Jet setting

Ready for takeoff!

A friend had told me about the paucity of airplanes for babies, which she discovered when her daughter and jet pilot son-in-law had their first child (I’m told Disney is planning a Cars-like movie about planes, so that’s likely to change soon), and I thought that was the perfect push for me to design one.

The pattern is not ready for prime time just yet, but I am very pleased with how this came out. The wings and tailfins are, of course, kind of floppy, but I think that just gives the plane personality.

I washed it the night before giving it to her and it was, unfortunately, not dry by morning (despite over a half hour in the dryer before sitting out overnight). However, that was not the worst thing, because I was able to blow-dry out the marks left by my overnight shaping method:

That photo just amuses me. The plane is about 10 inches long in sport weight yarn (100% acrylic, with 95% polyester/5% silk fiberfill), made with an E hook (3.5mm), and while the engines and base of the tailfins are sewn to the jet body, the wings are crocheted directly onto the body, the base of the tailfins is crocheted directly onto the fins, and the fins are then crocheted together across the top.

Incidentally, I’m pretty sure one of my design drafts looks like a comic book character – a specific one – but I can’t for the life of me figure out which. Any identification out there? The darker color is purple.

Embroidery resources

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My 200th post! I’ve been wanting to add some more organized embroidery resources for a while, and finally posted two pages earlier this week: one on learning hand embroidery, and one on embroidery design. The learning page holds general principles, tips, and links from which to learn individual stitches. The design page has ideas, examples, and resources for using embroidery to make pictures or abstract designs as well as accent sewn goods. It also links to resources for learning more advanced stitches or specialized embroidery techniques.

Having those accessible from the top menu necessitated some reorganization. All old links to pages still work – this is just a menu change. There are three new top-level pages, one for each of my three main activities: embroidery, sewing, and crochet. Each gives a little bullet-point list of what there is to be found here on ReveDreams.com in each category. You can also bypass them by clicking directly on the page you want in the drop-down menu that appears when you hover over the top-level page.

Everything that was formerly on the top menu and doesn’t appear there now is in a drop-down: scrap users and sewing tidbits under sewing, crochet reference and learn crochet under crochet.

I’d love feedback – here or via the contact form – on the navigability and ease of use of my site. If the menus are too crowded for comfort, I can move something to the sidebar.

Embroidery: before you begin

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I thought I’d put out my basic embroidery information. I’m not going to try to make an online stitch dictionary (at least no more than happens naturally from my own explorations), but I have thought a lot about embroidery for beginners through teaching it.

Fabric and thread to start: I like to start people with calico fabric (quilting cotton) and two strands of embroidery floss. That is a good combination weight-wise and those materials present no special challenges. Try other fabrics (coarsely woven, fuzzy or fluffy) and other threads (the full six strands of floss, perle cotton, ribbon) after becoming comfortable with the motions of embroidery. That shouldn’t be long, though, and then there are some rules of thumb for matching. Six strands of floss or something heavier like perle cotton is good on a very coarse fabric or to achieve a dimensional effect. On a puffy fabric such as fleece you’d likely want at least four strands of floss to keep the stitches from disappearing. For a smooth-surfaced fabric such as cotton or felt, two or three strands is good (for detail work a single strand might be employed).

Above: A sampling of materials. The fabric is cotton calico. The brown thread is Coats and Clark 6-stranded embroidery floss (6, 4, and 2 strands shown, left to right), the green at bottom is DMC perle cotton size 5, and the blue at top is Columbia-Minerva 100% wool “Persian-type” needlepoint and crewel yarn.

Tip 1: It is very difficult to separate a single strand of floss from more than one other strand without tangling to the point of knots. I find it easiest to separate two strands at a time, and if I want an odd number of strands, to separate a pair into singles and put the appropriate number together.

Tip 2: While stitching, your floss will want to twist, which can lead to tangles. One way to lessen this is to separate all your strands, run your fingers all the way down each to smooth them, and then put them back together. Wetting the strands when you smooth them helps as well.

Needles: Embroidery needles tend to be fine and sharp, but unless you are working on unforgiving fabric (delicate silk, say), use whatever needle is comfortable to work with, has a large enough eye for the thread, and is sharp enough to pierce the fabric. Wetting and twisting the end of the thread between your fingers will help in threading.

Knots or Not Knots: Knotting is typically not done in embroidery; instead, you leave a few inches loose at the back and weave them under your stitches later (or to start, if it is not your first length of thread). The same is done to secure the opposite end. Sometimes you have to knot, however, such as if you are stitching around the edge of a piece of fabric. In that case two or three overhand knots to start and a half hitch to end are easiest.

Above left: Overhand knot. Above right: Half hitch.

Tip 3: Let your needle dangle from the fabric after every dozen stitches or so. Its weight will help unwind the floss before tangles can happen. For more help, slide the needle down the thread until it is against the fabric, and use your fingers or a pin to separate and re-smooth the strands.

Tip 4: In a situation where knots are appropriate and you have two layers of fabric, provided the thread does not show through a single layer you can hide its end easily. After making your final knot, stitch through one layer only and bring the needle out a short distance away. Pull so the fabric is slightly compressed and snip close to the fabric. The end will disappear between the layers, and the tail should be long enough to stay put inside.

Comfortable Stitching. To keep your hands and forearms from getting sore, stretch and rub them frequently. Make sure you are not gripping the work too tightly, and change your hand position regularly. If it is difficult to get the needle through the fabric, use a thimble to push and a bit of rubber to pull (you may buy one for the purpose, or cut a 1.5-2″ square of a rubber jar opener). As a right-handed stitcher, I find it is most comfortable to stitch with the needle pointing somewhere between left and forward, and to tighten the thread up or to the right. Experiment for the best solution for you – for me it is frequently not the direction given in stitch instructions.

First Friday

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Happy June to you all!

My list of crochet techniques to try only grows: playing with the crocodile stitch and Jacob’s Ladder technique, crocheting with wire or cassette tape (provided I am convinced it’s not hazardous to my health to do so), beaded crochet, more intensive color work, and (the most recent addition) overlay crochet.

Overlay crochet is a technique that produces flat but multi-layered motifs in the round. In its fullest version the “background” is stitched in back loops only and the front loops are used to stitch outer-round colors into the inner rounds either by chains connecting them or by very long stitches. It is a great elaboration of spike stitches; I found simpler patterns that have this idea on Ravelry and Crochetville (both free).

Online patterns for overlay are not abundant. There is a woman in Germany who sells beautiful patterns on Etsy and Ravelry under the name CAROcreated; I chose this pattern of hers as my entree into overlay crochet. I ordered 2-ply afghan yarn (sport weight) from Herrschners, below, to make it, in colors chosen on a whim.

There is a much simpler free pattern of an overlay crochet heart available as well, but I went to the CARO pattern because I had some confusion that twisted me up when I looked at it. I think it is not so hard as I thought at first. The only other pattern I found that was called overlay crochet was an afghan block with overlaid hummingbirds, though I believe these Tangled Web and Celtic Cross afghan blocks both qualify. Offline, there is a book called Overlay Crochet Jewelry, by Melody MacDuffee, who really developed and popularized the technique, and one chapter (also by her) in the book Crochet Master Class.

I would have to consult the books to know what overlay crochet does and does not consist of “officially.” This flower (free) is three-dimensional because each layer of petals is made in two rounds of stitching. To add a layer of petals, you start by making a round of single crochet in the spaces between the petals of the previous layer, joined by enough chains to make a circle but no more. Those chains lie behind the previous layer of petals and well below their tips; the second round of stitching creates the next layer of petals on those chains. I’m pretty sure that technique alone is not overlay crochet, though there is a beautiful stained glass afghan square on Ravelry that combines this technique with “proper” overlay crochet.

Finally, on the stained glass topic, here is another stained glass crochet project – this time far, far larger – that also uses a technique that ends looking similar to overlay crochet. However, the description says the front is made first and the back after, so I doubt the construction details are the same as the overlay patterns I’ve linked to.

Anyway! That’s my plan. You will certainly see my CAROcreated pattern when I finish, and I’ll let you know what I learn about overlay crochet!

Number one in gauge

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As I work on my crochet self-study program, I find many topics I want to investigate. One of those is gauge. I make virtually no items that are gauge-dependent; as long as my stitching is tight enough to hold stuffing and consistent enough to keep the pieces-parts of an amigurumi proportional, it doesn’t matter how big it is.

A couple of examples for the course’s page on tension and gauge expanded into six swatches, every combination of two yarns and three hooks. The results were unexpected, to say nothing of the information on the ball bands. Without further ado, though, the swatches themselves:

The brighter, lighter pink, in smaller swatches overall, is Caron Simply Soft. The darker pink, larger swatches are Red Heart With Love. I chose these yarns because they are both 100% acrylic and in yarn weight classification 4-Medium, but are otherwise as different as they can be. As you can see below, With Love is visibly thicker; it is also slightly fuzzy, almost chenille-like, and the strands are more cohesive. Simply Soft is almost slick in its smoothness and has a tendency to split.

To find out to what degree my impression of thickness reflected objective reality, I calculated the WPI (wraps per inch; basically the number of parallel strands that can be lined up within an inch) of each yarn. I don’t have a lot of confidence that I was doing it completely correctly, but I measured a WPI of 8 for With Love and 10 for Simply Soft. That’s a significant difference! According to Ravelry, both should have WPIs of 8, though that makes me think the WPI was not actually calculated for each, but just assigned according to weight class. Which makes it not so useful.

I did not expect to be anywhere close to the gauge on the yarn label (ball band). I know PlanetJune discovered one yarn brand where a recent skein had yarn that was measurably thinner than an older skein’s contents, but the ball band’s gauge information was unchanged. That led me to be suspect of all of them, in addition to my experience being very different from stated gauges in the past. Before starting the swatches, my theory had been that for yarn substitutions, yards per ounce would be a better comparison point than the gauge on the label. However, I discovered something totally counterintuitive: Simply Soft gives you slightly fewer yards per ounce than With Love. That is, Simply Soft is enough denser than With Love that despite being so much thinner, if you weigh equal lengths of each kind of yarn Simply Soft will be a bit heavier. So that theory went out the window.

The swatches above were made with F (3.75mm), H (5mm), and K (6.5mm) hooks, chaining 20 and single crocheting 25 rows. The hooks were chosen because F is a typical amigurumi hook for me, H was recommended on the Simply Soft label, and K was recommended on the With Love label.

And now, the gauges:

	sc per 4″ (10cm)	rows per 4″ (10cm)
Simply Soft F	16	18.7
With Love F	13.3	14.5
Simply Soft H	14	17
With Love H	11.2	12.8
Simply Soft K	11.4	14.5
With Love K	9.6	11.8

A few observations: for me, same-width single crochets in thinner yarn are shorter than those in thicker yarn. The middle four rows of the table make it look like a 1.5mm change in hook size about accounts for the yarn in terms of stitch width (the difference between H and K; F and H are only 1.25mm apart, though there is no guarantee moving down to E/3.5mm wouldn’t overcompensate), pictured below. If I were to take a pattern for With Love and want to make a more open, drapier version of it with Simply Soft, my first move would be to go up 1.5mm in hook size, and then try using extended single crochet to increase the height, though perhaps only every other row.

Rather to my surprise, my stitches were larger than the label gauge. The With Love label said that using a K hook there should be 14 stitches and 14 rows to obtain a 4″ square. I only needed about 10 and 12, respectively. My F hook swatch was much closer than my K hook swatch! The gauge for Simply Soft with an H hook was 18 stitches and 24 rows, whereas I only needed 14 and 17. Even my F hook swatch was too large.

More investigation is needed. In particular, I’d like to know whether I’m always larger than the label gauge, and whether it’s by a consistent amount (proportion). There is always something to learn.

How to teach embroidery

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The title is misleading – “how to teach embroidery” is more of a question than an answer. I’ve taught it multiple times at the Sew-Op and the students seem satisfied, so perhaps I’ve succeeded already, but it’s such an odd, free-form class that I can’t really tell.

I’ve got another session of embroidery class tonight, so I’ve been thinking about this question over the past couple of weeks. Should I make it a project class? In December I taught one aimed at making felt ornaments, with a variety of holiday and non-holiday patterns printed on tracing paper. No one used any; they were all interested in embroidery for their own purposes.

Still, it’s nice to have something to hang up in the store to entice people to sign up. That didn’t happen, but I do have a few of the new models I wanted. In the last five or six days I’ve remembered several I would have liked last time, but didn’t note down for myself in any place I’ve looked at since.

You’ll see these apples again.

I have learned some things in the few times I’ve taught embroidery. One was how to successfully make a French knot! No longer are they the bane of my cross-stitching experience. I’ve also had to learn to be flexible in how I describe stitches. I may do well describing the blanket stitch in terms of compass directions or the corners of a box, but that doesn’t mean everyone will. I even had one student who was the most kinesthetic learner I’ve ever met, and the only thing that worked was actually placing the needle for her and having her complete the motion, all the way through the stitch. After that she had it, but description and demonstration did not suffice.

I try to emphasize how much can be done with just a few stitches, bringing a pile of examples to class. The embroideries for my children’s book quilt are almost entirely straight and satin stitches, with a few backstitched or stem-stitched portions (none of which are vital to the look). I have an antique handkerchief done in satin and straight stitch, and a tea towel with lovely flowers and butterflies made from lazy daisy, blanket stitch, stem stitch, and French knot. The examples I hope to have before the next time are more thorough but also modular: different numbers of strands, perle cotton and other non-embroidery-floss materials, quilting cotton versus more coarsely-woven fabrics, stitching in different sizes and with different proportions. Ideally I’ll eventually have a personal stitch sampler with a page for each stitch and for different thread/fabric combinations that can have its pages taken out and passed around.

Since there are only so many stitches we can cover in two hours, I try to emphasize the motions that distinguish the categories of stitches and are common to multiple stitches. Are you overlapping? Catching a strand? Pointing your needle in the same direction as the stitch line is progressing, off by ninety degrees, or backwards? My handout covers lots of embroidery basics, tips, and advanced notes they may come back to later, as well as ten stitches with variations. We don’t come close to covering all of them, but having them in the handout allows me to tailor the class to the interests of the participants. We always start simply with running stitch and general thread management, but then: If they are interested in classic stitching like my tea towel, we’ll cover stem stitch, French knot, chain stitch, and blanket stitch, probably in that order. If they are interested in making pictures more like my children’s book embroideries, we’ll work on the various straight stitches and doodle in thread. If they want to put edgings on blankets and garments, we’ll cover whipstitch, blanket stitch, and cross-stitch, and I might ad lib herringbone stitch.

Doing is the most important part of any class in arts and crafts, though. Doing anything! If I can teach them the basic motions and how to think about embroidery stitches, it doesn’t much matter which particular stitches we cover because they’ll be equipped to learn others on their own.

Maybe I had more answers than I thought…

Reviving, part 2

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In part 1, I showed you the result of combining two of my three worn shirts into one reverse-appliqued shirt. There was one left, and I planned to combine it with a secondhand white shirt and overdye again, but I didn’t want to completely repeat myself. Ultimately I had this:

This took longer both because there were more steps and because I didn’t buckle down with it like I did with the green shirt. The white shirt was a men’s XL and huge, so before beginning I cut a panel out of the front so that I would leave a usable amount of the material in its original state. I thought the birds would be more interesting if they weren’t solid red on a red-orange background, so I tried out a Tulip tie-dyeing kit. After accordion folding and rubber-banding the fabric, and then folding it in thirds and rubber-banding again, I put it in a plastic bag, sprinkled dye powder on it, and wet it thoroughly with a spray bottle. This was to preserve the leftover dye powder for later use, as the box warns it loses potency fast, without making the risky maneuver of putting it in a cup and mixing it separately. I could see myself getting dye powder all over the counters. I let it sit for about seven hours and then rinsed it and washed it. Good results! [Incidentally, I tried dyeing elastic as well, and you can see the mixed results there. The one that dyed well was Dritz stretch lace elastic, and the one that barely dyed at all was Stretchrite knit elastic.]

I’d wished for a dark red, like RIT’s wine color, but this would have to do. At least it came out well!

After a time I decided to dye it again, bundled it up in a different direction (and with a scrunch rather than accordion folding), folded it in half, rubber banded it three times and threw it in a dilute bath of RIT dark brown. That made it come out even better. I pinned the dyed panel inside the orange shirt, on which I had drawn freehand bird shapes. As with the previous shirt I sewed with higher thread tension and lower presser foot pressure, just outside the drawn lines. Since there was really no obvious color choice for thread, I used yellow, thinking this might help the birds really pop once the whole shirt was overdyed. After stitching, once again, I very carefully cut out the birds.

I wanted to do something to the back of the shirt, but decided after trying it on at this point that birds all the way around would be too much. Instead I raised my thread tension a bunch and sewed with a long stitch along a line centered on the back of the shirt at about the level of the tops of the birds’ heads. That gathered the fabric nicely, and then I pinned a length of ribbon along the line on the inside and stitched the fabric to it with a short, narrow zigzag.

Then came a red dye bath, which I did not pay much attention to, and ended up with a very splotchy shirt – almost tie-dyed.

This is why the RIT bottle says “STIR CONSTANTLY.”

It really wasn’t my cup of tea, especially the strange shade of pink the birds had turned, so I went one more round to get the result at the top of the post. This time it was in the washing machine instead of a bucket, and was a dilute bath of red, orange, and brown that I left the shirt in for a good hour. There was some relief when I pulled it from the wash afterward, though it was unfortunate how much the variegation on the birds had disappeared.

Overdyeing like this, incidentally, is something I learned from reading about graphic design. When choosing a color scheme, for a website for example, one way you can make sure the colors coordinate is to set out your palette and then add a semi-transparent layer of a single color over all of them. The resulting blended colors have more in common with each other. The first time I wore the green shirt a longtime quilter, sensitive to color, commented on how well the colors went together, which told me the technique did indeed translate successfully to dye!

Peacock pen case

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At last! I finished the pencil case for my dear husband, with the embroideries of his comics adorning the outside.

I’ll show you how I did it. I thought it out before beginning, but it was the first one I ever made and shows a certain amount of evidence of that fact. It is approximately 3″ by 6.5″ by 1″.

To make one just like this (sans comics) you will need:
1 zipper, 22″ long (a lot of that was cut off but the overhang was convenient in the making; it must be at least 15″)
4 strips of elastic each 4″ long (mine was 3/8″ wide and I colored it purple with a Crayola fabric marker)
2 rectangles of fusible interfacing, 4″ by 7.5″ (I used a medium weight)
and the following five pieces in each of two fabrics, one for the outside and one for the inside:
2 rectangles 4″ by 7.5″ (the faces)
2 strips 2″ by 17.25″ (could be as narrow as 1″ and could be a bit shorter also)
1 rectangle 2″ by just over 4″ (if your zipper is closer to 15″ the 4″ measurement here needs to be longer, up to 6″; my shorter measurement was 2.25″ but that wasn’t a good idea)

Face Preparation:
Other than piecing my outer faces, this was the beginning of the pencil case: iron the fusible interfacing onto the wrong sides of the inner fabric faces and then attach the elastic. Pin two pieces of elastic to each side, across the short distance, so they are centered and an inch apart. Stitch at just under 1/2″ from the edge and again at about 1/4″ to hold in place. The elastic can definitely be omitted or replaced with one centered strip, as desired.

This last step might be postponed until after the zipper is prepared, so you can adjust sizes as needed. With inner and outer faces both, fold the edges to the wrong side at 1/2″ all the way around and press. I like to press the side folds and then open it up, fold in the corner triangle, and then fold the edges down so no exposed raw edges are near the outer fold.

Zipper Preparation:
Sandwich the zipper between one outer and one inner fabric strip, right sides facing the zipper and raw edges lined up with the outer edge of the zipper tape. Center the strips on the zipper. Stitch about 1/4″ from the edge – I ran my regular presser foot along the teeth of the zipper with the needle shifted to the left, which was approximately 1/4″. The idea is to have a decent seam allowance while keeping the fabric away from the zipper pull.

Fold both strips out and press, then stitch together at least 1/8″ outside the zipper tape to hold them in place. Repeat this process on the other side of the zipper. Fold strips along edge of zipper tape so inner fabric is enclosed, outer fabric showing, and press a crease along the tape.

To make the corners, mark the center of the strips and then mark 3.25″ away from the center in each direction, and again 3″ beyond each of those points. Omitting the center, you should have four marks, the outer two each 3″ away from the closer of the inner two, and the inner two 6.5″ apart. Pinch at each mark to make a fold perpendicular to the strip, outer fabric enclosed, and pin to hold that fold in place.

At this point life gets easier if you unzip the zipper. Bend the zipper the opposite direction from the fold you just marked (i.e., so the inner fabric is to the inside) and let that fold wrap to the inside until it meets the crease at the edge of the zipper tape. Baste in place.

Final Assembly:
The folded-in edges of the fabric strips on the zipper will be sandwiched between the prepared faces and topstitched around, though at first you must leave an opening on the side where the ends of the zipper meet that is wide enough to accommodate that last unpaired piece of fabric. I found it easiest to sew just the inner face on first and the outer face on in a separate step.

Zip the pencil case to the first corner and trim each end of the zipper just past the fabric strips. The remaining pieces of fabric will cover the ends of the zipper, sandwiching them, with the long edge parallel to the zipper. Fold the short edges of those pieces to the wrong side by 1/2″ (less if necessary to cover the zipper ends, more as desired if you have extra) and press.

Mark 1/2″ from each long edge with a pin. Slide each piece under the faces of the corresponding fabric, above everything else, so the pins line up with the folded edge of the faces. Topstitch along the edge of the faces, so the previous stitching now goes all the way around, and across the zipper near the folded edge of the fabric. Done!

Color conundrum

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In part 2 of beginning crochet, I teach basic color work. I don’t do a lot of color work, and when I do it’s typically in a case where the unused color can hang out loose behind the work, so it’s based on less experience than pretty much the entire remainder of the course. I was practicing before the most recent iteration, and made the following from a cross-stitch pattern:

Holy tension problems, Batman! As a note, this was made with worsted-weight yarn and an H hook (5mm). I tried again, resisting with all my might the urge to tug the yarn down when I switched colors:

Immediately after I finished the piece some of the carried yarn was peeking out between the strands of the yarn in use, but I stretched the finished piece vertically and then horizontally and they all disappeared. Apparently for me the key is to hang loose.

So, then, that’s all about practice, but what can be done about the exploded mess that is the back side of the stitch? It seemed perhaps I’d found the reason that well over half the fancy color work I’d seen online was on pieces worked in the round.

There is either surprisingly little to be found online about colorwork, or I have not found the right search terms. I mostly got pages with what I have always seen as simply the correct way to change colors in crochet, presented as though it is a special technique.

However, Carol Ventura’s blog about tapestry crochet includes a tutorial category, and there I found a post about the mess wrong sides make. Her solution? Crochet in such a way that all the stitches’ fronts are on the same side of the work. She either switches hands between rows or works the “wrong side” rows with a backwards crochet technique.

The comments section of that post includes another tip: if you’re making something with a larger hook (J/6mm or K/6.5mm, say), it will look better if the carried colors are uniform, since they will show through a bit. That is, if there are stretches where you are carrying white inside yellow, you should carry white inside all the yellow stitches.

As a bonus, as someone who crochets with always at least two and often several more colors, she has a solution to the twisting-strands problem: don’t untwist, just make sure the twist is right up against the back of the work. You can see in the example in her post about this that it does not produce any bump or peek of color, at least when done right.

I can see I have some practicing to do!

Stitching vistas

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Through the Sew-Op, I had the chance to take a two-part course from one of my fellow teachers, Sally Munro, on landscape quilting. We used the method in the book Accidental Landscapes, by Karen Eckmeier. I chose a photo of sunset as seen from my grandparent’s backyard when I was growing up (appearing in speckly scan form below). See what you think of the interpretation:

I took a few progress photos to give you a sense of how it went together.

The sky and water were made from pieced fabric, through a technique called texturing where you cut a slightly wavy edge, press it down a quarter inch, and topstitch it to the layer above. After trimming the lower layer to a quarter inch below the stitching, you can add the next one. Cutting a wavy edge rather than a straight one gives a more organic feeling to the piece. The perfect colors miraculously came out of Sally’s fabric stash.

The tree was black fabric on Steam-A-Seam cut out by hand with a previous copy of the photo on top of the fabric. It is on top of the sky but extends below the top edge of the water, for extra security.

The binding is one continuous strip, joined into a loop after being sewn on three sides and a couple of inches into the fourth on each side. It is turned to the back and hand-sewn down. I used corner pockets for a hanging rod; the binding is what’s called a French twist and is supposed to create its own rod casing, but the fabric I used was too narrow to accommodate anything but the tiniest of dowels, with virtually no overhang at the ends.

Unfortunately I basted by machine, which was not Sally’s intent, and couldn’t get the needle marks out. It’s a good thing I had basted with the direction of the design! I will know better next time. It was a wonderful learning experience, though, and I am more than happy with the way it came out.

Boifday

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Tomorrow is my birthday, and although last year I didn’t even mention it, the year before I took a post to explore projects that went better than I could have hoped. This year I’m just going to have a little chitty-chat about hopes, dreams, plans, and gratitudes (though I also updated the showcase (showoff) category).

The past year has been major. I alluded to big changes to come at the beginning of last year, and while things have moved more slowly than I originally planned, the changes have indeed come. Along with some I did not plan! It wasn’t until after writing that post that I started dating my husband, with all his varied interests and collaborations. The day after tomorrow is our first anniversary of becoming engaged (he would have proposed on my birthday, but the ring wasn’t ready yet). His support has been inexpressibly valuable to me.

The change I had planned on was leaving my job as a math professor at the end of the 2011-2012 school year and striking out on my own as a craft teacher and designer. This blog chronicles most of that: constructing and teaching classes, designing crochet patterns, my other crafts done out of personal interest or need and perhaps with the goal of learning something along the way. I’ve been doing some mathematical work on the side, and won’t let that slip entirely, but I hope to make craft the central focus of my career. The opening of my crochet pattern store less than two months ago was just the latest step in this path. I have big plans for future design and branching out from amigurumi, and I have to remind myself that trying to do everything all at once is just going to lead to a big bottleneck with zero income meanwhile.

There are ups and downs. The store opened much later than I originally hoped – but allowed me time to make a major revision to pattern layout that I think much improves usability, and to find WooCommerce, an open source WordPress plugin for online sales. My first pattern sale to someone I didn’t know personally turned out to have been a misunderstanding that ended in a refund – but brought to my attention a technical problem I’m glad came up when it still didn’t have much of an impact.

So it is one step at a time, one pattern at a time, one class at a time. My wonderful sister has been my other biggest cheerleader, and I can’t close this post without thanking her as well!

So happy birthday to me, and break a leg to my fourth-grade sister-in-law, who features in a school production of The Pied Piper of Hamelin tonight.

Crochet class, revised

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Tonight begins another two-part crochet class, my third at the Sew-Op. In light of my experience and the fact that I’ve put most of the previous curriculum on the Learn Crochet pages (which, by the way, got several hours of revision over the weekend, and will get more next weekend in advance of part 2 of the class), I’ve switched things up. Tonight we’ll begin making this little poorly-photographed bag:

We’ll start with the tassels; one is a plain chain, one a chain adorned with a slip-stitched faux good luck knot, and one a chain with a flag of solid single crochet at the end. The drawstring will be homework lest we spend all our time chaining. The bag is worked bottom up and you can get through more than half of it knowing only chain, slip stitch, single crochet and sc increase. Once you get near the top there is some decreasing and double crochet, which we will cover in the second class. There should be plenty of time for some special topics according to student interest at the end of the second class. I’m excited to try this new approach!