Flowers for my Mom

This past weekend Jeff and I made a trip to Houston to visit our respective mothers. Since I work on Mother’s Day, we were a week late, but the love is still there, right?

So for this past Mother’s Day I decided to make my mother a gift of one of her favorite things, violets. I wouldn’t have thought of it except one of my favorite crochet designers - June Gilbank - provided a lovely pattern for a cute little pot of violets just in time to make them for the day.  It didn’t take too long to make it, it was fun, and it turned out so, so well!  June is one of my favorite designers because her patterns are deceptively simple, but just exactly right.

As you maybe can see from the picture, my mother loves violets, and as long as I can remember has grown lovely examples on her kitchen windowsill. So the idea was to make her a special, permanently flowering version of them.  I took June’s pattern and altered it just a wee bit, and it became not just a pot of violets, but a basket for jewelry.

I made sure to use fuzzy green yarn (Jiffy yarn in Avocado) for the leaves, because I always loved the soft velvet of violet leaves. Apart from that, the main difference from the pattern was that I split it in half to make a basket.  The original design is all one piece and stuffed with fiberfill.  In order to change it, I judiciously applied plastic cross stitch canvas, some matching stash fabric and a bit of fiberfill.

The first step was to cut out circles of plastic canvas to stiffen the flower top “lid” and the bottom of the pot.  Then I sewed a rectangle of the canvas into a circle shape to stiffen the pot sides.  I also sewed the circle for the pot bottom to the sides. I used plastic canvas because (1) I could sew it and (2) plastic doesn’t disintegrate over time like cardboard does and (3) it’s waterproof.

Next I got a large circle of coordinating fabric from my stash and stuffed it into the little basket made from plastic canvas.  I stitched the fabric to the canvas with yarn around the top, and then I tacked the fabric to the bottom of the pot with four tiny stitches, also using yarn.  That leaves you with a basket lined with fabric.  Then I trimmed some of the major excess off the outside, still leaving a considerable amount so it’s fabric-lined inside and out.  Here’s the lining basket after sewing (and a lovely picture of the Men’s Health magazine I was using as a table).

The final step was to stuff the fabric basket into the yarn basket and smooth the fabric down, and tack them together with matching yarn. Voila!  fabric lining inside and out. Creating a lovely, structured, lined basket capable of holding the most lovely of jewelry, if I do say so myself.

I did something similar to structure the “flower lid” by adding a circle of plastic canvas to the bottom of the lid. I also obviously added the brown lid bottom to suggest the dirt the flowers are growing in.  In the original there is no need for this bottom.  Apart from the canvas, the lid is mostly stuffed with fiberfill.  The crocheted bottom structured with plastic canvas is the lovely structural finishing touch that makes the lid match the bottom in shape and style. I don’t want to say more beyond that, because I don’t want to give away June’s clever pattern.

I also added a “lip” to the top and bottom of the crocheted pieces in white by adding two rows - I crocheted around twice in both the back loop and front loop of the last row of the top and bottom.  The point of the lip is to create a way to fit the basket together in a neat way. (sorry for the fuzzy picture below)  I did this before attaching the fabric.  You can see the bottom of the lid including the “dirt” bottom and lip in the picture of the two halves also.

So that was my Mother’s Day gift to my mom!  She loves jewelry and violets and purple, what better way to tell her her crafty daughter loves her than to make something out of the things she loves?

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!!