pencils. I started scribbling and found my head was full of flowers. Maybe it was because fall has arrived here in Chicago, where I know I won’t see anything in bloom except mildew for about the next nine months.

I remembered a passage by legendary gardener Gertrude Jekyll, describing how with the aid of teams of housemaids she gathered thousands of roses to make potpourri. I remembered watching purple jacaranda petals fall and cover the sidewalks during my childhood in Hawaii. I thought of showers of white Mountain Laurel near my grandmother’s house in Pennsylvania, and pink cherry blossoms drifting across a Japanese scroll in my collection.

A carpet of scattered flowers.That’s what I wanted to make. To be used as…

To be used as…as…uh…

Well, I don’t know what it will be used as. I’m not even sure how I’m going to make it. Let’s talk more about that in two weeks.

Tools and Materials Appearing in This Issue

I Dream of Yarn: A Knit and Crochet Coloring Book by Franklin Habit (Soho Publishing)

Connect the Shapes Crochet Motifs by Edie Eckman (Storey Publishing)

Schoppel Wolle Zauberball (75% Superwash Wool, 25% Nylon), 420m/100g ball. Color: 1993 (Chocolate Cream)

Hikoo Tiara (10% Kid Mohair, 5% Wool, 49% Acrylic, 22% Nylon, 10% Bead, 4% Sequin), 188 yd/100g hank. Color: 74 (Amethyst)

addi® Olive Wood Crochet Hooks