WIP: Christmas tree skirt

Remember when I asked for opinions on edgings from Mrs. Gaugain’s Crochet D’Oyley Book, published in 1846?

Probably not, it was three months ago, after all.

In the end, I chose edging #3, which I figured would lie flat better and not have points that would be difficult to keep pointy after a washing.

The edging is for a new Christmas tree skirt I’m making for my parents. This past Christmas when they were out of the country and we borrowed their Christmas decorations, I was reminded how little I like their current one:

I laid it out on a large piece of felt and cut out a new circle with the same dimensions.

The edging was simple enough although slightly unclear thanks to its early terminology. I fudged a bit on the last row because it didn’t seem as if the instructions were suggesting something that would stay balanced. The picture ended up being a bigger help than the text.

I decided to make twelve granny stars for the 12 days of Christmas to embellish the surface.

Just last week, I finished the twelfth star (although I seem to have misplaced it!) and now I can block them a little, stitch them to the felt, and this project will be complete!

 

FO: Mother’s Day earrings

I also made a pair of earrings for my mother this year. Using cotton sewing thread and a size 11 steel hook (1.1mm), I slightly modified the pattern for these earrings to come up with the ones pictured below:

What did I change? I’ve been crocheting for nine years now and I still can’t make a passable looking picot. So instead of 1ch, 3-ch picot, 1ch for each point, I chained 3 and then did an sc in the side of the previous sc. Seems to have worked well enough although the points could be pointier, I realize.

 

FO: Mother’s day bookmarks

My mom and Gene’s mother both received bookmarks this year, made from a pattern I’ve had in my Ravelry queue for almost 5 years. I honestly don’t know why it took me so long to get around to this project as it turned out to be quite easy and satisfying.

Fan Bookmark Pattern

I used crochet cotton and a size 3 steel hook (2.1mm), significantly larger than the 1.25mm hook called for in the pattern. I prefer it slightly larger, actually. It seemed a good size book mark for the novel I was returning to my mom, so it probably fits better in other books too.

 

WIP woes

Back in March, once I got into writing a lot every day, I discovered that crocheting during my breaks gave me achy wrists. So my plan for making something mindless and pretty ended there.

I did start on the Rosetta Lacy Dress, but two things hampered my progress:
1) Even just a single row led to achy wrists.
2) It required more attention to the pattern than I imagined it would.

And, when I finished all my writing in mid-April and picked it back up again, I sailed past a part where I needed to begin decreasing on the sides. I went past by enough rows that unraveling and picking up again where it would be correct felt more like work, less like relaxation. So that’s hibernating for a while.

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In January, I began working on the Schoolmarm Vest, using that same navy cashmere. The shape seemed to be coming out oddly (more of a parallelogram rather than a rectangle) but I assumed that blocking would fix it.

I set the project aside in February because it was more than I could handle at the time. This past Sunday, thinking about my works-in-progress, I remembered that there really wasn’t that much left of the body shaping part to do and after that I really only had the button band, which looked simple. Imagine my intense frustration when I took the project back out and with fresh eyes saw that the parallelogram shape was due to an error I carried through, row after row. I’ve gotten so used to following charts that instead of reading the written pattern well, I’d gone with how I thought the stitch pattern looked. Stupid mistake.

I need to unravel the whole thing, there’s no avoiding that conclusion. I’m too annoyed with myself to to that now, however, so back into the drawer it goes.

Woe is me.

 

FO: Branching leaves scarf

It’s finished! Aside from sewing in ends, that is.

I stitched the end to the beginning after finishing off on a row where the patterns matched up, so it’s now one of those trendy circle scarves. Since I was serious about wanting to use all of this bright green yarn, it wraps around my neck three times comfortably and could go around a 4th time in particularly cold weather.

Um, this is not the greatest of colors for me. But I like how it looks against our accent wall!

 

Coverette Thread ?

Or, the thread I just used for the shawl hanging in my living room and what I’m hoping to use in a dress. 

All along, I’ve known it’s old, but not from when or even really who made it. The label isn’t clear, but I realized instead of searching for the thread name, I should probably use the generic sounding company name.

According to the internet, it’s from sometime between the 1931 and before whenever bankruptcy occurred and the name became “Textiles, Inc.”

1931, The Gray, Separk and Armstrong families merged their interests.  The Rankin Group and A.G. Myers & Associates joined.  Soon twenty-one plants were included.  This was the beginning of Threads, Inc., which represented about twenty-two percent of the combed-cotton sales yarn in the South.  Still, it was not enough and bankruptcy followed.  Threads, Inc. became Textiles, Inc.  In 1978, Textiles, Inc. became Ti-Caro, Inc. to reflect the growth outside of sales yarn and also into adjacent states.  In April 1987, Dixie Yarns, Inc.,  Chatanooga, TN acquired Ti-Caro for stock worth $70 million. (Ray Clune, Daily News Record, March 2, 1987) 

(Textilehistory.org)

 

Christmas crochet: Cat hoodie

March edit: The previous post with its neon green yarn reminded me of the wearable I made with it. Not for me, for our borrowed cat, thank goodness. I sat on this draft waiting to take a better picture, but never got the chance and the cat’s home with my parents now. Instead, you get a picture of him looking rather surly, although he actually liked wearing the hoodie when it was really cold.

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Pattern: Cat Hoodie. This is a knitting pattern, but with a little creativity and a basic understanding of how knitting works, it’s not too hard to crochet from it instead.
Recipient: Shadow/Dou-dou the cat

Alright, this wasn’t really a Christmas present, but I finished it a few days after Christmas and “gave” it to the cat, so that still counts, right?

We don’t have indoor heat in Taipei. Gene has a space heater in his study, but aside from that, it’s been down to 14C indoors once or twice already this winter. Not cat weather. I started making this as a joke for the cat, but he surprisingly tolerates it and has learned how to walk in such a way that he doesn’t walk out of the sleeves.

He’s still not so sure about the hood, however.