Did I tell you about crochet class?

In high school, I definitely thought crochet kicked knitting's butt. I made my brother Aaron a series of ill-fitting crocheted beanies (too thick, too short, rather like a puffy yarmulke) and my Aunt Glo and rather terrifying scarf that I'd rather not even describe here. Then college hit and my dorm buddies reminded me how to execute a few basic knitting skills, and my costume teacher Martha lent me a set of double points and I never looked back. My crochet skills were only the tiniest bit revived when I co-taught the Montessori crafts camp with Cindy, a famous crocheter (I just love those two words together).

So when I had the chance to take a crochet class aimed partly at knitters who wanted to branch out, I was very excited. Deb, our teacher, had a slew of project choices for us, each of which would help us get the hang of certain skills. Our first project that we all did together was a felted box. (Hey, all this time I've been swearing that Lamb's Pride is the best basic worsted weight yarn for felting, and it turns out, it's actually Cascade 220. Huh!)


After boxes, we branched out into washcloths (mine is a shell stitch):


and granny squares (I didn't spend much time on mine because I want to do one of those amazingly humongous granny square blankets made with some yarn that has long color repeats, like Noro or Mini Mochi or Tie-Dye).


Then I went stash diving and came up with the perfect half-skein of gorgeous Brooks' Farm Primero, 100% kid mohair, that Meg sold me at the yarn swap last year. This was the perfect project: done by the end of the class, used up almost exactly the amount of yarn that I had, required no counting or pre-planning. Done. I love it!

Darn!

Double darn!



I guess this is the Universe's way of letting me know that while blacksmithing is nice and all, I should be working on learning how to darn socks. Sigh...

I'm off to check the Ravelry forums for helpful hints and/or video tutorials.

A very overdue post about my Felting Class: how to make a felt hat from roving

Several weeks ago I was lucky enough to score a spot in Carla Owen's class on felt-making, using resists to felt things in the round. In the back of the room there were two tables covered in gigantic balls of wool (wound out of long strips of merino wool, the primary wool we'd be using that week). Under the table were boxes and boxes of domestic breeds, all in natural un-dyed colors. Heaven!

Our first project was a hat. We all started with the same exact size and shape. The size was determined by the resist, which is made out of that kind of thick yet flexible material you might cover chairs in a diner with. carla knew the shrinkage rate for merino (40%), so had made a resist that was 40% bigger than our actual hat was supposed to end up. Of course, since it's felt we're making, lots of different sized hats could come from the same size resist, because if you have a bigger head you could stop felting earlier, and if you needed it smaller you could just keep going. It was so interesting to see all the different types of hats that the class made, just from felting at different rates and on different areas of our hats! Several friends of mine have asked how I made the hat, so Ashley and Jenna, this one's for you!

So how exactly do you go about actually making a resist felted object? First of all, we worked on screens. Just a roll of nylon screen, the type you'd use for a window. We first placed a paper pattern that was a little bit wider than the resist on the table and put the screen over it, and then laid out three layers of roving, in loose tufts, with the first layer laid out horizontally, the next layer with the fibers running vertically, and the final layer horizontally again. Then we put the resist down on top of the wool, and did another three layers just like the first, but on top of the resist. Because the paper pattern we used was slightly wider than the resist, the layers of wool overlapped at the edges (except the bottom edge, of course, which is the opening), and we encouraged that overlapping by using our fingertips to splash a little water on the edges and sort of glue them in place so that they curved around each other.



Once all the layers are in place, we put another piece of screen on top and sort of basted them together with a running stitch of twine, stitching as close to the wool as possible. This proved to be very helpful, as the secureness of the screen sandwich helped all the wool stay in place while we rubbed it like crazy with soapy hands. (This class was very exfoliated by the end of the first day). Also, as you start to felt the hat, the edges will start to pull away from the stitched outline you made, which shows you just how far you've come.

Felting step one: sprinkle your project with water. Step two: rub the screen with a bar of natural, old fashioned soap. Steps three through three hunded and three: agitate. Rub up and down, side to side, ball that sucker up (once it's all started turning into felt, of course) and squoosh the hell out of it. Keep on agitating it until you feel like it's pretty solid, and then cut your stitching off the screens, toss the screens aside, and reach your hands into the hat and work just the seams. They are delicate! But they get nice and strong really fast once you start working them from inside and out at the same time. Here's a picture of my hat, with the resist still inside, before I started working the seams.

Once the seam is strong all the way around, you're done with the resist! Now it's time to put it on your head and take a silly "before" picture, so you can remember just how big and floppy it once was.




I'm so proud of my hat. It's exactly what I was after, in size, color, shape, and everything. I wore it in my Morris Dance class this weekend and it was just perfect. Total success!

Later in Carla's class I attempted to make an oversized "mountaineer" hat, like a moonshiner's hat, from a pattern left behind by legendary Canadian host and blacksmith Matt Jenkins. He even wrote on the pattern, "Matt's Big-ass Hat". I felted it too quickly in width and not fast enough in length, so it's crazy tall. Fortunately, Conway my co-host tried it on and it looks perfect on him! He wore it during our Morris presentation and it looked so nice, I said he could keep it. Happy trails, big-ass hat!

Our stomping gets featured on the Folk School Blog

Here is a nifty little write-up from recent birthday girl Emolyn Liden who co-taught the weekend clogging class a few weekends ago.

Suh-weet!

Class re-cap: Quilting with Mary Lou Weidman

The final week of our three Advanced Weeks culminated with a dilemma: my first two choices were full, and since my life's skill set has been cultivated to be spread as widely and diversely as possible, I really was not advanced enough to be in anything. I reckoned that Quilting was a safe bet, as I've had one weekend quilting class, and have been working on that hand-sewn English Paper Piecing project, and oh yes, I spent about 5 years of my life sewing garments in high school and university theatre costume departments.

What I didn't know about the quilting class was that it was being taught by a very famous quilter (Mary Lou Weidman) who has a very distinct style, and most of the other students in her class had been in other classes of hers and knew exactly what to expect. I was the complete opposite! I showed up thinking I was going to make a functional, washable quilt, and Mary Lou had planned the week to be sort of an art-quilt/ story-quilt wall hanging type of class. Oops. Luckily for me, Mary Lou and her assistant Kathy came prepared to help all of the students achieve their own goals, and when I said I'd rather make a useable quilt, they were totally fine with it. So the rest of the class was doing really intense applique stuff, and I was piecing an invention of Mary Lou's, called... wait for it... "Hoochy Mama" quilting. I have to admit, through the fault of my being in my late 20's, that this name is hideously embarrassing for me to be batting about in conversation, say, in the dining hall ("what'd you do today?" "Uh, I made some Hoochy Mama squares..."), but the name apparently came from a sweet old lady who would yell "HOOCHY MAMA!" everytime she finished something, rather than the "you ain't nothing but a hoochie mama/ hoodrat hoodrat hoochie mama" that we all had to hear over and over in the 90's (thanks, 2 Live Crew!). Although I have to admit it was pretty funny to me that every time Mary Lou said the word "hoochy mama" in class, my internal juke box bellowed "BIG BOOTY HOES! Up wid it!" It was all I could do to not yell it out loud. I mean, I didn't even know I remembered that song.

Anyway, in the quilting world, thanks to Mary Lou's book and workshops, to hoochy a block is to deliberately misalign the corners of the fabrics you're piecing, which renders measuring pretty much unnecessary and careful sewing a thing of the past. WHICH IS AWESOME. All those semesters in high school when I wanted to make up my own pattern and the teacher told me it just was not possible, that such a thing would be a veritable sewing sin? Totally vindicated now.

Enough words, let's take a look at what I made. Here's the front, which is a pattern called (I think) hoochy stars, using fabric I bought on Saturday in Asheville with Sarah. Here's the first step:

(What I did was cut all the purple 4" squares and put them up on a design board, then I'd take down four from each nine-block group and hoochy some green points onto them.)

Then I took the middle four out and added orange diamonds, hoochied of course.

(See how the corners are all catty-wampus? That's on purpose.)

Then I finally got to sew all those seams together! Now it starts to look like a real quilt top:


Here's the top without its border. Note how the orange really pops out at you, because it's the only bright color:


Now check it with the border:

Now that's a quilt! I love it. I also quilted the back, just because the top was done halfway through the week and I didn't know what else to do with my time.

(You guessed it: those are hoochy hearts.)

Mary Lou actually blogged about our class here, complete with pictures of everyone in our class and their projects. She even wrote a little paragraph about me!

300 Posts!

I just realized that I reached 300 posts here about, oh, three posts ago. I didn't celebrate when I got to 200, but I did do a little capsule update on the 100th Postiversary (which was April 16, 2007-- and it's crazy that that is over two years ago. What the heck?)

To celebrate, I'm reposting what I wrote on that day in April, from the snowy spring in Vermont, with updaty-type comments in bold. This is completely narcissistic, but isn't that what blogging is, in its truest form? Read on if you're interested, all 9 of you.

***** ***** ***** whooshing you back to 2007***** ***** *******

(me, then-- pretty much exactly the same as me, now)

You are all invited to my 100 Posts celebration, in celebration of the fact that I've now posted 100 times to this blog.
When: Now
Where: Here
RSVP: you just did!
Wow, thanks for coming, everyone. Here's a quick update:

-I am being flown down to Williamsburg for a job interview at a most excellent Montessori school, which would be grand for several reasons, the top reasons being a) the job title includes lots of creative artistic work being done with younger children and b) it's full time with benefits and c) the director seems like someone I would very much like to work with and she understands a living-and-working synthesis that I would like very much for my life and d) it's in Williamsburg, close to the campus where Kenny will be squeezing out his brains every day. So, here's hoping I am suave and smooth and relaxed come the interview weekend. (Dude, I got that job and loved it, and am still loving it, albeit from afar, temporarily. So glad that one worked out as smoothly as it did. Here's to at least one more great year at WMS.)

-I'm in Princeton right now, hanging out with people that I like and care for very much, enjoying a respite from the snows of Vermont. (Ahh, Princeton! How sad that the Shimizu clan has moved on from your hallowed streets. It still hasn't really hit me that my future Father- and Step Mom-in-law have moved to the West Coast. I miss it and them very much.)

-I've been doing some hot glass work in the basement, which makes me feel good, since it was such a financial investment to set up my own studio. (See very recently posted entry for the extreme happiness it brings me to finally have come back to this.)

-let's see... oh yes, have successfully knit two pairs of socks (one for me, one baby-sized which will be mailed off to a Canadian-Vietnamese baby quite soon) (Alisa and Duy now have two daughters. Holy crap. There's nothing like someone else's baby to make you wonder what the heck you've been doing with your time...)

-I weathered a stomach-flu (not mine) last week, and am always proud of myself when I manage to manage someone else's vomiting without screaming and running away. I was actually quite maternal and caring. Sweet. (Ah, yes, that time when Kei threw up for 24 hours straight, just totally cementing the fact that I will not ever eat peas. Not that I was uncertain about that at any point, mind you.)

-I reckon that's it for now. Life is good. (And it still is.)

Thanks for reading! See you at 400?

Clicking (the mouse kind and the sticks kind) for good

I just stopped by to blog about the amazing Haiti relief effort that Ravelry is conducting: all sorts of indy designers are donating part of the profits from their pattern sales and all you have to do (if you're on Ravelry) is click here to see which patterns are specially tagged as being part of the effort. Once you're there you can see which tagged patterns are already in your queue, and do some pattern shopping that not only supports the disaster relief efforts AND indy knitwear designers but that also helps you stay an organized knitter/crocheter. Triple win.

I found three Haiti-tagged patterns that I've been meaning to buy, and had put them in my queue at some point in the past few months, so I bought them using my PayPal account (which is staying in the black because of other people who buy handmade from this independent craftster. Are we using the internet in the best way possible or what?!) Here are the patterns I chose to buy:


End of May Mittens by Mandy Powers (Rav link)
(Loved these from the moment I saw them. Stranded colorwork in worsted weight? Only one ball of each color and you're done with the set plus enough left over to make a hat? Yes, please.)


Veyla by Ysolda Teague. Enough said. (Rav link) I told my bestest Vermonter bridesmaid that I would knit her a pair of these, like, forever ago. Sorry Jules! But look, maybe it'll happen now that I've finally bought the pattern!


Ahh, the marvelous squirrel. Always so cute, sometimes white (Brevard) or black (Princeton), usually misspelled (by me). These Squirrel Sampler Mittens from Hello Yarn caught my fancy because they're lined, and you can put a name or date on the front. Perfect. (Rav link).

Ahhh, retail therapy! Because of my New Years Resolution #2, of course, I won't be knitting up any of these mittens for awhile now (and oh my god, I just now realized I bought three mittens patterns. Seriously, it did not occur to me at all during the oggling/purchasing spree that they were ALL FREAKING MITTENS. Awesome. Must do more shopping at night.) So once I finish my wedding shawl, and the crazy Fair Isle cardigan, and the brown yoke pullover, I may indeed cast on for one--or all-- of these.

Now go, do some supporting of your own.

Class re-cap: Advanced Glass Beads with Kimberely Adams

Advanced weeks are somewhat tricky for hosts: as we can only register the Tuesday before classes begin, we are limited to only those classes with space available. And during advanced week, this means we need to have a short list of several classes we're advanced enough to get into, most of which require specific previous experience. Fortunately, there were two open spaces in Kim Adams' lampwork class and both Conway and I managed to get in! It was a total dream. All day, from after breakfast to late at night, I did nothing (no, really, nothing) but work at regaining the skills that I let atrophy away in the past 2.5 years or so since I've been able to set up my torch. (Which was last used in the basement of Ken's Mom's Vermont home for two blissful and chilly months before being packed away in a box, where it currently still resides. Poor torch.)

So anyway, it was great to be able to stretch my glass muscles (not literally) and make my fingers remember how to gather, wind on, center, add stringer and dots, manipulate edges into the perfect dimple, etc. Kim's class was geared, of course, to the way more advanced bead maker, and she brought lots of far out expensive stuff for us to play with. I made a bead with fine silver wire melted around in in strings of tiny metal beads; beads with colored cubic zirconia shoved into their sizzling centers; and beads with silver tubing inserted into their 1/4" holes and then tamped down on the outside rims, making it seem as if the beads were made around a hollow silver mandrel and then magically detached. Other things I could have chosen to do was electroforming (involving painting my bead with some sort of copper and then lowering it into a container of blue fluid with a battery charger in it, which makes it look, er, different), or I could have fumigated my beads with either silver or gold something-or-other, adding a metallic sheen to the outsides. As you can tell, I mostly paid attention to the basic bead skills, enjoying greatly this new technique: scale beads. Ooh! Observe:




That last one is my absolute favorite. Conway's torch was stationed right next to mine, and I couldn't help but be influenced by his rapturous fascination with making hollow beads. I'd attempted a few of these in the past, with great beginner's luck, but because of my poor annealing set up in the Vermont basement, i hadn't done any since my first time at the Folk School which had to be at least 5 years ago. So my first few were failures, but one night towards the end of the week, I was talking to one of my best friends and fellow bead maker Lauren, who randomly said, "hey, make a hollow bead and stick one of those crystals on the fattest part," and so i did. And it worked!



Aw yeah. Here are some other beauties from the week:









I'm very happy with them, but most of all I'm pleased to have gotten such a great week of bead-making boot camp. I feel like I'm back in the game. Which is great, because one week from today, I'll be in Tony Prince's Free-Form Flamework class! I've been looking forward to taking Tony's class again for years. But before we get there, I've got a dreamy week of feltmaking to complete. I know, I know: my life is awesome.

This Blog is Overdue

13 days since my last post? Seriously? What the heck am I doing with my time, anyway? You know, besides taking a class each week and hosting in the spare seconds and planning a wedding on top of that... oh, whatever, you know I'm not really that busy. It just feels that way sometimes. Also, I've been going to bed earlier these days and thusly my blogging has slowed.

I have dance practice in 15 minutes, so this is a quicky teaser:

Visiting a local alpaca farm;

Trying my hand at "hoochy mama" quilting-- don't ask, I'll explain soon;

And painting new apartments/sampling champagnes (can this be filed under wedding research?)

Ohboyohboyohboy!

Today it snowed in Brasstown! Doesn't it look just like powdered sugar? Apparently this doesn't happen too often around here (despite the 13" accumulation, aka the Snowpocalypse, which happened a mere 2 hours NE of here in Asheville), so everyone is excited. I am excited because when it started falling, it was no ordinary snowfall: I guess the wetness + the coldness was just at that perfect point to create SNOW CRYSTALS THAT LOOKED LIKE MINIATURE STARS. I am not even kidding. At first I thought someone was throwing handfuls of die-cut confetti from the treetops because seriously, these little tiny perfect stars all over the ground? Simply unbelievable. LOOK!



(So sorry for the horrible iPod closeups.) Aren't they magical? Don't they look like stars? Well, stars and sea salt.

I took these photos as I walked back from the glass beads class, who very kindly let me come watch so I can start getting excited about next week. You know, I've been so patient... letting my bead frenzy lie dormant while the past 2 years have just ticked by, waiting for me to have an appropriate space to set up my torch... but as of today the desire for melting and turning clicked in and I WANT IT SO BAD. That heaviness, the feeling of molten glass and the colors and the sounds... I've really missed it. Glass glass glass. I cannot wait.