The Bible According to Mel

Spring has sprung in Illinois - 5 days of record setting temperatures and no end in sight. And so as is the case every year, my fancy turns to gardening. I'm trying something completely new this year, Square Foot Gardening - a rather revolutionary concept in home gardening - or at least it was when it was first introduced in the 1970s by Mel Bartholomew. He's back with an updated book and we are drinking the Mel kool-aid. The concept is simple - really simple and easy - which appealed to me. You build 4x4 foot boxes, grid them off into 16 squares and plant x number of items per square (depending on how much spacing the plant needs). Last weekend we built 4 boxes and this weekend we filled them and actually planted! I'm crossing my fingers that the weather holds, but we put in the traditional early Spring crops, spinach, shallots, peas, lettuce and strawberries, etc. When they sprout I'll post some pics. It's gonna be a great growing season!

Works in Progress

by Kelly

Here's the afghan I'm making with the Super Simple Hexagon pattern from a previous post. What do you think?

I've discovered there are two problems with this kind of afghan. First of all, there's the seaming. It's kind of a let down after all the fun and easy work of making the hexagons, to be confronted with a lot of boring seaming. Of course, you could connect them as you go, but that limits the spontaneous nature of the hexagons, because now you're chained to a full blown afghan project again.

And aside from the seaming, there are the gaping voids along the edges. Lots of people make half hexagons. They aren't difficult to figure out, if you have a picture on hand. Of course, that still leaves a pointy side edge.

Or maybe I could just put a border around the whole thing, like Adi Keren did:

via Flickr

Check out her Flickr stream here for other goodies, including a sweet baby blanket made out of tiny crochet flowers.

I'm off to see if I can create half-hexagons. Heigh, ho.

Irish Lace Crochet

by Kelly


Today is St. Patrick's Day. For Americans, this is an excuse to go to an Irish bar and drink green beer and talk in a terrible Irish accent. Optional activities include singing traditional folk songs, punching friends, which celebrates the nineteenth century Irish bare-knuckle boxing tradition, and falling down stairs, which celebrates Irish stepdancing (a form of locomotion that requires the practitioner to preform intricate foot movements while staring into the middle distance with a fixed, goofy grin). The ironic part of the whole thing is that the Irish don't celebrate St. Patrick's day, and look oddly at Americans who do.

All this is probably a kind of salute to the fact that the Irish are believed to have invented whiskey.  Now, my husband and I have had both Guinness and whiskey (the Guinness in an English pub (yes, with an English pour) and the whiskey in a very nice Edinburgh restaurant that my husband and I were painfully under-dressed for) and we'd like to specifically not recommend them. They are not tasty.

So, are there other ways, aside from those listed above, to celebrate St. Patrick's day? Well, what else are the Irish known for? Aside from fiery tempers, potatoes, four-leaf clovers, and leprechauns, that is. Why, Irish Lace, of course! (You knew I'd get there eventually, didn't you?)

via Wikipedia

Irish Crochet Lace is made by crocheting tiny motifs like flowers, leaves, hearts, etc, then basting them onto paper or a ground fabric.  Then chains or picots are crocheted between the motifs, binding them all together. After you've done all that, you then cut the basting threads (which are usually in a different color so you can find them) and voila, you have a piece of lace.

For sheer eye candy, The History and Beauty of Irish Lace on HubPages can't be beat. The site is full of amazing pictures. If you're just looking for inspiration, check here first. Unfortunately, there don't seem to be links to sources or information, so the patterns will remain a mystery.

Hub Pages

Here's a  link to another site with hundreds of examples of motifs, also with no patterns.

Ah, but trusty About.com comes through again -  here is a free starter pattern for an Irish Rose. They have a few other patterns too.

And since the patterns themselves are hard to find online, it may be time to look into print books.  Luckily, there are quite a few of these. There's a great one by Thérèse de Dillmont called Masterpieces of Irish Crochet Lace.


So if you decide to try your hand at Irish Lace Crochet, you may have your work cut out for you. Not only does it require thin thread and a teeny crochet hook, but it may be an uphill battle to find a pattern. However, with a little effort and a little luck, you just might make a bit of lace that will be treasured as an heirloom.

Easy Crochet, Pom Poms and Alliums

by Kelly

While I'm waiting on yarn for a broomstick lace project that I'm working on, I went browsing for easy crochet projects and found this neat pattern for Super Simple Hexagons from the blog One Loop Short.

oneloopshort

Granny square hexagons - simple and flower-like and I can use up all these odd balls of yarn in a productive way. Perfect!

Even better, she also has a tutorial for Easy Pom Poms that I can't wait to try! If you have ever ground your teeth with frustration while trying to cut cardboard circles for pom poms, you should definitely check out this tutorial. So simple and obvious! Why didn't I think of that?

oneloopshort

 
 And where or where did she get that lovely purple yarn? That bright purple pom pom looks exactly like the Alliums I used to grow around my house. I don't know what ever happened to those flowers, although I suspect the bulbs were eaten by the squirrels that were always digging in that flowerbed. Squirrels can eat anything. And Alliums are related to onions, after all.

Allium

Poplar Leaf Embossed Dishcloth

by Kelly

For quite a while now, I've been working on an afghan using embossed dishcloth patterns as afghan squares.

I'm using autumn colors (red, orange, yellow and browns) and patterns for leaves, including a maple leaf and an oak leaf. But then I got bored, and couldn't find another leaf pattern that I liked. So I made my own!

I wanted to use yellow yarn, so I did a Google search for yellow leaves, and found elm leaves and poplar leaves. The elm leaf design I drew up looked even more boring than more maple leaves, so I tried the poplar, and was much happier.

Poplar Leaf

 I made my squares using Caron Simply Soft in Sunshine and size 8 needles. I love this yarn - it comes in gorgeous colors and is wonderfully soft and shiny, and machine washable since it's acrylic.
So here's the pattern. I don't have anyone to test knit this, so keep an eye out for any mistakes or typos. If you find any, please let me know in the comments and I'll correct the pattern. Thanks!

Don't sell or reproduce the pattern except for personal use. If you'd like to make and sell items using this pattern, please feel free. After all, you'll be doing the hard part - the actual knitting.

Here's the link to the pattern. This will send you to Scribd, which is hosting all our PDF's.

New Crochet Techniques - Colorwork

by Kelly

Just when I thought I had finally figured out this whole crochet thing, I stumbled across a few new techniques that totally blew my mind...

First, how about this jogless crochet technique for amigurumi by NeedleNoodles...

Needlenoodles

Then there's this invisible finish technique from Crochet Cabana, which uses the same method to get rid of that little jog that has always bugged me in crochet rounds...

and, for those of you who have already mastered the above techniques, how about a little Intarsia colorwork? And here I thought Intarsia could only be done in knitting - color me wrong! Of course, you have to be able to crochet with both left and right hands... or at least, that's how it's done by Carol Ventura...

She makes it look so easy! Myself, I think I'll stick with knitted colorwork. But if you'd like to give it a try, here's a great page of patterns for Tapestry Crochet. The cat pillow below is also from Carol Ventura, and looks especially awesome.

It's kind of like Assisi work, which is an embroidery technique. Even better, it's available for righties and lefties! Of course, which hand you prefer  doesn't matter so much, if you have to be ambidextrous to finish the pillow.
Carol Ventura does make the suggestion that a lefty and a righty could work together to finish a project. But that raises the question of who gets the finished pillow. Maybe that would only be an idea for good friends.

Show and Tell - Knitting

by Kelly

Things I've been making:

A winter headband/hat/ear-warmer in angora (warm!). I used a free pattern from Drops Design.

Drops Design has a ton of free patterns for crochet and knitting. One of my favorites is the Garden of Diamonds shawl that I would jump on if only I had some lace-weight yarn.


I also made some accidental flowers while attempting something else,

and finally a knitted dragon that perches really well. Maybe I should have made it look like a bird instead. Here it is looking out our window.

I've also tried my hand at Broomstick Lace, which was actually quite easy and fun, once I figured out how to work with that huge knitting needle. I  found a pretty shawl pattern using this lace, only it calls for a size 35(US) knitting needle, instead of the size 50(US) that I currently have. Oh, well.

What have you been working on?