Google and Gingrich--They Don't Get Me At All

Some people who live on remote mountain ridges worry about the government tracking their movements and infringing their rights. I assume that's why Newt Gingrich called me on behalf of the NRA a few days ago, to warn me that "Obama's gonna take your guns." (His elocution was a little more sophisticated, but he was just echoing the same old theme I've been hearing since 2008.) Of course, I asked Newt why Obama hasn't gotten it done yet, but, being a robo-call, Newt didn't answer.

I'm more concerned about giant corporations than intrusive government. When I found this link to Google's ad targeting data based on my searches, I expected them to know things about me I feared to admit even to myself. I imagined an ominous combination of Santa Claus and Orwell's Big Brother. Instead, it seems, Big Brother doesn't get me at all. Here's how Google sees me:

Your categories:
Business & Industrial
Computers & Electronics - Software
Computers & Electronics - Software - Operating Systems - Linux & Unix
Shopping - Apparel
Localities - North America-USA-South(USA)-West Virginia

Your demographics:
We infer your age and gender based on the websites 
you've visited. You can remove or edit these at 
any time.
Age: 35-44
Gender: Male

I expected all those searches for antique crochet patterns and sewing supplies would have given a different demographic profile. But perhaps midlife male computer nerds are exploring their softer side with vintage-styled handmade lace. And, from an advertiser's viewpoint, Wal-Mart is the only place in our area where you can buy steel crochet hooks and computer hardware.

To see how Google identifies you as an advertising target, you can visit Google's Ads on the Web.

Closet Sachets--Upcycled and Emblematic

Sometimes I don't know what my New Year's resolutions are until the year is over. 2011 was a year of going through my old stuff, sorting, deciding what to discard and what to work with going forward. That was most obvious in my fiber activities, but I think my sorting, sewing, spinning and knitting projects symbolized some internal housekeeping processes best left unblogged. Perhaps Pincushion of My Ancestors, Slipcovered and Starched was a foreshadowing of my 2011 theme.

Whether or not they are emblematic of my soul, here are some sachet bags I made out of stained or unusable kitchen towels my grandmother and her friend embroidered back in the early 1950's. To pretty for rags, too damaged to display, I inherited a substantial collection of such linens.

I finished and photographed these in the early spring. Then I stuffed them with dried lavender flowers and stuffed them into my dresser drawers, where I see them whenever I change my socks.

The black-eyed-Susan-embroidered bags represent my first attempt at crocheting lace borders onto a sewing project. I'm not ready for delicate hankie crochet, but I'm moving toward that goal. The pale green and yellow crochet threads are leftovers given me from a friend's attic stash, so these represent totally upcycled projects.

Crochet Ye Roses While Ye May

I knit to create clothing, but the thing I admire about crochet is the variety of pure embellishment you can produce. I especially enjoy crochet floral motifs, like this cabbage rose, a standard feature in Irish crochet. I wanted to make some Irish crochet-style leaves to go with it, but I couldn't find a pattern in my collection.

Suzanne Thompson's Curious and Crafty Readers blog came to my rescue, with her Corrugated Leaf Tutorial. It was exactly the way to make the leaves I knew from my grandma's collection of doilies and do-dads. Poking around on Suzanne's blog, I found lots of wonderful crochet flower designs and directions. Some of them are the usual fanciful geometric shapes, but many have details that make them look like real, specific flowers--pansies, poppies, daffodils, primroses. And the leaves--ferns, palms, pine boughs. It's too cool.

She has some of these in a book: Crochet Bouquet: Easy Designs for Dozens of Flowers. It's so moderately priced at Amazon that I put it right on my wishlist. Suzanne's blog even gives you instructions for converting your copy to spiral-bound format.

Utilitarian Crochet Practice

I keep plugging away at basic crochet skills. For me, the key to good knitting skills was just to knit lots and lots and lots of stitches. I'm assuming that the same will hold true for crochet, but I have a lot of stitches to go. I'm using cotton yarn and thread from my collection of leftovers and bargin bin shopping, and my projects are small, funtional items that I believe I'll use. This placemat is mostly practice in making even double crochet stitches--the pretty cotton yarns are all that give it spice.

The black yarn in this potholder is a cotton/wool blend. Until recently, it was a sweater I didn't enjoy wearing. It has good insulating properties, and I hope I'll enjoy it more as a potholder.

Crochet Foundation Row and More Practice

My adventures in crochet are still mostly "skills-building," rather than inspired by projects. I made this small, buttoned purse to hold a lavender sachet in my sock drawer. The goal here was to get more practice working with inelastic thread and smallish steel hooks. I just made up the pattern as I went along, as you can probably guess. The shell-and-picot embellishments I added at the end are heavy and out of scale with the bag, but it's going to spend most of its time in a dark dresser drawer. Oh well.

My goal is to crochet with fine thread, like that used in this table topper from my grandma's collection of crocheted dresser scarves, tablecloths, and doilies.

Besides simple practice, I did learn a new technique with this project--the crochet foundation row, a project starter that skips the foundation chain. There are dozens of tutorials on YouTube, but for those of us who prefer written directions, the best explanation I've found is this: Tutorial: Foundation Single Crochet: "You can use foundation crochet to determine the size of a row when it's not set because the stitches are true-to-size unlike a chain, which is impossible to use as a row-length gauge." Futuregirl.com provides excellent written directions, and a brief history of the technique. I found a helpful forum discussion, too: In praise of the single crochet foundation row.

Pincushion of My Ancestors, Slipcovered and Starched

This pincushion has been on my to-repair list for years. In fact, I believe it was on my mother's to-repair list throughout my childhood, and may have been on my grandma's to-repair list before that.

Although my mom kept it with her sewing gear, it's not that sort of pincushion. It was made to sit on a lady's dresser, and to be stuck full of hatpins and the sorts of pins they used to fasten their apron tops to their dress bodice-fronts.

This particular pincushion was handmade at home, most likely as a gift. I believe it dates from my grandma's post-card collecting days, from around 1900 to 1915. (After she was grown up, but before she was married with kids.) The body of the cushion was machine- and hand-sewn of pink cotton sateen, and stuffed full of sawdust. The decorative cover is crocheted of very fine cotton thread. I washed it and starched it with spray starch, but I'll probably look for some stiffer starch to make the ruffles stand up better.

I had originally planned to make a new cushion to display the crocheted cover, but I had this pretty blue silk left over from re-covering a lamp shade. (The silk was salvaged from a favorite shirt.) It's a match for my bedroom walls, and it was a quick project to simply "slip-cover" the original cushion and pull the crocheted cover over the top.

Do you suppose crossing something off my late mother's "to-do" list has some sort of karmic significance beyond just finishing a sewing project?

Shopping, Crochet, and Spring Wildflowers

I believe I stated a while ago that I had plenty of crochet patterns and books on hand, that there was no need for me to spend any money on this new pursuit, or to acquire more stuff to clutter the new house. When I found a big gap in my collection of crochet hook sizes, it didn't seem outrageous to buy a set of large-ish steel crochet hooks at Wal-Mart. They wouldn't take up much space, and they only cost seven dollars--not as much as many new hobbies require, surely?

A few weeks later, shopping online for a replacement flashlight, we found what we wanted on Amazon. Just a few dollars short of the free shipping minimum, I dipped into my "Wishlist" and added on Beyond-the-Square Crochet Motifs: 144 circles, hexagons, triangles, squares, and other unexpected shapes by Edie Eckman.

Although I'm nickle-and-diming my way out of my frugality promises, I am very pleased with this book. It's hardback and spiral bound, and the colorful example motifs fulfill my yen for new eye-candy. I'm pleased to have both text directions and diagrams, and I've learned some new-to-me techniques. There's also a section at the back on how to design your own unique motifs. That's something I'd never even thought about before, but that is one of the truly cool things about crochet--you can go wild and just try things. (With knitting and the sort of sewing I usually do, you need to plan ahead more.) I'm really pleased with this book, and here are some of the motifs I've made so far.

Eckman's book shows all the motifs in colorful sport-weight yarn, so of course I'm trying them in some rather coarse crochet cotton thread (using my new Wal-Mart steel hooks). A couple dozen of the ecru squares at the top of this post would make a handsome table runner, I think. I like how open this square is, compared to the granny squares we're used to seeing sewn into afghans and blankets.

These motifs remind me of dogwood blossoms. I think I'll sew them onto my next pair of slippers, with some little gold buttons in their centers.

These white motifs are two variations on a theme. I think they both look floral in crochet thread, like some small spring ephemeral--perhaps wood anemones?

Crochet in Plaid, My Favorite Color

Here's another crochet-skills-building exercise I've worked through. These place mats are rectangles of crochet mesh, and my big accomplishment is that I have the same number of stitches on each row. At least in the case of mesh stitches worked in yarn, I'm now able to create actual rectangles, sporting lovely parallel sides.

I changed color several times in the mesh pattern, to make stripes, and then I took advantage of the "holes" in the mesh to slip stitch perpendicular stripes over the top of the mats. I've been fascinated by crochet faux-plaid patterns, and it happens to be a simple design to make, one that doesn't require much advance planning. It's perfect for using left-over bits and pieces from other projects.

New Crochet from Old Thread

Rather than posting yet another "tinkering with computers and software" saga, I'll show you some more of my crochet projects. Like the wobbly potholder, the goal here is to improve skills, while making a potentially useful object.

After completing the potholder, my next thought was to crochet some slippers from my cheap acrylic yarn collection. Acrylic yarn has gone steadily downhill in quality in the years I've been knitting, but this yarn was given to me during someone's spring cleaning, and had been purchased new in 1970--in other words, a blast from the past. I actually crocheted three different slipper patterns, found them unsatisfactory, and unraveled them. At this point, I decided that the best slippers are the garter-stitch rectangles that you sew up and adorn with pompoms, so I put aside my crochet hook and knitted the black acrylic yarn, sewed them into slippers decorated with two-tone pink crocheted "roses." They're washable house slippers, and the "roses" don't look so oversized when the slippers are stretched over my feet.

Having practiced a bit with stretchy yarns, I believed I was ready to move on to crochet thread, which is reputedly more difficult to work with. I pulled out my Quick Crochet thread, purchased at American Thread's "Yarn Barn" in Willimantic, CT around 1980. (For me, fiber crafts are always a walk down memory lane.) I'm really pleased to finally use this stuff, after hauling it up and down the Eastern Seaboard over all these years.

First, I made a simple pinwheel motif out of white thread. This stuff is a little coarser than the thread sold as "Bedspread Cotton," it's polyester, and it came from the factory seconds bin at American Thread. I was pleased to have it turn out relatively pinwheel-shaped, although there are a number of mistakes. Washed and starched, it doesn't look too bad, and it is currently sitting on the kitchen table under the sugar bowl.

I've been intrigued by two-color crochet, so my next move was to mix the red and the white thread in a project. I just followed the instructions I found on Carol Ventura's web pages (see links below), and made up the pattern as I went along. It's crocheted very tightly, and because the unworked thread is carried along in the pattern, it's quite thick, and works as a potholder.

Some of Carol Ventura's Tapestry Crochet links:

• Tapestry Crochet, a website by Carol Ventura, features her own approach to colorwork and beading in crochet. She has text instruction, free video tutorials, links to her books for sale, and examples of her own work. The work in her Gallery is just amazing.
• Tapestry Crochet...the rest of the story is Carol Ventura's blog where she profiles tapestry crochet artists. More examples of beautiful colorwork crochet.

Embroider Ye Pillowcases While Ye May

It doesn't seem that long ago that every Woolworths's had stacks of pillowcases printed with simple patterns, ready to be embroidered and edged, but nowadays such ready-to embroider items are only found in pricey sets from mail order companies like Herrschners'.

This pillowcase was in perfect shape when I took it out of the box. My grandma would have embroidered it, then crocheted on the pink edging, and washed it, ironed it, and put it away. Unfortunately, its mate lay directly on the bottom of the box, and was badly stained by acid in the cardboard. I was able to bleach away most of the stain without harming the embroidery thread, but I don't expect it will last long.

I'm going to use these, and remember to enjoy pretty things while I can.

The Wonderful World of Plarn

Periodically, I run across ideas for recycling plastic bags into craft materials. I get all excited, try the suggestions, and then go back to stashing bunches of plastic bags inside a plastic bag in the pantry.

Here I go again. In my search for crochet tips and patterns, I've been seeing quite a few items crocheted from plastic bag yarn, or "plarn." Tote bags, "rag rugs," pot scrubbers, many of these look perfectly functional. I'm going to have to try again. Here are some links.

• Plastic Bag Crochet from needlepointers.com is a link list of plarn-making directions and instructions for various crochet items.
• All you need is plastic bag and a crochet hook.... via Whipup--Handcraft in a Hectic World. Actually, you need quite a few plastic bags, but that doesn't make such a good slogan....
• My Recycled Bags, where Cindy shows us all sorts of things she's crocheted from plarn. She also recycles old clothes into crafting materials. Myself, I make cleaning rags from worn-out tee-shirts and I cut up newish but damaged tees to make cotton underbritches, but Cindy cuts tee-shirt fabric into strips for knitting, crochet or weaving, and displays some very cute projects.

Free Crochet Patterns, Especially Old Ones

I have a decent collection of crochet patterns. My grandma left a collection, and some of my mom's knitting leaflets also include crochet patterns. After I learned to crochet, I subscribed to some crochet newsletters for a couple of years. I could crochet from this library until the end of my days, but there's that itch to see something new....Fortunately, I can indulge this without buying stuff, thanks to Websites like these:

• Crochet Pattern Central is a great place to start. It's a curated link directory, and it's actively updated.

  Welcome to Crochet Pattern Central--an often updated online directory featuring thousands of links to free crochet patterns. Choose from 90+ categories, including clothing, afghans, doilies, baby items, bags and totes, potholders, toys, stuffed animals (including amigurumi), and so much more.

• The Antique Pattern Library is the Project Gutenberg of the needlecraft pattern library. On their "Welcome" page, they say

  This ongoing project is an effort to scan needlework pattern books that are in the public domain, to preserve them, so we can keep our needlework heritage in our hands. These scans have been photoedited to make them more useful for needle workers, and to reduce file sizes. They are available, for free, to anyone who wants them, for educational, personal, artistic and other creative uses.

  Their collection of crochet patterns is awesome, especially for those who like working with fine gauge crochet thread, as opposed to yarn. I have a real fascination with crochet lace collars and nightgown yokes from about 1900 to 1940, and I've scored dozens of gorgeous patterns. Now, to develop my skills to that level....Be prepared, if you start downloading, for a time-sink, not because the website is slow, but because these collections are quite addictive. I'm unlikely to do purse netting, silk embroidery, or tatting, but you should see the awesome patterns I've got, just in case...

• The Free Patterns page from Heirloom Crochet has some wonderful old patterns for free. There are also many vintage patterns are for sale, but I'm a little unclear on her business model.

I joined the knitters' social network Ravelry a couple of years ago, but found it disappointing. I didn't like the social interaction--I got flamed for submitting a very polite bug report, for heaven's sake, threats of violence and all. The tone of dialogue is just not my style--one of the newsletter feature writers calls herself "Auntie BubboPants." Whatever floats your boat, but not for me, thanks. However, in my hunt for free crochet pattern novelty, I did revisit Ravelry's crochet section, and found it much more to my liking. I think there are two reasons for this--one, the crochet community is smaller, and that means a better signal-to-noise ratio. That is, more crochet talk, less general conversation. The second reason I like it better is that I'm a novice crocheter, and Ravelry probably works better for novices than for long-time afficianados. There's just more new stuff for a novice to see there.

My Crochet Potholder Inheritance

The deep snow has deep-sixed sorting and moving stuff from the old house, but while the weather was still conducive to line-drying, I sorted and washed a collection of linens from my grandmother's house. My mom had put them away in a closet in 1964, and I moved them from my mom's house in 1996, and hadn't unboxed them since.

Quite a few things are badly stained, either through use or poor storage, but I found these inspiring crocheted potholders in almost-new condition. I remember the green and white ones (or potholders like them) from my grandma's kitchen.

These potholders and the dozens of doilies and pillowcase edgings are probably what triggered my recent crochet-jones. By the way, these potholders are the work of my post-card collecting grandma, Florence Williamson Hunt.

Wobbly Pot Holders--Pleasures of a New Skill

After moving to the new house this past fall, I noticed my entire collection of potholders was pretty shabby. (I still have them--my Mom and I made them together, and I just can't seem to toss them....) However, Golden Apples has posted dozens of double knitting projects, including some truly inspiring double-knit cotton yarn potholders. I've been meaning to master double knitting, and in November, I hauled out some left-over cotton-wool blend yarn that I thought would have good insulating properties, and I turned to the Golden Apples' double knitting tutorial index to get going.

The directions were great, but the yarn was uncooperative. It had a history of unsatisfactory results, as the cardigans I made from it had all the droopy bagginess of cotton, coupled with wool's unfortunate tendency to pill. After a few false starts, I began to think of the true purpose of potholders--to give the novice fiber artist a vaguely useful first project. I thought of all the wobbly potholders knitted by little girls out of Grandma's yarn leftovers, and I realized I needed to be a novice at something once more.

I needed to crochet these potholders. My Great Aunt Cora taught me to crochet when I was 8, and in 1987, in a fit of February depression, I bought Maggie Righetti's Crocheting in Plain English and holed up in my Tacky Park garret until I'd used up all my leftover yarn on a cute hexagon motif afghan. (Easier on the liver than a drinking binge, and I used the afghan for years.) However, I had secret skill deficits--I couldn't crochet a plain square piece of fabric. I could crochet dandy button bands onto a knitted cardigan, and I could make motifs that started at the center, but I was helpless when a foundation chain was called for. What's more, my flat rectangles gained or lost stitches at the ends of rows, and I had no idea how it happened.

Clearly, I needed to take this obnoxious yarn and crochet square, flat potholders. I tried plain and fancy stitches, but I finally settled on single crochet, worked into the "back loop" only, which gives these cute little ridges, yet seems firm and thick enough to make a good potholder. With all the stitch testing, false starts, and lost stitches (Where did they go?) I began to wear out the yarn, so I just went ahead and finished the "rectangle," flawed though it was. Then I crocheted another rectangle, much like the first, perhaps a little less wobbly at the edges. I crocheted them together around the borders, which concealed some of the lost or gained stitches, and added a little shell border, which definitely looks better made in crochet thread than in this bulky pink yarn.

The next project will look better. I'm beginning to understand where to put the crochet hook at the beginnings and ends of rows. My place mats have the same number of stitches on every row, and their sides are almost parallel. It's really fun to explore something new. I love wobbly pot holders!

Recyling Craft Projects--How About a Rug?

I always get on a "recycling" kick this time of year--usually with fabric scraps. One year it was rayon scrap window quilts; last year it was compacting the denim scrap collection; another year it was converting some heavy handknit pullovers to cardigans. Maybe that's why I keep noticing things like Plastic Bag knitting. I've actually tried this, and wasn't that pleased with the results; however, plastic bag crochet might be a little more promising; as crochet gives a firmer fabric.

Cocoknits, the source for Plastic Bag knitting, also has tutorials for knitting bathmats out of rag strips. Her project looks fabulous in her photo, but I have made such, and, once washed, they are quite disappointing. However, this reminded me of the wonderful world of rag rugs. Woven, braided, crocheted, hooked--I've never gotten beyond the initial experimentation stage. I wonder if I have enough denim scraps? Here are a few Web resources on rag rug projects.

• Rag Rug Tutorial from Vintage Chica
• Rag Rug Instructions from Thrifty Fun
• 1885-1929 VARIOUS RAG RUG INSTRUCTIONS from Rugmaker's Homestead. This website has all sorts of information on traditional rug making with dozens of techniques. A lot of fun!

Troublesome Plastic Bag Build-Up

The garden is done for the year. I'm already missing the fresh vegetables, but there is another negative as well: My plastic grocery bag collection is building up again. I use plastic bags to bring in tomatoes, peaches, grapes, peppers, cucumbers...everything. After the bags are muddied or ripped, I can throw them out in better conscience. Since there is no place locally to recycle them, they just pile up the rest of the year.

I have a sense that they "must be good for something," so I'm always on the lookout for ways to re-use. Here's a way to turn them into "fiber" for crochet, knitting or Recycled Plastic-Bag Weaving by Jana Trent. Her woven plastic project is the best looking use of plastic bag "yarn" I've seen, and it makes me want to try it out.

Doily Fraud--The Seamy Underbelly of Pioneer Days

Last week I was asked to judge the knitting category in Marlinton's Pioneer Days Craft Show. When I arrived in town with my evaluation forms in hand, I discovered that there were no entries. The competition is generally referred to as the "Quilt Show," so I wasn't too surprised at this turn of events. Instead, I assisted the crochet category judge, a last-minute stand-in. There were about ten crochet entries, and I think we evaluated them fairly, with one possible exception.

It seems a cotton doily we ranked in the top four was suspect. According to the quilter who organized the show, the woman who brought in the doily entered it on behalf of her neighbor, along with another doily with a "Made in China" sticker still attached. The rules state that the entry must be your own work, an explicit addition after last year's scandal, in which it was revealed that the award-winning quilt was a purchased article.

Now, it costs $2 to enter an item in the show, and the winner's financial stakes are very low--less than the cost of a doily at Wal-Mart. What would motivate doily fraud? Bragging rights are limited, because one runs the risk of coming in third in a field of two. Myself, I've never entered an item in the show because once the competition is over, the display is not watched carefully, and much that is not nailed down in Marlinton disappears during Pioneer Days. (This is not typical--the rest of the year I leave my car unlocked without qualm. I blame the huge crowds from out of town.)

What kind of person commits doily fraud? My faith in needle artists is shaken. I have also been disturbed to learn of dissent and ill-feeling among the quilters in Pocahontas County. There are, it seems, quilters who would not interact with "that quilt show" for anything on earth. It's all rather disillusioning.