Kolika Crochet Workshop

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Many years ago a friend brought me back a souvenir from a trip to Hawaii.  I expected to receive a flowered shirt, or a lei, maybe a bag of Kona coffee…. or (fingers crossed!) a box of chocolate covered Macadamias.  Nope.  I was presented with a small envelope.  Inside was a rectangular patch embroidered with my name.  Now, in the Hawaiian language, the sounds for “d”, “r” and “s” do not exist.   So the closest approximation for my name is “Kolika”, which is so exotic and falls so prettily from the tongue, huh?  “Doris” is your crabby great-aunt; “Kolika” is a winsome, bewitching hula girl. :-)

Funny, I hadn’t thought about Kolika in such a long time.  But last month, when my Interweave show producer, Anne Merrow, asked me to name the exclusive sweater design for my Top Down Seamless Crochet Workshop, that lyrical little word just popped into my head, and Kolika it became.

DVD Cover

Doris on set

I had the best time shooting this workshop, but have been dreading the release of the DVD. Holy Crap, do I really look like THAT??!!!!  It is so embarrassing to view videos of yourself, isn’t it?  Seeing yourself as others see you is a major source of cognitive dissonance; the image is somehow wrong. I imagine that’s because you are so familiar with your face in the mirror, backwards from the way the rest of the world sees you.  Plus, the stylist gave me wavy hair, eyeshadow and mascara. Let’s just say that this face is more Kolika than Doris.  Here’s a preview of the video.  YIKES!  I can’t seem to stand still.  TIme to switch to decaf, huh?

Never mind. I’m going to be the only one who does not recognize the person in this DVD workshop. Otherwise, I am thrilled with the results. Top Down Seamless Crochet is a brilliant presentation of techniques, demonstrations and tips for making a Kolika that fits you. Here are some random images from the shoot:

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You can get the workshop as a DVD or as a download from the Interweave Store.  Enjoy!

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Filet Scarf and Stole: Cookie’s Last Dance

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It is with enormous pleasure that I offer the adorable filet crochet that I created in remembrance of my dog (see previous post Cookie’s Last Dance). In DJC: Cookie’s Last Dance, Cookie the Chihuahua spins merrily in anticipation of his supper, up and down the length of a scarf and around and around the panels of a stole.  Even for those who don’t give a toss about Chihuahuas or have never contemplated working in filet crochet, there’s plenty of content in this file to help you add to your skills.  Along with the instructions for a scarf and a stole, the pattern holds many extras, including an overview of filet crochet, extensive filet charts for single and double width Cookies, step by step technique tutorials and suggestions for yarn substitution.

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Not to burden the pattern with too many image files, I prepared a separate photo tutorial for two special techniques that I think will make your project dance better: Foundation Double Crochet and Beginning Extended Double Crochet.  Although the swatches and stitches in the images are taken from this specific design, the information may prove useful for all.  So if you purchase the pattern and need to see the stitches up close, or if you are interested in these techniques, please view this new tutorial page.

So I’m a sentimental idiot; I can’t yet wear my scarf or stole without getting… sort of… verklemmt.  I did love creating and crocheting these samples.  Even the pattern writing was less the usual nuisance, and more therapeutic than I had imagined it would be.  I believe I am ready to let go of them both, the filet design and the tiny, twirling terror that inspired it.  DJC: Cookie’s Last Dance is available for download for $3.99.  Please visit the design page at  DesigningVashti.com for complete information about the pattern and purchasing.  Enjoy!

One last note.  A wonderful, talented and crazy friend crocheted this and sent it to me along with her best wishes.  I hesitate to share it with you because I do not wish to be inundated by requests for the pattern.  I DO NOT HAVE THE PATTERN.  But he is so cute and even has a blanket, as suggested by her daughter as a necessary accoutrement for a heat-seeking Chihuahua.  Awww, he even has a little collar and dog tag.  “C” is for Cookie. :-)

Haley's Cookie

Cookie’s Last Dance

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Cookie 6 months

Cookie the quirky, defective, anti-social white Chihuahua, was my best pal, although I was not his. A natural born heat-seeker, Cookie preferred and deferred to our other pack member, John, because John’s hands were always warm and mine always ice.

He wasn’t very smart for a dog, impossible to train, but he had his charms. The one trick he would perform on demand was the old “gimme five”, or more accurately “gimme four”. Cookie would sit and quickly touch his paw to your outstretched hand, but only if he knew you had a treat in your other hand. He also had his own happy dance, crazily spinning around like a compass needle, reserved for moments of ultimate fulfillment of longing and joy, like suppertime. We tried to encourage this natural behavior and get him to dance on command, but to no avail. Cookie did exactly what he wanted, whenever it suited him. So it had been from the day we brought the little brat home nearly 14 years ago until just last month.

In mid-March, Cookie stopped dancing and eating, not even tempted by his favorite treats, no longer aware of what he was doing or where he was.  Tests at the vet proved inconclusive; systems were failing.  I knew he was slipping away and all I could do was make him comfortable and wait.

That last morning I didn’t know it was going to be his last morning.  I groomed him as gently as possible, dabbing at the bit of dried blood that still matted his fur at the back of his neck where the vet had drawn so many samples the week before. I trimmed his nails, and for the only time in his life he did not protest, and wiped away the bits of yarn fiber that were constantly getting sucked into his soft, brown saucer eyeballs.

After we were done, I set him on the corner of the sofa, his beloved watch post, but Cookie didn’t stay there long. Eyes clouded with cataracts, legs weak and unsteady, he staggered down his little doggy stair steps and, drawn by instinct, found a welcoming spot on the floor, the place where the late morning sun hit and heated the carpet. He circled that spot once, laid himself in the sunny warmth, breathing heavily. I tried stroking him and calming him, but nothing would delay the inevitable.  His head drooped to the carpet, he shuddered and breathed his last.

I never understood, in the movies and TV, when grieving loved ones would say “he looked so peaceful” or “I thought she was just sleeping”.  I get it now.  And I have done some difficult things in my life; I birthed two babies, I sized crochet garment patterns, I lost my dad. But the hardest thing I ever had to do was that morning, bundling Cookie’s tiny, limp, still warm body and taking him to the vet for his final arrangements.

People deal with grief in their own time and in their own ways.  Today I immerse myself in my crochet and have been creating a remembrance. It’s not quite finished; it is a work in progress as is my grieving.

Cookie's Last Dance

In a while I will have my emotions in hand, will likely publish this filet project as a DJC Design so I can share with you Cookie’s Last Dance.

One more thing.  I am not sure if I have figured out how to do this, or if I have the right to do this, but I hope all concerned will forgive me.  This piece of music has helped me, a catharsis in four and a half minutes.  Written by Karen Taylor-Good and Burton B. Collins, produced by the late Phil Ramone, this song, performed by Laura Branigan, might be heard if you click through here a couple of times.


Rewards for Alternative Crochet

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I hope it has not escaped your notice that I occasionally refer to award-winning crochet designer, writer, instructor, blogger and deep-thinker Vashti Braha as “my boss”.  Not that she is in any way bossy.  Quite the opposite, she is as laid back as anyone I know, perhaps due to the languid {outside of hurricane season} sub-tropical climate where she resides.  Maybe it’s something else. I get the impression that she can smile while all hell breaks loose simply because she knows stuff that we don’t.

I teasingly call Vashti the boss because she owns the site Designing Vashti, where she hosts her own patterns as well as my independent pattern line, DJC Designs.  She is technically, then, my landlady, shopkeeper, stockperson, shop accountant, payroll manager and the one sweet voice in my ear who propelled me into self-publishing land.  So OK, she charges me exorbitant fees {not really!} for the privilege of having my designs listed, but it works… works astonishingly well… as a partnership in crochet goodness.

I also hope that her popular Crochet Inspirations Newsletter has not escaped your notice, either.  By free subscription, this gem can arrive in your e-mail inbox every couple or three weeks, the frequency of publication dependent on whether I have been successful at enabling procrastination.  Funny how the disease/sin/vice of procrastination, although not exactly infectious, can easily be encouraged by a few words at the right moment!

Anyway, when she manages to ignore me, Vashti pours out her heart and soul in vibrant full color on the pages of her newsletter.  She delves into the mysteries of crochet techniques, spills about the designing process and generally goes where the rest of us go except she confesses all to YOU, whereas we are mostly too embarrassed to speak up. And she swatches WAY too much. What Vashti has learned and experienced through her incessant uber-swatching could fill… well does fill going on 50 issues of her newsletter.

Her crochet aesthetic and mine co-exist happily at DesigningVashti and also on the pages of magazines and books.  We thought it so funny that our latest Tunisian crochet designs, her Rivuline Shawl and my Shantay Skirt, appear back to back in The New Tunisian Crochet (Interweave Press, February 2013) by our friend Dora Ohrenstein.

Rivuline ShawlShantay Skirt

On one thing we agree completely; Vashti and I strive is to pass along our love and obsession for alternative, mind-expanding crochet techniques, and we put our money where our mouths are. As we have been for 2011 and 2012, DesigningVashti is the proud sponsor of the CGOA 2013 Design Competition prize for Special Technique. (The idea for rewarding technical merit was pioneered in 2010 through a personal grant from KJ Hay, another fellow crochet geek.)  Although it is necessarily Vashti herself who chooses the winner as I am always up to my eyeballs with producing the competition, we both want to see design entries that make us think, “Holy Crap, why didn’t I think of that?”.

It is our hope that the $200 prize for 2013 will encourage design entries using alternative crochet such as Tunisian, Broomstick, Hairpin, plus beading, innovative colorwork, fresh approaches to all types of ethnic, vintage or historic techniques, and in particular, brilliant new directions in which to take our beloved craft. Past special merit prize winners illustrate the glorious and wide-ranging possibilities:

2010, KJ Hay prize for Technical Merit: Rose Infinity Doily designed by Kathryn White

Rose Infinity2011, DesigningVashti prize for Special Technique: Poptastic Purse designed by Janice LonnrothPoptastic Purse2012, DesigningVashti Special Award for Technical Merit: Summer Dreams Bolero designed by Dot Drake

Summer Dreams BoleroAll during March, as the 2013 celebration of National or International Crochet Month continues, it’s a great time to kick your crochet skills up a notch by practicing or tinkering with new crochet stuff.  Vashti and I hope you will be as fascinated by alternative crocheting as we are and that you might be motivated to come to where crochet is spoken, Crochet Guild of America, become a member if you haven’t joined us yet, and watch for information about entering the CGOA 2013 Design Competition. We are on this voyage with you… to explore strange, new worlds… to seek out new crochet forms and new techniques…. to boldly go where no crocheters have gone before.  :-)

Check Your Geek

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***The following, although promising at the start, quickly devolves into a non-crochet, totally smug and self-indulgent trivial pursuit, and is a strictly temporary aberration.  Meaty crochet stuff should continue to appear here in future, unless I decide otherwise.***

Avid crocheters may have experienced the Zen of crochet.  This is the state of mind, or lack of mind, often a place of blissful calm, that you can achieve once you stop thinking about your crochet and just do it.  When the physical work being done by your hands, the rhythmically repetitive action of creating row upon row of crochet stitches, becomes smooth, hypnotic, automatic, your higher brain functions are freed up to think about other things, to dream, to foster creativity…. and to watch TV.

I am at a peculiar stage of my current crochet project where I’m doing the same thing over and over to the point where it’s not terribly interesting. To help me through this mind-numbing task I have been catching up with some of my favorite programs and films, stuff I’ve possibly viewed before but don’t recall in detail, stuff I missed, vintage stuff I’ve finally been able to find.  Through the miracle of modern technology (downloading and streaming) I can now wallow in programming that was previously unobtainable.  I wish I could report that my recent viewing has been high-brow, intellectually stimulating, uplifting, enlightening.  Not.  My taste runs to terminally geeky, sci-fi and fantasy shows, the sort of fare obsessed over by the guys on The Big Bang Theory.

To those detractors who are quick to label my shows as stupid, time-wasting, time-sucking vices, let me say I have no defense.  Geeky fan-girl that I am, I just love this stuff.  From the Star-cana major, the seminal star-triumvirate of Star Wars, Star Trek and StarGate, to the British import Doctor Who (classic and new series) and it’s darker spin-off Torchwood, to the deeper cuts, the cult programs from Farscape to Firefly, Babylon 5 to Blakes 7, I geek-speak them all.  Do you?

Here’s a little pop-quiz to check your geek. The points, although nice to score, mean nothing. No fair web-searching. Either you’ve been there… or you’re about to run screaming from this page.

#1 We’ll start off easy.  Give yourself five points for each of these alien species you can identify by their respective works of science fiction/fantasy:

a) Ferengi; b) Foamasi; c) Nebari; d) Minbari

Add 10 points if you know which species lives by the Rules of Acquisition. 

50 bonus points if you can quote any one of the rules (of which there are 285).

#2 Give yourself 10 points for each of these villains or seriously unpleasant characters by their respective yadda yadda:

a) Scorpius; b) Boba Fett; c) Davros; d) Servalan; e) Adria

#3 Score 10 points for each of these space-faring ships you can identify by their respective yaddayadda:

a) Heart of Gold; b) Moya; c) Liberator; d) Protector; e) Excalibur; f) Serenity

#4 Gain 15 points for each of these destinations, planetary or otherwise you can yaddayadda:

a) Chulak; b) Coruscant; c) Cygnus Alpha; d) Bajor; e) Delvia; f) Raxacoricofallapatorius;

#5 Gain 15 points for each of these geek-tech devices you can yaddayadda:

a) Sonic screwdriver, b) Zat; c) DRD; d) infinite improbability drive; e) vortex manipulator; f) Orac

#6 Score 15 points for each of these substances yaddayadda:

a) naquadah; b) spice/melange; c) shakan oil; d) latinum; e) retcon; f) pangalacticgargleblaster

Add 25 points if you know which comes from tannot root.

#7 Rack up 20 points for each of these phrases, terms or refs yaddayadda:

a) qapla; b) klaatu barada nicto; c) wibbly wobbly timey wimey; d) hezmana; e) never give up, never surrender!

#8 Dig a little deeper and score 25 points for each of these alien species yaddayadda:

a) Talosians; b) Toclafane; c) Tok’ra; d) Tollan

Add 25 points if you know which one is actually us.

#9 Dig a lot deeper and score 42 points for each of these alien species yaddayadda:

a) Vogans; b) Vogons; c) Vorgons; d) Vorlons; e) Vorlians

50 bonus points if you know which has the worst poetry.

#10 Trick Question: Do you remember the Silence?

Give yourself 5 points if your answer is yes.

Give yourself 50 points if your answer is no because you realize that nobody can remember the Silence.

#11 Score a whopping 100 points if you own or have considered owning any of the following:

a) any model of USS Enterprise, any generation; b) a dematerializing TARDIS mug; c) a light saber, or better two light sabers; d) a Borg cube Christmas tree ornament; e) the full technical specs for any space ship or other vehicle or orbiting station; f) a Klingon dictionary

#12 Check your T-shirt. If any geeky logo or phrase is  emblazoned across your chest right this very moment, give yourself a a bazillion points, for example:

a) Keep Calm and Don’t Blink; b) Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal; c) May fortune guide your journey; d) Resistance is futile; e) Exterminate!; f) rock-paper-scissor-lizard-spock

Congratulations for making it to the end of this little exercise. Check your geek. If you have scored zero points, please come back to this blog at such time when I am not geeking out and you will be more entertained by future crochet talk. If you have scored any points at all, then welcome and thanks for all the fish.  If you have scored, like, a million thousand points then you win and we are on the same page. And, I realize this is a futile gesture, but I am advising everyone to please refrain from posting comments that contain clues or answers.  SPOILERS!