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Tinking Turtle Raverly

Witchlace

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Ravelry Link Here
Published in:  Knit Picks Serenity Crochet Collection, KnitPicks
Craft: Crochet
Category: Sweater → Pullover
Published: June 2013
Yarns suggested: Knit Picks Galileo
Yarn weight: Sport / 5 ply (12 wpi)
Gauge:  20 stitches and 15 rows = 4 inches in alternating rows of sc and dc worked through the back loop
Needle size: US 19 – 15.0 mm
Hook size: 3.5 mm (E)
Yardage: 1090 – 2970 yards (997 – 2716 m)
Sizes available: 32 (34, 36, 38, 40, 42, 44, 46, 48, 50, 52, 54, 56, 58, 60, 62, 64)”

This pattern is available for download for $4.99.

Early mornings around the house, days out and about and evenings in the yard – Witchlace is a sweater that embodies all of these moments. It’s both simple and feminine, pretty yet casual; reclaiming an old technique, broomstick lace, in a more modern way. The front, sleeves and back are worked while alternating rows of DC or HDC with single crochet. A textured ribbed effect is produced by working the stitches through the back loops. All four pieces are worked flat, blocked and seamed, then the yoke is picked up from each of the pieces and worked. Finally, the broomstick lace is started in the round and alternates with rows of single crochet (worked through both loops) up to the neckline.

For more information, see: http://www.knitpicks.com/patterns/accessories-en/sweaters/witchlace-sweater.html

Got questions?  Wondering if you should make this?  This is the place to ask!

Crochet, Food and Art: Smithsonian’s Food Cover

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My husband just brought the June 2013 issue home.  He burst in the door with this frenetic look on his face and slapped the cover in front of me.  “Look!  It’s what you do!”  Michael was referring to the fact that I’ve been designing a series of crochet foods, the latest of which are Sweet Strawberries and Outrageous Orange.

If you haven’t seen the cover yet, Kate Jenkins, a fiber artist, created the absolutely stunning display at the right.  Called Wool Chow Mein Fake-Away, there’s also really comprehensive article on her work at the Smithsonian website.  It doesn’t surprise me that Smithsonian would use her crochet-based art as cover-art, because the Smithsonian has had a relationship with crocheters in the past.

Some of the many pieces crocheted for the reef:
mine are the orange ones in the middle.

The Smithsonian and I have a deeper relationship than just our mutual appreciation for food as art.  In 2010 I, along with many other crocheters in the greater Washington DC area, participated in the Smithsonian Display of the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef.  The project works to get local communities engaged and learning about Coral Reef Destruction and Preservation through a mix of community interaction, art and education.  For a couple of weeks my room mate and I frenetically crocheted hyperbolic shapes to help create the absolutely massive coral reef that dominated the ocean hall a the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History.

What I love about the Smithsonian June 2013 cover is not only the creative use of crochet as art (because well, it’s cool and a little mind-bending, because handicrafts like crochet and knitting rarely get the attention that other forms of art do), but the way it touches on the tension in values in America today.  Crochet (and knitting and other handicrafts) are experiencing a wonderful revival, as people push back against our technology driven society by going back to the hobbies and handicrafts of their parents or grandparents.  In a similar way, many people are trying to get in better touch with where their food comes from – either growing their own, seeking organic alternatives, or participating in things like farm shares.

Kate Jenkins art, in a way, combines these converging concerns, in a lighthearted way that engages a viewer.  There’s the moment of thinking, oh, a box of chow mein, before the viewer goes, “wait a moment – is that fake?”  And suddenly, the tension between ‘fake food’ and ‘real food’ gets blurred, and the viewer has to really think about the piece – the word it took to make it look so realistic and authentic, and the time it took to make the display.  Just like the time it takes to make and grow real food, and the work that is put into fruits and vegetables, shrimp and noodles, before the food makes it onto the plate.

The Crochet Cornucopia series, with my Strawberries, Oranges (and coming soon, Watermelon, Cherries and Carrots), is trying to work toward a same goal.  A person could just purchase toy food from the toy store, or buy plastic food to fill a fruit bowl.  By making the fruits and vegetables themselves, you are declaring that it’s important to have quality items that will last years.  You want homemade fruit that will look beautiful.  You want toys for your children where you don’t have to worry about them teething off the paint or have stuffing fall out.  You want quality things that reflect the time and care and thought you put into making them.

Check out the Crochet Cornucopia patterns on my Ravelry page.

Outrageous Orange

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By Jennifer Crowley

Published in: Tinking Turtle Designs
Craft: Crochet
Category: Softies → Plant; Food
Published: May 2013
Yarns suggested: Stonehedge Fiber Mill Shepherd’s Wool Worsted
Yarn weight: Worsted / 10 ply (9 wpi)
Gauge: 13 stitches and 12 rows = 2 inches in Single Crochet Through Back Loop
Hook size: 3.5 mm (E)
Yardage: 50 – 100 yards (46 – 91 m)
Sizes available: finished strawberry is 2.5″ tall and 2″ wide

Have questions?  Ask them here!

5 Ways to completely Mess up your Knitting or Crochet

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The other day I was giving a private lesson, and my student mentioned she couldn’t wait for the day when she stopped making mistakes in her knitting.  I laughed.  When I stopped, she asked me what was so funny.  I told her, “You never stop making mistakes.  You just figure out how to make worse ones.”

Fixing mistakes kit.
Today’s been one of those weeks where mistakes just keep happening.  I finally had to put my work down, but I can say with confidence here are 5 really good ways to make mistakes with your knitting or crochet:
  1. Watch something entertaining while stitching.  It’ll get you every time.
  2. Knit or crochet while in a dimly lit pub with friends.  Bring your lace work, with lots of yarn overs.
  3. Bring the project where you need to repeat each row to yourself as you make it to sit and stitch.  Start talking about whatever with your friends.  Look down. Realize you started working your last repeat halfway through the row.
  4. Pull the wrong DPN completely out of your sock. Neglect to pick up one of your stitches.
  5. Decide that you don’t really need a lifeline.  Mess up and have to pull back completely to the beginning.
What are some of the best ways you’ve made a mistake with your work?  Share, so other people can learn!

Carrying Davidson With Me

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I’ve been talking a bit the last few days about Davidson College (my alma mater), which has been on my mind since Michael and I are currently driving our way from Washington, DC to Davidson, NC.  As previously mentioned, we’re going for Michael’s brother’s graduation.

I’ve been talking about how Davidson College played heavily into the designing I do today.  From resources like The Needlecraft Center to the art program at Davidson, this town and college started the transformation from a casual stitcher to fiber-arts professional.  There is, however, one other major thing I’ve taken with me away from Davidson that has been instrumental in leading me where I am today.

My husband.  Michael.

Back then, of course, he was my boyfriend, whom I had been dating for three years.  As a freshly minted graduate, I had an English Degree in hand, a job working for my alma mater (which I was very happy about, as the job market had just plummeted), and a plan to live with Michael and two other friends in a house off campus.  Michael and my friends were all seniors, and a year younger than I.

Early design project that has been revised,
and will be published later in the year.

I found myself with a profusion of free time.  Having no course load and a job that lasted from 9-5, I had evenings free for the first time in my life.  It was amazing. I was doing more spinning than I had ever been able to do, and was knitting and crocheting up a storm.  I quickly tired of other people’s patterns, and began to work patterns of my own.

There was one such time, working on a pair of socks, that I began to write things down, so I could remember what I did for the second sock.  And it was about that time that Michael began to say, “You could make money from that.”

At first, I scoffed at the idea.  There aren’t many entrepreneurs in my immediate family, nor did I run into many people where I lived who ran their own business.  In contrast, Michael’s father has run a successful small business most of Michael’s life.  What seemed inconceivable to me seemed obvious to him.

Michael kept at it, though, asking thoughtful questions and encouraging me to learn enough about the industry to make an informed decision.  It was there
where I began to seriously think about what it would take to be a designer.  I wasn’t ready yet to take the leap, and I had a lot of learning to do, but it was at Davidson that the seeds were planted.

Reminiscing about Davidson

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As I mentioned yesterday, I’m heading to Davidson College (my alma mater) over the weekend for my husband’s graduation.  It’s got me thinking about how my experiences at Davidson have lead me to where I am now, designing knit and crochet.

Yesterday I told you about the Neelecraft Center, my very first LYS.  Today I want to tell you about the second of three things that heavily influenced where I am now.  The first was the Neelecraft Center, and the second would be Davidson’s Arts program.  You see I was an english major and my senior year I had fulfilled most of my general requirements.  That meant I was taking classes mostly toward my major.  As things happened, my first semester Senior year I found myself taking three reading-heavy English classes.  There were weeks where I was reading nearly three books a week, plus associated articles with the text we were studying.

It was right about that time that Lauren Cunningham, one of my close friends and an art major, told me I should take a sculpture class.  (She said this, actually, as we were sharpening pencils for one of her really cool sculptures.)  I was dubious, but a few weeks later we were working on another one of her sculptures and it was so much fun I decided ‘what the heck?’

Sculpture was amazing.  I’ve always liked to create things with my hands, and here I was being given the tools to be able to do that.  I learned how to work with wood, weld with metal, and cast in lost wax.  I got to play with plaster, and best of all, I was constantly incorporating crochet and knitting into my work.

Some of my sculptures were pretty weird.  I made a hand that’s dressed up like a clown – it was made in a rush on an impulse, inspired my the “hand anteaters” my father used to make when I was a child.

I also made a piece titled “Rebellion against the Sampler.”  The piece was inspired partly by the then incipient Crochet Coral Reef Project, partly by scrumbling, and partly by a desire to see just how far I could push crochet.  It inspired some rather visceral reactions from my peer reviewers, including one student who claimed it looked like something out of “Dr. Seuss trying to eat my foot.”  At my professor’s encouragement  I entered it into the student art exhibition, and won second place – beating people who were art majors!  It was the first time it occurred to me that I might actually be good at the sculpture and art thing, instead of just enjoying the heck out if it.

Tomorrow, I’ll tell you about the third things at Davidson that brought me to where I am now.  Stay tuned!

Going back to where it all started…

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Davidson Mascot, the Wildcat

This weekend Michael and I are returning Davidson, NC, the home of our alma mater, Davidson College.  Michael’s brother is graduating, ending an eight-year run of family members attending the school. (His poor parents) Davidson is a small school that nobody really knows about.  If you’ve heard of Davidson you’ve probably heard of either Stephen Curry or free laundry.  In the fiberarts world Davidson is the alma mater of Ann Shayne ’85, better known as one of the co-author’s of Mason-Dixon Knitting, and the blog by the same name.  While I don’t know her personally – she graduated far before I went to Davidson – I’d like to think that some of her coolness rubs off onto me.

I’ve got mixed feelings about going back.  I’ve been told things have changed quite a bit since I was there last (in July 2010) – and I’m nervous to see what has changed, and what has remained as I remember it.  I’m excited though, because Davidson was a major influence on where I am now.

Davidson introduced me to my very first LYS (local yarn store), in the form of The Needlecraft Center, right across the street from the campus.  God bless them.  I was a poor college student who could barely afford the yarn out of their “Discount Drawer.”  Still, the staff took me under their wing, listening to me cry about classes or homesickness, teaching me to push myself to become a better stitcher, and occasionally helping me fix my mistakes.

Elaine McArn is the owner of the Needlecraft Center.  She’s one of the first people who taught me there are different ways of knitting.  She’s also the woman who pointed out I was knitting with entirely twisted stitches – and that just might be the reason that my sweater had a mind of it’s own.

Then there were the knit-nights at The Needlecraft Center.  Happening every other week, I loved to hang out with the group of women there.  I made some really good friends, like Garret Freymann-Weyr, who later helped me get my nanny job working with Sweetness and Light.  I liked seeing what the women in the store were making, what was happening with jobs and relationships and family.

There’s more to the story about the Needlecraft Center, and how it intersected with Davidson, but I’ll have to share that tomorrow, in another post. Stay tuned for part 2!

9 Lies and Excuses we Tell Ourselves About Our Yarn Stash

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I made these batts before I knew how to use a drum carder.
I finally admitted to myself that I’m never going to use them.
They are now cat toys – I felted them in the laundry.

I’m in the process of getting organized after the wedding.  This is actually stating it rather mildly – I didn’t realize how many things I’d let go in the last few weeks before the wedding, as small planning details took over much of my brain.  One of the things that has become truly noticeable is how my yarn stash has escapes it’s confines, and is now… well, everywhere.  This is even more of a problem because I have to keep track, and keep separate, stash for designing and personal stash.  I’ve had to confront a few lies and excuses I’ve been telling myself about my stash:

  1. It coordinates with XY&Z, so I should keep it. Some of the time, this is a good reason to hold onto the yarn – especially if you have plans for it.  But if it’s in a weight or fiber that you just don’t use… find a new home for it.  Ravelry has both groups and a stash page for trading or selling yarn you won’t use.  Make use of those resources.  Not familiar with Ravelry?  Then you should take my Ravelry 101 class.
  2. I spun it, thus I must use it. I know the pain of this one, I really do.  But some of the yarns I spun when I was first learning?  I’ll NEVER use.  I didn’t know how to spin what I wanted, so I either spun something too thick, or without enough body.  So, ask yourself some questions: can you give this to someone who will love it?  Can you re-purpose it?  Can you make it into something you can use?  If the answer to all of these is no, it’s time to donate that yarn.  It’s taking up space that could be for something you do use.
  3. But it was such a great deal! This is one point I used to have a lot of problems with.  Now, as a designer, I have an entirely different view about yarn.  But I come from a family of deal – hunters, and that type of upbringing is hard to resist.  Just remember – if you haven’t used it in the past two years, do you really think you are going to use it in the next two years?
  4. I’ll use it someday. Maybe you will.  But if you are like me, the appeal of something new and shiny is better than the yarn that is already in my stash.  Make room for new stuff.  Use it, or (deliberately) loose it.
  5. It’s too nice to make ___ with it. This is one I struggle with.  I have lovely, lovely yarn in my stash, and it’s so beautiful, so wonderful, I can’t find a single pattern that is worthy of it.  A lot of it is my hand-spun  which I have created with such care that I can’t possibly imagine a pattern that will highlight it’s beautify adequately  But I have to realize this: if I don’t ever use it, nobody else will ever see the beautiful hand-spun I made. Or the beautiful yarn that I found.
  6. Everyone has to have a little bit of ___, for emergencies.  This is true to a limited extent.  I recommend to everyone who makes socks to keep a couple of yards of the yarn just in case you have to darn something.  But you don’t need to keep half a skein.  You don’t need three balls of worsted weight black, so you can make eyes on your animals.  A little bit is enough. So save what you need and clear out what you don’t.  You’ll be happier for it.
  7. This dyer is out of business/isn’t available, so I have to keep it! Okay, you can’t get more of it, that is true.  But if you aren’t going to use it, it doesn’t matter how rare of a yarn that it is.  You know what I’m going to say already – be honest with yourself.  Get rid of it if you aren’t going to use it.
  8. I have such fond memories of getting this yarn. Great.  Now make something out of it, so you’ll have fond memories of making something out of it too.  Yarn is meant to be used.
  9. I got it as a gift – I don’t want to insult the person by not keeping it. I actually had a skein of yarn that my now-husband, then boyfriend gave me.  It was acrylic, and he didn’t know better, but it meant the world to me that he thought to buy it for me.  But I’d never use it for something for myself – it just wasn’t what I used.  So I made a quick gift for someone else, and kept a small ball of the leftovers.  I still have that small ball, but now someone else is made happy by what I made.
What things do you keep, even though you don’t use them?  Have you tried to bring down your collection?  How?

Inspirations and Influences: Sweet Strawberries

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Sweet Strawberries is the first in a series of patterns, called collectively Crochet Cornucopia, that will be coming out this year involving food.  I want to talk about why this series of patterns is important – and why I’m passionately committed to releasing them seasonally – as each of the fruits and vegetables comes into season.

My mother is a registered dietitian.  In addition to working as a clinical dietitian (working in a I gave them to her for Christmas, and she was overjoyed (like many mothers would be when their children make them stuff).  But it got me thinking about other people, who might want children-safe playfood or just beautiful crochet pieces to put on display.
hospitality making sure that patients get the right food in order to become well), she is also passionate about children’s nutrition. Just before Christmas, she jokingly said to me that she wanted me to make her some fruits and vegetables – not realizing that I’d already started making some for her.

Meanwhile, Michael and I belong to a farm share.  You might remember some of our adventures in using the food from our farm share from last year.  Eating locally and seasonally is something that Michael and I are passionate about.  Not only is the quality of the food so much better, but belonging to a farm share (or finding another way to eat local) cuts down on transportation pollution  in addition to supporting local farmers and communities.  Even in the winter when our farm share isn’t running, we try our best to eat as many seasonally appropriate fruits and vegetables as possible.  We also do a fair amount of canning, freezing and preserving to hold us through the winter.

Food is important.  Where it comes from, what we eat – it’s not only about nutrition.  It’s about culture, history, values, economics, ethics and choice.  At least once a day – if not two or three or five times – you take time to feed yourself, and every single time you make choices about what you eat and why you eat it.  This, for me, is fascinating stuff – and important!

Sneak preview of the next pattern!

Michael and I weren’t always as fortunate to be able to eat at a farm share.  The first year I was out of college (Michael was still in college), we were on a tight budget, and we had to sometimes choose between the ethical and healthy option or the economic and convenient option.  It is a shocking state of affairs when it is cheaper to buy a doughnut than it is to buy a piece of fruit.  It is cheaper to buy processed and canned food than to buy fresh and local.  In other places that isn’t the case – the cheap option is the local option – you pay more for ease of use.

Crochet Cornucopia isn’t just about making cute fruits and vegetables – though that is part of it.  I’m releasing them seasonally to correspond to the growing season for each piece of produce, aiming for the beginning of the seasons so you have time to make them.  I’m using a yarn that is made in the United States – my effort to use “local” yarn.  And as part of my release schedule, I’ll be doing blog posts connected to the fruits and vegetables.  It’s my form of meditation on where our food comes from.

I’m looking forward to taking you along for the ride.

Sweet Strawberries

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By Jennifer Crowley

Published in: Tinking Turtle Designs
Craft: Crochet
Category: Softies → Plant
Published: April 2013
Yarns suggested: Stonehedge Fiber Mill Shepherd’s Wool Worsted
Yarn weight: Worsted / 10 ply (9 wpi)
Gauge: 13 stitches and 12 rows = 2 inches in Single Crochet Through Back Loop
Hook size: 3.5 mm (E)
Yardage: 50 – 100 yards (46 – 91 m)
Sizes available: finished strawberry is 2.5″ tall and 2″ wide

Debating if this pattern is right for you?  Questions?  This is the place to ask them.

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