Tag Archives: Tunisian crochet

Sep7

Better photo and another FO

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Edited to add: I just spent all of five minutes adding all my free pattern links back in the sidebar. They were all still there, in the background. If I’d realised how quick and easy it would be, I would have done it 9 months ago when I changed the theme! Doh!

 

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Daytime shot of the Polaris scarf, taken outside this morning. We have another day of orange sun, the sky being totally obscured by smoke again.

And I finished off this coaster, which is about 5 inches in diameter. I felt like my experiment was a success and I’m itching to move on to something new.

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If you look carefully, you can see a little bit of the Phil Techno rubber yarn peeking out at the bottom of the photo. I didn’t want to trim it too close. The yarn is Red Heart with Love, and I think the colourway is Boysenberry.

Yay for finishing things!

So my day looks like this…keep nagging young men to get up and get ready for the bus, drop them at bus stop, go to gym (which I joined on Tuesday and I am all gung ho for getting fit again), come home, shower and change, vacuum the house, and make dinner. Sounds like a plan!

And tonight I can pull out a cake of Lion Brand Mandala (totally non-fattening) and crochet on the couch, guilt-free!

 

 

Sep6

FO: Polaris scarf

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Just a quickie tonight to show you this scarf, hot off the hook. I only had one skein of Katia Polaris so I was limited by that, and the scarf turned out almost 36 inches long and about 15 inches wide at the top edge. I probably will have to wear it with some kind of pin.

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Nighttime shots again – they look way clearer and brighter on my iPad compared to my Windows laptop. BTW, I will never buy a non-Mac computer again. I was all for saving money at the time, but with hindsight it was a crappy idea.

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I love that the Tunisian Simple Stitch lies flat at the edges, but unfortunately it does curl somewhat top and bottom, so after slipstitching across the last row to close the gaps I turned the work and did a row of shells to finish off.

I have two WIPs in timeout now, a monster toy and a blanket. One active WIP, the coaster or hot pad that is an experiment with that strange rubber yarn. I’ll get that done and then reward myself by playing with some of the Lion Brand Mandala. I keep seeing lovely projects made with it on Facebook.

Good night all.

 

 

Sep4

A week of WIPs

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Another week has whizzed by, though it didn’t feel like it at the time! In this heat, I am gasping for some cloudy, rainy, cool days, but we are still experiencing hot sun, 30 plus degrees (90+F), dry and smoky air.

A new wildfire started just a couple of days ago (photo above is from the day it started, viewed from our house). In the first day, it grew to 100 hectares, overnight it grew to 1000, and now I think it’s around 1500. It’s on the southern edge of a town south of us, and thankfully not heading towards the main residential area but into the forest. However the town south of that one is now threatened. Some people have been evacuated, others on notice to be ready just in case.

The crazy thing is that the vast majority of these fires are human caused. A discarded cigarette butt is often the reason and one moment’s carelessness is all it takes.

So what’s been going on in my crochet world? I did work on the Everything is Cool and Groovyghan a little bit. (I blogged about this on July 21st and showed you a photo of the progress.) Well, I’m just not enjoying the next part of the CAL. It requires a bunch of fiddling with little rectangular bits that stand up on their own and get filled in on the next row. Not feeling it!

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(A quick evening shot – the brown and green rows are the latest ones and I don’t like them.)

The three bags/baskets of DK are going down to my craft room tonight along with this WIP so that I can put it in time out while I consider its fate.

I have been loving this WIP, however…

The yarn is Katia Polaris which a kind Raveler sent me a little while ago. I only have one skein and decided to start out with 3 stitches and work Tunisian Simple Stitch, increasing at the beginning of every alternate row, until the yarn runs out. The colours are very vibrant and I always find this stitch very meditative.

Today I started playing with some Phildar Phil Techno that a friend gave me ages ago. After experimenting with knitting needles and crochet hooks without success, and asking for ideas on a Facebook crochet group, I am using a 5mm crochet hook and some Red Heart with Love to actually crochet around the thick rubber ‘yarn’ to make a coaster or hot pad. So far it’s going well.

I am off to the kitchen now to help clean up. Tai Chi Man has been busy, taking out the old range hood (cooker hood) which is a dated colour, rusty and inefficient. Of course, with an old house, fitting a new appliance to an existing space is always going to be a challenge and this one is no different. He has been adding bits of wood to the opening and messing about with wires and has run out of time as far as fitting in the new hood.

I’m glad he is such a Mr Fixit and has oodles of experiences at DIY and installations. I’m sure it’s saved us thousands of dollars over the years.

If you’re in North America, I hope you enjoyed your Labour Day. Roll on fall/autumn!

 

May26

Tunisian mitts

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These mitts grew out of my experiment with Tunisian purl stitch. I made two rectangles and sewed them into mitts, leaving thumb holes.

Comparing the two, there was a definite improvement in tension and evenness in the second one. Tps is a little trickier than Tss or Tks, with extra movements involved to bring the yarn forward, across the front of the stitch, and back again to wrap. The result is a little like garter stitch on both sides. And no curling. Here’s a link to a video that really helped me get going on this. If I’d only had the book to refer to, it would have been a lot more difficult.

I think I’m going to try Extended Simple Stitch next as it’s used in a chevron ripple later in the book. This is fun!

 

 

 

May23

Happy Monday!

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Everyone is so down about Mondays (I’m looking at you, Garfield). But today, I didn’t have a shift (even though the store is open this afternoon) and Tai Chi Man had a long weekend because of the public holiday. So this particular Monday is pretty darned good!

I love getting an email from my Google Calendar peeps saying, “You have no events scheduled today.” It feels like the day is so full of possibilities. I also love waking up in the morning and knowing I don’t have to jump out of bed and get going. Slow starts are so much nicer.

However, there is still housework to do, and Mondays used to be my regular day, before work outside the home got in the way, so I did clean up the kitchen and bathrooms, vacuum (the majority of) the house and washed a crapton of laundry. After lunch I was able to relax on the couch with my crochet, guilt-free.

This is my experiment with Tunisian knit stitch. I LOVE THIS!

(Whaddya know, daylight shots, taken outside, so they are actually in focus and full colour!)

The right side of the Tks looks like, well, knitting. The back looks sort of like purl, but the ridges are way bigger, and the fabric it makes is so soft and thick, it’s gorgeous. Can you imagine a sweater made with this? I can, and it would be really warm and cuddly.

I used the same yarn as the cowl – Loops and Threads Chameleon in Rainbow – but of course on such a small project you only see a couple of colour changes. This time, though, the hook is 6.5mm. Tunisian crochet takes a larger hook than you’d use normally.

Now I have to get in the kitchen for a little advance dinner prep, but my plan for later is to open my new Tunisian crochet book to the next stitch and practice that one.

 

May22

Tunisian cowl FO

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The above photos were taken last night after I decided that the cowl/scarfy thing was long enough. After some discussion on the Tunisian crochet group that I joined on Ravelry, I realised that I’d been doing the left edge all wrong, so it was time to call that a lesson learned and move on.

The piece of Tunisian simple stitch was about 25″ long and 9″ wide and the perfect size for a cowl. As far as I’m concerned, the somewhat curved ‘wrong’ edge can be the bottom edge, and the other neater edge can be the top, as that what will be seen most during wear. (Of course if I give this away, I doubt a non-crafty person would be able to tell the difference.)

The fabric resulting from the Loops & Threads Chameleon with the 6mm hook is so nice. Close but not too dense, soft, squishy and very warm.

Today at work I found some clear buttons to add to the cowl.None of the coloured ones really worked. The buttons are probably not going to have to be undone to wear the cowl but I didn’t want to just sew the ends together because of the drastic colour difference between the two ends.

Colours are looking washed out here, but it’s the same yarn that I used for the Spring Bag. I am playing with a 6.5mm  hook now and more of this yarn, practising the Tunisian knit stitch. Just a small piece that will probably become a cellphone cosy.

It’s a public holiday here tomorrow – Victoria Day – I already worked two days of this long weekend and I’m glad I don’t have to work tomorrow. I’m sure many Canadians decided to go camping this weekend, but in our area the weather has been chilly and windy and wet. Whilst I feel a bit sorry for those in tents, we really do need the rain.

Talk to you again soon.

May20

Cowl/scarf thing

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This is my progress after a couple of days with my new Denise2Go interchangeable crochet hook (6mm) and the Loops & Threads Chameleon (worsted weight) in Rainbow. I waited to get a daytime shot, because the colours are more true to life.

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The first thing I learned was how to finish the left edge properly. Sometimes I was working into the chain at the end, sometimes into the last stitch, and I thankfully had my new book to confirm that I was supposed to be inserting the hook under the two strands of the last stitch of the row (like in regular crochet). Both edges, for the most part, are looking pretty neat (after the first couple of inches where I wasn’t being consistent) but the tension on the left edge is a bit looser, hence the waviness in the photo.

The second thing I learned is that the bottom (and presumably top) edge curls, but the sides don’t, so if I leave this as a scarf rather than a cowl I will need to finish off the ends with some double crochet.

The third thing I learned was how much I love the Zen state that can come from such a relaxing repetitive stitch. It’s so effortless. If you haven’t tried Tunisian simple stitch before, I hope you give it a go. There are lots of video tutorials on You Tube. The Crochet Crowd is one channel you could try. The Tss definitely looks more interesting with the colour variations in a yarn like this. At one point today, I found a knot in one strand of the two that are twisted around each other. Cutting out the knot and restarting at the right edge left a hard colour change. But pulling back until I was back at the left edge, then rejoining the yarn, made for a softer transition because one colour then underlays the other.

Excuse me now while I run off and finish my breadmaking, followed by dinner-making, followed by ordering the kids to clean up the kitchen! 😀

 

 

 

May17

Denise2Go

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Well, I didn’t plan to write two blog posts in one day, but when I went outside to the mailbox today I found a parcel waiting for me. Whoop Whoop!

20160517_121439Yup, the package from Denise arrived. I ordered on the weekend, they despatched on the Monday and it only took 8 days to get here from the US.

I was surprised by how tiny the crochet hook set looked. You don’t get a sense of scale from the photos on their site. It is certainly travel-friendly. At first glance, the hooks look a bit like cheap plastic, but actually they are a strong resin and are very smooth.

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Just behind the hooks are two tiny compartments which hold four cables and some stoppers and a joining piece. The cables are quite stiff which is something that some people probably don’t like about Denise products.

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I also ordered this book because there is  so much I don’t know about Tunisian crochet.

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This is my first test swatch with these hooks and some worsted weight acrylic.  A little Tunisian and a few dcs to try things out for size.

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The hooks and cables felt fine, though the longer cables would probably benefit from being dipped in warm water to straighten them out before use. I wondered how I would like the tips, as 99% of my hook collection  are tapered rather than inline, but they seem ok.

Time and practice will tell!

 

 

 

 

 

Apr17

Summery Sunday Summary

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This morning wasn’t the best – I burned my arm with boiling water when making soymilk in the Vitamix (went from nothing to max speed with the flick of a switch; note to self – check high speed button is off before switching machine on). And after I hung out the laundry on the clothes line I was walking back up the yard looking at my arm when my head hit a low branch of the apricot tree! I felt a bit sorry for myself for a while.

However, after cleaning off the bits of soybean from the kitchen cupboards (!) and assembling a large potato salad, we all headed south to a friend’s place for a sociable afternoon of hiking, eating and trying out some anti-gravity yoga. The weather was hot and sunny today and we saw red-tailed hawks, deer, mountain goats, and beautiful valley and lake views.

The potluck was delicious, the yoga was fun, and on the drive there and back I played with some Tunisian crochet with some James C Brett Marble Chunky and the double-ended crochet hook that I ‘inherited’ recently. The stitches I experimented with were simple stitch, knit stitch, full stitch, purl stitch and rib (a few rows of each in the swatch below). I need to check You Tube to make sure I was doing the purl correctly, as I was working from memory.

Tunisian crochet is very unstretchy but I do like the look of the knit stitch  and the fact that it’s thick and would make for a very warm item.

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See that chocolate bar? Zazubean Sassy – mmmmm!

 

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And the book I’m reading right now? This…

 

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Definitely written for adults, this one!

 

Apr8

Bag WIP

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What gorgeous weather we are having this week! I’m not sure how warm it got, officially, but it’s been in the twenties Celsius, which is 70s Fahrenheit.

Yesterday, after a visit with a friend, I had a bit of time to spare before going to work at 4pm. I wanted to get some exercise in, but also some sunshine, so I multi-tasked by putting on my swimsuit and taking my yoga mat out to the deck along with my resistance bands. Hopefully I didn’t scare any of the neighbours with my flab and downward facing dog! It was hot, as the back deck faces south, and I probably was out there for less than half an hour.

My shift at the store was 4-9pm, and it was really quiet. I wore my favourite turquoise maxi skirt which meant I had to break out the summer shoes…except I should have worn some knee high stockings with them, because in a very short time I had nasty blisters and it was really painful to walk.

This morning was all about errands and this afternoon another frying (sunbathing) session.  Dinner was a rather tasty purple yam/eggplant/broccoli curry, which sounds like an odd combination but it worked well.  And finally a walk with Tai Chi Man to round off all the things on my mental To Do list.

So, to the bag (finally, you say)! I found a fabric remnant at work last night, 0.3 of a metre for $1.35, which has the perfect colours for lining the Autumn bag. I have sewn the lining and pinned it in around the top of the crocheted bag, and started making a strap with Tunisian Simple Stitch (Tss). This is the only Tunisian crochet that I know how to do! One of the things I like about it is that there’s no turning the work every row, which is good when the rows are only 8 stitches long.

Do you join in on CALs or KALs (Crochet- or Knit-alongs)? I have mixed feelings about them. I see some wonderful designs but start to wonder whether I’ll stick with them for the duration. There’s the Frida’s flowers blanket, the Last Dance on the Beach one, the Everything is Cool and Groovyghan one. If you want to know more about these, check out the Colourful CALs/KALs group on Ravelry, as they are talking about these three and many others. The Groovyghan one is most appealing to me right now, as I love granny squares, but it started back in January and runs until September. I could catch up, I’m sure, I just need to make a decision (that’s the hard part).

Ah well, back to the hooking. Ttfn

(edited to add link to Ravelry group)