Confessions of a Wrong-handed Crocheter

Once upon a time there was a knitter. She was what was called a thrower, using the right hand to hold the yarn and throw it over the needles to knit. One day she went to college and met another crafty student. They both decided to learn to crochet and went to Ben Franklin to buy yarn, crochet hooks and a book on how-to. The book they bought only showed pictures of the hook and yarn so the knitter did what she knew best. She held the yarn in her right hand and threw it over the crochet hook.

As time passed the knitter found out she was supposed to hold the yarn in her left hand. She didn't want other crocheters to think she was doing it wrong so she tried to learn the "right way". It just didn't work. So, the knitter only crocheted in private, away from other people so they wouldn't see her and her wrong way. She made beautiful things. She even taught crocheting which worked well because she had to crochet so slow the right way her students could see exactly what they needed to do.

More time passed. One day the knitter met another right handed knitter who complained about not being able to learn how to crochet. The knitter got brave and told her about the way she crocheted. Intrigued, the other knitter asked for a lesson. There was joy in the other knitters heart because suddenly she could crochet. This made our knitter happy and a bit brave. She started to crochet in public occasionally and ended up teaching throwing knitters to crochet with their right hand - just like they knit. Many were happy and many finally learned how to crochet.

And they all lived happily ever after. But this isn't the end.

I've decided its time to admit I don't crochet the way the books tell you to crochet. I'm happy with my own method, others I've taught are happy to be finally crocheting and maybe by telling this silly little story I can let other throwers who can't crochet know that there is hope. Hold the yarn in your right hand just like you knit. Hold the project in your left hand. Give it a try.

Watch here and I'll try to get some pictures up to show you how I crochet.


Just a few samples of what crocheting the wrong way can make.

Rust Goes Green - my design that's been downloaded almost 10,000 times so far

 

 

Fall Colors

Sometimes I'm so busy looking for fall colors and sights by going out driving that I forget to look in my own back yard and enjoy the sights right here. Every year my maple tree gives off the best colors.

 

Top that off with some final bright greens and some late fall flowers and I have a pretty nice view from my windows.

 



This weekend was the Quilt show of my guild (Women of the West). It's a medium sized guild that does a show every other year. There were many quilts including some challenges. This year's special theme was Stars. For some reason I didn't take any pictures except for 1 of the special speaker. Gudrun Erla of GE Quilt Designs. She spoke for over an hour about her quilt designs and books. She is best known for quick, quilt as you go designs. Several of her designs have a very Scandinavian feel which makes sense because she is originally from Iceland.

 

Going to quilt shows or knitting shows is always such a treat. Getting to see the creativity of fellow crafters always recharges my creative battery. If I knit, crochet, quilt or whatever craft I'm currently into but spend no time with other people sharing this love, I tend to lose my creativity. Or as many say - lose my mojo. But- get my backside off the chair and into a room with other people of my interests and its like going to a revival meeting. After spending a few hours at the guild show I came home and worked some more on my Shoo Fly quilt. It WILL be done for my guest bedroom by Christmas when my brother comes home for a visit.

Catching up

It's been a little while since I posted anything but life goes on at the house and the boys have been busy trying to keep me in their control.

They seem to think by guarding my purse I can't leave because they've both figured out I pick up the purse before I head out the door and disappear. So, they came up with a plan during my last week off - one of them guarded the purse at all times.

 

 

When I did manage to get out of the house I picked up the package waiting for me and Chief was thrilled. There's nothing more fun than getting a big hunk of plastic bag to chew on!



 

 

Of course life lately has not been all guarding the purse and chewing on plastic. It's been having important discussions....

 



and quilting and some knitting (no pictures of knitting).

Christmas placemat. Just a bunch of leftover material and this is what I came up with.

Wallhanging. I made this about 10 years ago. I made the top. I did buttonhole stitching around the flowers. I sandwiched the top, batting and back. I stitched around the houses and I put it away for 10  YEARS! Why do we do this?

 

 Today is sandwich the churn dash quilt I made almost a year ago. It just isn't magically getting quilting together my itself and I really want it on the guest bed for my brother when he comes to spend his first Christmas since 1971. Yep, he hasn't been home since then and so far it looks like he'll make it home this year. Cross your fingers!

Searching the Web

I can always tell when fall has come by looking at the number of views of my blog. Come fall, the numbers really rise because knitters are visiting the Reversible Cable Scarf page (Which Way is Up Scarf). The scarf has been #1 or 2 frequently on some of the free pattern search sites so a lot of traffic comes from those websites. Last week I had a major change in the numbers so - it's official - fall is here.

Since I don't have any pictures to share with you I thought I'd spent a little time talking about one of my favorite topics - researching on the web.

I love to go hunting through other people's blogs and websites to find pictures, inspiration and how to's for my current interest. Right now I'm back into quilting; so, many of the websites I've been hanging around are about quilting.

My favorite research tool is Bing.com. One of the things I like to do is type in something into Bing and click on the Image button. Try going over there and typing something like "Blue quilts". Suddenly you have many, many pictures of just blue quilts. If you find one you like, click on it to get a bigger image. At the bottom right of the bigger image window should be the link to the source and you can go over there to see the full blog post or shop website where the picture came from.

My latest search was Native American Quilts. Whenever I do a search on this I notice the Star of Bethlehem/Lone Star is a very popular quilt design. From what I understand when the missionaries first came to the different groups, they women taught quilting to the Native women and the star was popular because of its symbolism. I live in an area with Lakota and Ojibwe and I've noticed may of the quilts are the Star.

Through this searching I found an artist named Gwen Westerman. Her quilts often include the Star with a contemporary look. Search Gwen Westerman Quilts and take a look. I think you'll enjoy her work. Check out her quilt - Night Wind. I'm not going to link to it so you'll have to have a little fun and do some searching.

If you want to have a little fun - search "Tristan Quilt" and click on Images. This quilt was made in the 14th century and is quite an amaing quilt.

Maybe next post will have some pictures of what I've been working on lately. Stay tuned.

Controlling Obsessions

In the past I would "discover" a new craft of pattern and suddenly become all involved in it. When I took a stained glass window glass with my friend, I had to buy all the equipment and lots of glass to use. (I still have plenty if I get back into it!).

When I started machine knitting, I threw myself into it and within a few months I had the best machine on the market and was asked by one of the national instructors to take over a class for him out of town because he knew I had everything figured out and he needed to back out of teaching that weekend.

When I started crocheting, I bought all the hooks and ended up teaching at a friends shop after a year. Same happened with all my obsessions. But this time something happened.

I've been reading a lot about hexagons lately. Quilters become obsessed with them and take years to make them and ultimately a huge quilt. In the past (like maybe last year) I would have gone head first into buying a ton of fabric and hexagon templates and a fancy box to keep them in while sewing hexies and maybe even a new Ott lite with a magnifying glass to see the hexies better.

Last week I went on line and found a 1" hexagon template. I print out a limited amount. The I got some fabric scraps from a quilt I made for my cousin's little girl. The current game plan is to make SOME hexagons. Not a whole quilt. I'm going to make a small wall hanging with some hexagon flowers and maybe a hexagon sun. It will be bright and cheery and most important, small.I plan on using the hexagons like applique rather than a whole quilt of hexagons, we'll see... Maybe this will get the hexagon bug out of me without taking over my life. I'm hoping I've learned to control some of my obsessions cause my house can't take too many more!

A Fearless Young Woman

My other cousin's daughter (model for Jan's Shawl pattern) is in Africa for a few months for college. She is writing a blog about her experience. I haven't asked permission to post the blog so I won't but, I have to tell you about her. She is an amazing young woman who will change the world. She is absolutely fearless in her devotion to our God and living the life He wants her to live. Her blog is well written and lets me feel as though I am there experiencing the country with her. I hope she won't mind my putting just a small piece of her blog here. She wrote all about the small buses called trotros that she uses to get around. She wrote about the people she is meeting on the trotro in a way that gives me hope for the future. With people like my cousin's daughter coming into their own, the world be will a good place in the future.

 

*****

 

" I find immense peace on the trotros, sharing in the journey with my Ghanaian brothers and sisters. I feel the presence of the Lord within those vans. My pulse calms, my eyes open, and my heart dances. Jesus provides me with His peace, which is so much greater than what the world can give. In those hours on the trotro everyday, my prejudices begin to melt. My frustration from the day dissolves. And I enjoy the journey with people whose lives have coincided with mine, if only for a few minutes.

Isn’t that what it’s about? Sharing the journey together, dwelling in peace together, learning together. The trotros with their confined spaces showed me this. The trotros keep showing me this with every day that comes. And Ghana just keeps blessing me.

…welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God. -Romans 15:8"

This One's for the Family

Yesterday was my uncle's memorial service. As always the family gathered and shared stories. It's a little sad that some of the great stories you don't get to hear until the person is gone but - it's always great to hear family stories whenever you can.

One topic we got on was past family homes. Our grandparent's house is for sale again and one cousin stopped by the pick up the sales information. We all studied it trying to figure out all the angles of the pictures. We had 2 basic problems.
1. The wide angle camera lens was used to causing the front door to be twice as wide as normal and other distortions. The dining room wasn't all that big but the picture made the table of 6 chairs look like you could seat 12 people.
2. The previous homeowner did a great deal of remodeling so things didn't look like we remembered.

We also tried to remember the other house addresses we would hear about as children. Internet to the rescue! I grabbed the US Census records for 1898 thru 1849 and wrote down the family addresses. Today I took a little trip and grabbed a few pictures. Some of the houses are gone and Grandpa's grocery store is gone but here's a couple pictures I found. I left the pictures bigger files so the family members can download if they want to.

Here's the history I found:

1898 - when our Grandpa Bill was a child he lived on Dupont. I've sent all the addresses to some of the cousins and if you're a family member and want the exact address for the places without pictures, let me know. This house is very obviously a newer home so I didn't take a picture.

1900 - he had moved but the address on the US Census is not legible. Note to anyone who ever does a Census - please write carefully so people can read it in the future!!

1905 - yet another house address (and another newer house). Seems Grandpa moved around a lot as a child!

1910 - Yep - new address for Grandpa. Meanwhile, Grandma's family lived in the house on Fremont that would stay in the family for many years. My parents rented from the Aunts during the first few years of their marriage before buying the house I now live in. The house looks like a new window was added to the front but otherwise it looks mostly original.

1920 - Grandma's parents moved to a new house in Robbinsdale but the Aunts still had the Fremont house. Meanwhile, Grandma and grandpa were married and lived in their first house. I forgot to head over to this address so - no picture.


1930 and 1940 Census show Grandma and Grandpa at the house we knew and spent so much time at as kids.

 

 

 

Meanwhile - my Dad's family was living in south Minneapolis where Dad had friends who would sneak over the fence to steal apples from their tree. The apple tree isn't there anymore but the house look much like it would have in the 1920s - 40s. During the middle part of Dad's alzheimers I would ask him about where he lived. He could remember this house and give me details about everything (including the apple tree) but couldn't remember the house he and Mom lived in for over 50 years until he moved to memory care. I guess this house made quite an impression on a little kid growing up!

 

 

Jan's Shawl

 

I'd like to thank everyone who purchased Jan's Shawl so far. If you didn't read about this shawl the post about it is HERE.  I had a few questions about how much will be donated to the fire fighter support group. Right now $4.55 of the $5.00 will be donated. Paypal takes $.45 to process things and a small amount will end up going to Ravelry (unknown amount at the moment) but everything else will go to the support group. I'll be keeping nothing.

 

 

 

 



Back Together Again

Uncle Bud rejoined his sisters this past week after living a very full and happy 93 years.

As kids they grew up in the north Minneapolis area. Being the children of a grocer, they lived over the store and had to spend spare hours sweeping the floors and helping out. I'm told Mom got out of the work because she was "the baby" of the family.

 

 

 

As time passed they moved out of the store and into a house on Victory Memorial Drive. During this time WWII started. Uncle Bud and Grandpa fulfilled their service in the Navy. To his last day Uncle Bud could tell you very ship he was on and when he served on each of them. His memory for details was incredible.

 

All three grew up, had families of their own and instilled a sense of family in the next generation. We grew up close and cousins were more like brothers and sisters. We knew 2nd and 3rd cousins, meeting up every year at the family picnic or seeing many of them weekly at church.

 

Their generation was strong, faithful and loyal. Uncle Bud was a leader at the same church he was born in and held his friends close. My cousin told me recently some of the people from his work days came up to spend the morning with him. I don't know too many people who are still in touch with people from work over 25 years later!

 

 

Uncle Bud loved his grandchildren and loved going to their soccer games, swim meets, church programs and being involved in their lives.

 

 

And now, after living independently right up until the last day, Uncle Bud has gone Home. His generation has passed the torch to the next generation and I can only hope we live up to their fine example. My uncle and godfather will be missed.