3KCBWDAY7 Eskimimi Knitting and Crochet Blog Week Day Seven

Today is the final day of the Eskimimi Knitting and Crochet Blog Week. It has been such fun participating. I have loved both writing my own posts and reading as many as I can of everyone else's. The inspiration out there is mind-boggling and a huge thank you is in order to Eskimimi for organising the whole thing. As well as the fun of the writing and reading has come the challenge to push the boat out a little into uncharted waters in an experimental way with the craft itself. I have really enjoyed what I have discovered.

Before this week I would have said I was a crocheter first and foremost, albeit a newbie one, and Not At All A Knitter despite the one-off hat I made for my son's birthday last month. To explain why I will quote the explanation I gave in my post Teenage Birthdays:

"The history of knit-sticks and me is a sorry one. At school, along with the rest of the class I managed to knit a strip of squares that were sewn together into blankets to be given away to a nursing home without too many problems and a lurid green teddy bear in garter stitch, with a squeaker from a cracker fitted to its intestines, followed, again without too much trauma, but the following year we were supposed to knit something to wear and choose a Proper Pattern. It was in the seventies when those tank tops, which have now made a bit of a come-back, were coming in the first time around and I started off fairly enthusiastically on one of these, in a rather pretty cherry red wool.

Something unidentifiable went seriously wrong with the ribbing very early on, resulting in my long-suffering mother, to whose lot fell the unhappy task of knitting the other side of this awful garment, after I had given up, having to try and replicate my mistake so that the two sides matched. She needn't have worried, the tension was so woefully out that I don't think I ever wore the thing more than once or twice. It turned out as wide as a bus and you could have fitted half my class at school into it without stretching it! Disappointing to say the least and the memory of the headache of trying to undo rows and pick up stitches again has not been erased with the years. Nor the disbelief that it could really have turned out so gigantic!"

But making that hat was actually rather enjoyable. And despite the legacy of past years, the newly taken-up knitting needles felt at a loose end and out of sorts without something on them. So with the challenge of this week coming up I acquired Jan Eaton's book "200 Knitted Blocks" and began to think about making something out of knitted squares. It was a good getting-back-into-the-water project because each square could be relatively small and the end result cushion cover was also relatively small so if the whole thing was a nightmare from beginning to end, at least it would be reasonably short-lived!

I also wanted to break out from my normal colour palette and experiment with subtler, softer shades (but on a small canvas in case I hated the result). The result was the knitted cushion in my post of a couple of days ago. Complete departure from my norm - knitting, not crochet; muted, earthy colours not sunny, clear, bright ones; no overall design other than the one in my head that I drew out; skills required to complete project acquired on the hoof rather than beforehand.

But it was such fun, I can't tell you! The only real stress was from the fact that I don't know how to pick up a dropped stitch. So if I went wrong I had to frog the whole square and start again. I have to admit this did happen a number of times! I had never done intarsia knitting but although I got in a bit of a pickle with three balls of yarn going at once, it worked! The Fairisle technique required for the rose-stippled trout square was also completely new to me. But after some helpful advice from the Needles & Natter group on loosening my tension up a bit so that the contrasting colour stitches showed through properly, this too worked! Miracles! And the squares came out as, well, squares, not football pitches! Miracles again!

So I can no longer quite say "I am Not At All A Knitter"! Which is all to the good because the expensive yarn hanging around, all dressed up with nowhere to go, after the frogging of the variegated Japanese flowers needs to be knitted, not crocheted, into a scarf. I've started it and in my humble opinion we have a different story from the pile of old seaweed at the beginning of this week!

Knitted rather than crocheted, the beautiful deep sea colours can sing (hopefully!)

I am still more comfortable with my crochet hook than I am with my knitting needles. And I probably always will be, but it is lovely to have both as possibilities. There are some things more suited to knitting rather than crochet so it's great to have a choice I didn't feel I had before. The same is true of the colour thing. I do still gravitate by choice to my original sunny, clear colour palette but so long as plenty of variety is involved, those colours that I wouldn't normally have touched can be an exciting playground of colour exploration especially when combined together. I have found unexpected delight in earthy browns, soft neutral buffs and fawns, chalky greys, muted greens and mustardy ochrey yellows, burnt oranges and plummy wine reds. Had to have one grey in particular - its colour name is "Tittlemouse"! It's the one in the centre of the pic!

The last word has to go to Duck who loved appearing on this blog at the beginning of the week and who has been a bit miffed that he could not figure every day! His view, when consulted about the knitting / crochet balance thing is:

"So long as it makes me another blanket, it's OK by me!
Now which do you want, knitting needles or crochet hook?!"

And once things get his "nihil obstat" seal of approval who knows where it will end?!

Thank you so much for reading and sharing my week, especially those of you who have been so lovely as to comment - I have appreciated it more than you can know.

A hooky hug to you all from me (and Duck of course,

who, as you can see, has really enjoyed editing this week's posts!)

"I am looking forward to next year's already and I hope you are too!

(If Eskimimi is up for organising a fourth one that is!)"

3KCBWDAY6 Eskimimi Knitting and Crochet Blog Week Day Six

Because I only learnt to crochet properly last year I still feel very much that I am a "newbie" and am always rather taken aback when anyone assumes I will know the answer to a crocheting question. Even more taken aback when sometimes I know the answer! The lovely thing about being at this stage of experience is that I now know enough to be able to embark on making things I actually want or feel are good enough to give away as presents but I know there is still so much scope out there to improve and develop. There is a kind of peace in that balance. Right at the beginning I wasn't sure I could make anything that looked like the picture. Right at the beginning I couldn't! Sometimes I still can't! But slowly, bit by bit, more and more often, I find I can and it's hugely satisfying. I love the unexplored potential to develop this thing further though and am beginning to acquire a little collection of books of inspiration that will stretch and expand what I know and am able to make.

A little example is the book in the pic which a friend at Needles and Natter introduced me to:

It's quirky and original and different in all sorts of ways from the kind of crochet projects I had tried before. 3-dimensional sort of stuff for a start.

What about this toadstool which is really a box?

Or this intriguing crocheted vase designed to hold pencils with crocheted daisy pencil toppers?

Or these little crocheted pebble boxes?

But the thing that really caught my eye and made me want to get stuck in was this:

Isn't it sweet?

It is effectively a crocheted double-layered sleeve for a tin. It uses Tunisian crochet which was entirely new to me as a technique. I had come across a reference or two to it in my "Encyclopedia of Crochet Techniques" but that was all. For those of you for whom Tunisian crochet is a closed book, as it was for me, it is a cross between crochet and knitting. You execute half a stitch of each stitch in a row at a time and then go back along the row finishing off the other half of each stitch. Each row of half stitches is called "a pass" so two "passes" are needed to complete one row.

You use a longer hook than a usual crochet hook in order to accommodate all the stitches. It sounds a bit complicated but there are instructions in the book and once I had got started I found it quite easy. Fascinatingly the fabric that Tunisian crochet makes, is quite different from ordinary crochet; it is much denser and thicker, making it perfect for projects that you want to use to cover something.

The instructions recommended using a tin but I don't get on well with tins - my tin opener is clearly not the safety kind and leaves a wickedly sharp edge when I remove the top. This is fine when the tin is heading straight for the recycling box but not when I am trying to revamp it with crochet, or anything else for that matter and I have a track record of cutting myself repeatedly in these circumstances. A better bet, I think, for this sort of project are those cardboard drums, of approximately the same dimensions as tins, that come with a very thin foil lining stuck to the inside and a metal base - more robust than plain cardboard but absolutely safe to mess about with, for the more accident-prone tittlemouse. Searching the larder for something suitable, I found this drum of Chai Latte which was a perfect size and shape for my purposes. In varying dimensions, cocoa, custard powder, dried skimmed milk and stock powder all come in these kinds of tubs in the UK.

The hooks are a bit scary looking:

The two grey metal ones I bought for this project - you need a slightly larger diameter one for the outer sleeve and a slightly smaller diameter one for the inside sleeve. The huge, long wooden one is an ancestral Victorian one, belonging apparently to my French great-grandmother, so clearly I am not the first in the family to try Tunisian crochet! A shame nothing survives that she made with it.

Anyway, armed and dangerous with the scary hooks, I sallied forth with the pattern and this is what resulted:

You could of course do your own design but there was just something about the little house and the cherry tree, the happy sun and little scrunched up cloud, above the bright flowers that called to me just as they were.

Isn't it fun? I love it! 

As you can see, I used little wooden beads rather than embroidery for the cherries and the door handle on the house but otherwise, apart from omitting the handle for the pot which I didn't need, I followed Gina's pattern exactly as given. I love the fact that it involved a whole new technique that I managed to pull off without too much sweat and tears. Opens all sorts of doors for variations of one kind or another, methinks!

Here is the finished object in service in my kitchen holding the essentials of life - pencils, scissors, crochet hooks and my new knitting needles! All I need to keep my life on track together with my trusty chalk board for listing items for the next shopping list before they get forgotten! Sorry about the horrible kitchen surface - SO not my choice! - but pics of real life have to be real sometimes.

I don't have an actual list of techniques I would like to learn but my flibbertygibbet, butterfly mind will always look speculatively at anything new and inspirational to try, so who knows what ponds I may dip my hook into in the coming year not to mention my newly deployed knitting needles?! 

More of that in tomorrow's final Knitting and Crochet Blog Week post! 

In the meantime, Happy Weekend, everyone!

3KCBWDAY5 Eskimimi Knitting and Crochet Blog Week Day Five

A story of "something a little different from my usual" made over the last week, told "a bit differently" - just in pics. 

Monday 16th April 2012

Tuesday 17th April 2012

Wednesday 18th April 2012

Thursday 19th -  Sunday 22nd April 2012

Wednesday 25th April 2012

Friday 27th April 2012

3KCBWDAY4 - Eskimimi Knitting and Crochet Blog Week Day Four

There is a sense in which my hooky adventures have an obvious link to the four seasons of the year: hearts at Valentine's Day and eggs at Easter for Spring, roses to attach to hair-clips for Summer, fall leaf colours in a jar-jacket for an Autumn candle, snowflakes for a Christmas tree garland in Winter etc etc  

But there is a different kind of seasonality at work as well. The kind of seasonality I have in mind comes from Ecclesiastes: 


"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.
A time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain,
a time to search and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace."


Of course the writer is thinking about the big picture of how human beings handle Life but actually a lot of what he says applies in quite an important way to the Creative Life. I find it quite a liberating approach. 


Think about it and you may see what I mean. Of course you may decide I am completely off my head - it's up to you!


A time to be born and a time to die... there are times when our creative energies emerge from dormancy and a time when they can go dead. Certain periods of our lives are more creative than others because we have more time or space to be creative. Times when work or childcare becomes all-consuming can leave little room for any creative muse to breathe but at other times, windows of opportunity offer themselves and new life emerges, sometimes when we least expect it. Birth and death in this sense are not one-off events but recurring ones for the creative soul.


A time to plant and a time to uproot ... creative life is often about investing in new skills, nurturing and growing them. Sometimes it can also be about uprooting fears, diffidence or inhibitions that prevent us from pursuing something or experimenting. Both are important. 


A time to kill and a time to heal ... sometimes we may need to "kill off" an idea that simply won't fly or come to terms with one that we thought we had run aground with and put it back on the road. Often this is a process that others' perspectives can help with. The friend round the corner or in blogland whose opinion can be trusted, who tells me that those colours I'm fixated on really don't work together or the one who rescues what seems like an irretrievable disaster with a helping hand or emergency, life-saving tip. 

A time to tear down and a time to build ... as we all know, there are times when things just have to be unravelled or frogged but there are also times of reconstruction and sometimes it's those projects that have involved the heartache of undoing and redoing that turn out best in the end. 

A time to weep and a time to laugh ... closely related in my creative life I find! That aaaargh moment when I find I've read the pattern all wrong or something has gone haywire. My instinct may be initially to cry with disappointment or vexation but I usually end up seeing the funny side and moving on. (See my pile of seaweed scarf!!) 

A time to mourn and a time to dance ... that time when we sadly come to terms with the fact that certain things are beyond us (at the moment) but also that time of sheer delight when we successfully acquire a new skill or solve a problem; the ending of a happy project can trigger both emotions - sadness that something we've enjoyed doing A Lot has come to an end and irrepressible, effervescent fizzing at a Proudly Finished Object! 

A time to scatter stones and a time to gather them ... there are times when we find ourselves being the ones helping others because we have more experience or skill or whatever and there are equal and opposite times when we draw on the experience or expertise of others. All good.

A time to embrace and a time to refrain ... there are times when for whatever reason we plunge into the unknown, perhaps we read a book on a new technique or research one on YouTube or we sign up for a course to improve an existing skill or learn a completely new one but there are also times when this is too much to take on and our instinct and preference is to stick to what we know and are comfortable with. All good again.  

A time to search and a time to throw away ...  most creative people have times when they hunt out new designs, materials or ideas and times when clearing out is the name of the game in order to make way for fresh projects or new acquisitions of essential stock-in-trade, in other words yarn-buying! What's stash-busting for otherwise?!   

A time to tear and a time to mend ...  Anyone torn up an idea and started all over again periodically? I am sure I am not alone in having had what seemed a good idea on paper that just didn't work in practice and had to be ditched. And anyone who has made something special that has been well-used and well-loved will happily take up a mending needle if it needs repair even if they wouldn't mend bog-standard M&S socks (as I won't)!    

A time to be silent and a time to speak ... I find there are times when I need to be quiet and just contemplate a project especially one where a significant colour choice has to be made that will potentially make or break a project but there are also times when I need to bounce ideas around with others and talk about them to get clarity.

A time to love and a time to hate ... projects that we instinctively love? Of course there are! Where everything just works - colour, pattern, yarn, our own abilities in synch with what's needed - yayyyy! But there are also those that just go against the grain the whole way - the pattern is obscure or doesn't work out how we think it will, the yarn isn't as nice a colour or texture as we hoped, we don't have the skills quite to pull this off without a lot of cursing and struggling : (   Anyone been here? Well, I have! 

A time for war and a time for peace ... there are times of both for the crocheter or knitter - times when actually we decide we will do battle with an obstacle we have encountered and won't be beaten by it and times when things are calmer and we go peacefully along, adding row after row to our WIP which happily and quietly grows under our fingers, while we chat with other like-minded souls or are happily absorbed in a solitary world of our own.

And just as with the big picture of life "There is a time for everything." And it is all good, or as the writer of Ecclesiastes more poetically puts it, it is all "beautiful in its time". 

Happy Hooking or Knitting, whatever season you are in at the moment! 

3KCBWDAY3 - Eskimimi Knitting and Crochet Blog Week Day Three

Where to begin with this? So many possibilities. As some of you will know from reading this blog, I only learnt to crochet just over a year ago. And the source of inspiration for that was Lucy of Attic24 about whom I have written already elsewhere on this blog and whose extraordinary talents for lighting the world up with colourful hooky I guess very many of you will already be familiar with. If you are not among that number, go and check out her blog here and, on what is a very grey, wet day here in the UK, prepare to have your spirits lifted and your day brightened! 

Lucy's patterns and tutorials are still the starting point for many of my hooky forays but today I want to write about two people whose hooky talents probably lie in a very real, if invisible, way behind my own efforts and my own interest in all things needle-related. One of them was still alive when I was born although I don't really remember her, the other had died some time before I arrived on the scene and I know her only through family story and what she left behind. Because of what they both made however I feel I know both of them quite well.

The first, the one who died before I was born, is my great-great-aunt Mabel, the twin sister of my great-grandmother. She was a very gifted needlewoman and a musician who played the viola. Here she is in a photograph taken some time in the early 1900s:

Some years ago my grandmother gave me for my birthday a tablecloth made by Great Aunt Mabel. It is embroidered with baskets of flowers and has a deep filet crochet edging in white, depicting tulips. It must have taken her absolutely ages to do the crochet, which, like the snow in the Christmas carol, is "deep and crisp and even" throughout. Here is a corner of the cloth:

A close up of the embroidery.

A close up of the filet crochet tulip border.

The cloth was probably made as a gift for her sister's wedding in the early 1900s although the family is not sure. It certainly dates from around that time. It's not that easy to photograph for you to see the overall effect of the whole thing. I need a bigger round table for a start.  Here is a pic of the cloth on a table that is a bit too small for it with some china of the same period given to my great-grandmother almost exactly a hundred years ago. (The cakes, I hasten to add, are not a hundred years old!)

Filet crochet of this sort was of course all the vogue in the very early part of the 20th C and on the other side of the family another great-great aunt was doing the same sort of thing. Aunty Mu (short for Muriel) was also a great needle-woman and also a maker of tablecloths and although I don't remember her, she didn't die until I was three. 

Here she is around the turn of the century with one of her sisters, Renee, and their mother, my great-great grandmother. Aunty Mu is the one on the right.

Here is Aunty Mu's tablecloth that she made for another sister, Carrie, when she married my great-grandfather in June 1914 which makes the tablecloth just a fraction under a century old. It too has filet crochet all round the edge and white embroidery and intricate, cut-thread work panels in the centre.

You can see here the intertwined initials she embroidered for my great-grandparents, some of the cut-thread work and the filet crochet border. This one is more geometric in design than Great Aunt Mabel's tulips.

A close up of the beautiful filet lace border.

A pic to give a bit more of the overall effect. 

Both tablecloths with some of my grandmother's china and some early 20th C crochet-related bits and pieces.

Crochet like this can't be done except with one of these very tiny hooks:

It almost makes my eyes ache just to contemplate working with something so fine. Along with the tablecloths, this solitary hook has made its way down the generations together with two volumes of patterns and instructions published just before the First World War, around 1912. History does not relate who their original owner was but they could have been used by either of the makers of these tablecloths although they may of course have produced their own designs. The two volumes, both edited by a prolific author by the name of "Flora Klickmann", make fascinating reading a century on! Mostly the patterns are for crocheted lace like the edging on my tablecloths.

But there are one or two "woollier" projects, like this:

Ingenious isn't it?
And in the right yarn and colour may be even wearable 100 years on!

The fascination of these books lies not least in the period advertisements like these:

"Peri-Lusta" Crochet thread seems to have been the crochet thread to use doesn't it?! As for "Fry's Breakfast Cocoa", well, may be you needed that to get fired up to start one of the intricate, eye-aching projects within the covers!! Even if I had "Fry's Breakfast Cocoa" with the authentic "yellow and red label" to make me "astonishingly fit" I am afraid I am not drawn to replicating this sort of work! It's too fine and fiddly and I know I don't have the patience for it but these great-great aunts of mine are nonetheless inspirational for me.

I know that my own delight in all things creative, especially needle-driven things creative, comes from a long line of creative needle-women. Considerably more skilled needle-women than I am or probably ever will be. But that doesn't matter. Periodically one finds comments in blogland that suggest that sometimes people are intimidated by the virtuosity of the enormous array of talent out there. I don't think one should be intimidated. I know my skills are far below those of my precursors and indeed many of my contemporaries  - look at what's out there this week in this 3rd Knitting and Crochet Blog Week! But what a joy it is to see the work of others and to have one's horizons stretched and new possibilities opened up even if in order to realise something approaching what one has seen, one has to simplify it, sometimes drastically so, to one's own skill or budget level. We all start somewhere and knowing that reaching for the stars is possible can be enough to make one dare at least to reach for the light switch, if you see what I mean! And once one has done that who knows where it will end?!

I have a hunch that both my great-great-aunts, Aunty Mu and Great Aunt Mabel, would be pleased that their beautiful handiwork is still used and enjoyed and that today it is my chosen source of inspiration and an encouragement to get busy with hook and yarn myself.

Just to finish, here are three post cards sent by Aunty Mu to my mother when she was a little girl in the late 1940s and early 1950s. I found them among the file of photographs supplied by my mother when I explained about this post and who is herself no mean needle-woman. They are not strictly related but I couldn't resist including them because they are so sweet and because they say something about the kindliness and warmth of the lady who made the beautiful heirloom I now have and use on special occasions.

Thank you for reading this and sharing my little dip into the past!