Traditions Holiday Swap 2007

I can’t show you what my swap partner, Vickie, sent to me yet, but I thought I’d show you what I sent to her. I went a little nuts (gee, how unusual for me!) and made a booklet and things. It’s fun getting to know someone this way. Vickie lives in California, and is married with a year-old daughter names Lani (so cute!).

So here’s my package:

I sent a tradition from my husband and I, our favorite holiday music: Vincent Guaraldi’s A Charlie Brown Christmas CD. Vickie sent me Harry Connick, Jr., which is awesome, and made me want to watch Will & Grace. Also a couple of books that are timeless Christmas tales for children, from my own childhood: The Night Before Christmas and the Twelve Days of Christmas.

I sent two tree ornaments I made myself - a crocheted snowflake and an embroidered felt tree. These were both much fun to make!

The little brown wooden square is an Edelweiss cookie press for Springerle cookies. Springerle are traditional German cookies dating back to the 14th century (I’m from the “Hasenclever” family maternally - can you get more German?). I’ll give more information about these later. I gave Vickie my family’s recipe for them.

Finally, I made a booklet with recipes and information for her:

Front and back covers there. The front is a holiday card cut in half with a piece of paper adhered to the back. Same for the back. Tied with ribbon, because I don’t know how else to bind a book at the moment.

A greeting on page 2, then on page 4 a rundown of a traditional holiday dinner - one I made in 2006, in fact. The portabello bisque listed there has a long story.

Pages 5-8. That’s my tree from 2006, then three pages to explain and give the springerle recipe. With pictures!

Pages 9-12. There’s some info about my maternal “hometown” and on the right my maternal grandmother’s Chocolate Crinkle cookie recipe.

Pages 13-16. Finally, my paternal grandmother’s sage noodle recipe. Very good recipe. haven’t heard of too many families with a holiday noodle recipe.

So that’s all there is. It was a fun project to undertake. I’ve decided I need to learn more binding methods, make a few more little books like that. I don’t know what for, but I can certainly build them anyway!

Made of F(rustation);F(ail)

I like this title because it is appropriate. Let me explain:

My new camera has a crack in the retractable lens. This is on the level of calamitous for me. I practically live with camera attached at this point, and to be completely without feels really upsetting. It makes me want to go buy a new one immediately.

It’s too bad, really, because I couldn’t record my cookie-baking, and I can’t show you the cute stuff my holiday traditions swap partner sent. I can tell you that she sent me her mom’s recipe for Vietnamese Pho! Well, it’s an approximation, anyway - you know those recipes that you make so often and know so well there isn’t really a recipe? It’s one of those. I’ll be making it soon, and I’ll tell you how it was. Mmmm.

I also can’t show you the great hard drive case my husband is making out of a Moleskine notebook with his new Dremel, and that’s just a shame.
Anyway, misfortunes aside, I was going to talk about was the construction of my blanket, which had a lot to do with frustration and failure. But ultimately, success. So, since I already have that picture … So this is what my lap looked like one night while I was crocheting …

You can kind of see the blanket there, or bits of it, and the white thing is the speed hook, and the rest of it is balls of yarn and TANGLES. That blue there is one giant tangle I had to cut apart. Tangles were a big problem with this project. But like all of my crochet, this was a nice learning experience …

This project involved three new complications for me that I had to learn to deal with:

• Crocheting with multiple strands of yarn,
• Frequent color changes, and
• Dealing with the loose weave of a large-gauge speed hook.

I started the project with the bottom tri-color border first (6 rows) and then commenced the next brown row. Since the tri-color border goes all the way around, I had to do (1) three stitches of three-strand tri-color, then (2) switch to three strands of a single color, then (3) switch back to the three-strand tri-color for the left border.

This means just one thing: a ridiculous insane number of tie-offs. By the time I’d done three rows this way, I’d tied off 24 times already just switching colors for the border. I knew it had to stop, because tying off all the time means the following:

• you have lots of ugly end-strings sticking out you have to weave in or cut off, both of which you know will cost oodles of time when finishing up,
• the three colors of your yarn are now hopelessly tangled from the combination of switching colors and turning for the next row, and
• you’re thinking of quitting or at least rethinking that color pattern you liked so much.

So what’s the solution? Stitching. In parts. I just quit crocheting the side borders alongside the solid and did them separately.

• Crochet the solid stripes all the way up.
• Crochet separate narrow rows for the strips for each side.
• Then I got out my large plastic yarn needle and did a sort of blanket stitch to attach the strips to the center. This was the fourth stitch arrangement I tried, but it was the one that was least visible.
• Next, I crocheted a last six tri-color rows across the top of the whole thing.

To finish, I crocheted two rows of half double crochet all the way around to tighten the stitches up.

In the end, the blanket for my grandparents turned out great, and I am really happy with it, and I learned a whole lot in the process. I’m also enormously pleased to have actually finished something. This can truly be a problem for me, so being able to complete two out of the three gifts I was working on fells like it’s a real accomplishment!!

Three-Color Afghan Q&A

So one of the main projects I’ve been working on in December was a gift, so I never showed it that much, however now that the holiday is over I’ll reveal it.  It’s an afghan that I made for my grandparents, now about five feet long and about 4.5 feet wide.  It’s very dense and yet stretchy.  Working on it with it on my lap kept me very warm!

Yarn:  It has three colors - off white, chocolate brown and dusty blue.  The worsted-weight yarn is Vanna’s Choice from Lion Brand (oh how my husband laughed when I brought home Vanna White yarn!).  It’s an acrylic yarn, and I thought it a bit squeaky to work with.  But on the whole it’s pretty soft, easy to care for, and fairly priced for a project as big as this.  I believe it took 5-6 balls of each, something like that.  It was made by holding three strands of yarn together as you go, so it took lots of yarn.

Hook Size:  Speed Hook Size Q .  This was my first foray into “speed hooking” and I am torn about the method.  I mean, the loose gauge is great for this sort of project, but it’s not quite so fun to work with.  Kind of hurt my fingers.

Pattern:  Lion Brand’s free pattern the “5 1/2 Hour Throw”.  I modified this pattern quite a bit althought the basic “V stitch” (as I call it) is the same.  I used a smaller hook (calls for size S) which of course decreased the gauge a lot.  I still thought it was loose, so to keep this from feeling “too floppy” I used pretty tight tension.  Despite the gauge decrease, I did increase the size overall significantly by adding additional stitches (the original is about the size of the striped without the border).  I also removed the fringe it called for and instead added a two-row deep half double crochet “binding” border to tighten the edges because I was still unsure how the floppiness and stretchiness of the stitches around the edges would work out over time and with repeated washing.  (Note: Normally I would give you the link to the pattern, but Lion Brand’s site is apparently in the midst of renovation and is totally borked.  So here’s the pattern from Michael’s.)

Color Pattern:  The pattern is a single color thing, but I made a pattern of solid stripes surrounded by a three-tone border.   This matches my grandparents’ sofa (they call the sofa a “davenport” which I’ve never heard outside that area of Iowa).  In my next post, which I shall title “Made of Fail” I’ll tell you how I ended up making this particular color pattern, and give you some insight into how spectacularly the phrase “I am not perfect” fits me and why that doesn’t matter.  The crap I had to go through to get this project to completion was astounding, and as usual, it was all my fault because I made it harder than it needed to be.  Typical.  Well, hope y’all like it

My brother Jeremy gracefully agreed to “model” the blanket to show approximate size.  Pretty big for a lap throw, yes?

Afghan Detail of border and brown stripe: