I’m a Valley {crochet} Girl!

Posted on August 10, 2011 by dorischancrochet

Knowing for myself that I am loathe to leave the comfort of my home for any reason, I browse and shop for yarns on line these days. I love WEBS at www.yarn.com. I discovered a fully realized, fully functioning yarn store offering a staggering diversity of products and volume discounts… and I never have to get out of my chair.

But I was most impressed by the first printed WEBS catalog I received last year. In it, owner Kathy Elkins wrote so sincerely about being a crocheter herself and wanting to include crochet in what might otherwise be a knit-centric publication. Her crochet-friendly attitude, the support for crochet design and designers and her willingness to be so in-your-face about it was refreshing. So when it came time for me to raise funds for the CGOA 2011 Crochet Design Competition, I contacted Kathy. Happily she immediately and wholeheartedly agreed to support us and WEBS is the proud sponsor of the prizes for the design category Accessories.

So when Kathy hinted at… asked… uh, insisted… that I do some crochet designing for her private label Valley Yarns, I dove right in. Valley Cowl is the result. Crocheted with Deerfield, a soft luxe DK blend of baby alpaca and silk, in a lacy stitch pattern in true mobius fashion (continuous figure 8’s), Valley Cowl looks amazing.

I recently talked with Kathy and husband Steve on the WEBS podcast, Ready, Set, Knit (episode #228 23 July) and at the very end of the interview Kathy mentioned that the Valley Cowl would be the next featured crochet-a-long. So check the WEBS blog on Saturday afternoon for all the details.

Kirsten Hipsky, Design Coordinator for WEBS, has asked for more details about the Foundation Double Crochet used to begin the cowl. It’s not an impossible technique, just difficult to describe in words. So when you join the CAL, which I hope you will, and you become petrified, which I hope you won’t, see this page or get a downloadable pdf version here.

DJC Foundation Double Crochet Tutorial

Ten Cent Crochet Pattern

Posted on August 4, 2011 by dorischancrochet

WOWSERS, I totally forgot to mention this special event. CrochetMe, the Interweave Crochet site, hosts a shop for individual pattern sales, featuring many of the designs published in past issues of the magazine. This week through August 9th you can download the Orphan Scarf pattern for 10 cents.

I named this design Orphan Scarf because it is a happy use for an orphaned, partial or lonely ball of any sock yarn. The sample was crocheted with around half a ball of Southwest Trading Company Tofutsies, but any sturdy, smooth sock/fingering yarn would work well. Crocheted loosely in ginormous gauge single crochet, the resulting fabric gets blocked and S-T-R-E-T-C-H-E-D in length. Everyone tells me the stretching part is a giggle, so much fun and quite miraculous. So, GO. Download. Cough up the dime. Enjoy!

BACKSTORY: Pearl River

Posted on July 21, 2011 by dorischancrochet

I think of my life as a tangled skein of yarn. For a crocheter or knitter the physical reality of tangled yarn is a bummer. But virtually, as a metaphor for the path of life, the messy ball of yarn image is perfectly apt and no more aggravating than the meandering thoughts of a daydreamer. The way in which one strand of yarn twists and loops back on itself, meeting, crossing and touching at unpredictable points and getting distractingly knotted at times… that’s how certain themes in life are connected.

My sense of interconnectedness is not in the same class of consciousness-raising experience as Proust’s taste of tea-infused madeleines or his step on uneven paving stones. (Be warned: if you tell anyone that I have referenced Remembrance of Things Past in a blog post I will categorically deny it!) And it’s not an ominous warning like Bad Wolf. The ball of yarn thing is casual and completely unintentional. When some word or name keeps cropping up throughout your life you don’t think much of it at first. But later you begin to believe there’s something there. Once in your life is incidence. Twice is coincidence. Three times? That could be interpreted as a pattern.

So it is with me and Pearl River. My dad was born in a farming village on the delta of the Pearl River in Guangdong (Canton) Province, in the southern part of China [see this post]. We lived in the back rooms of our Chinese laundry in a town called Pearl River [see this post]. Mere coincidence.

Last year Cari Clement, Design Director for Caron International Yarns, asked me to develop a crochet project, specifically a wrap featuring broomstick lace technique. As is the usual procedure for free-lance design work, I was forwarded a gang of paperwork that outlined the contractual agreement and identifying label/title for the project. To my surprise Cari had picked the name Pearl River for the broomstick wrap. YAHTZEE!

The yarn to be used for this wrap was NaturallyCaron.com Spa. Pretty much all of the names given to Spa designs are those of spas and resorts. Therefore, in keeping with that theme, Cari was probably thinking about Pearl River, the hotel/casino/spa/resort in Choctaw, Mississippi, and not my dad’s hometown or mine either. But I still felt a little stab, a thrill of recognition and an affinity for that name. Even before I picked up my hook, I understood that the Pearl River Wrap had to be really special and beautiful.

Our choice of Spa in the creamy shade Naturally has an inner glow that reminds me of pearls. So I was inspired to integrate broomstick lace with regular crochet to create a lovely, textured fabric I call “Broomstick and Pearls”. The pearls are little bobbly bumps that are such fun to make and pop to the front of the fabric. The wrap gets its stay-put shape from a line of increases at the center back and may be styled in stunning ways. I hope you enjoy the Pearl River Lace Wrap, pattern now available as a free download at NaturallyCaron.com.

And ponder this. Suppose we took two yarns, held them together and wound them into one ball, then took that ball and threw it around the room, let the dog or cat bat it across the floor, let the kids play Monkey in the Middle with it. That’s what a relationship is like. 🙂

Foundation and Crochet: Let’s try this again.

Posted on May 23, 2011 by dorischancrochet

And still there is confusion. In the July 2011 issue of Crochet! magazine, my design Leaves of Summer vest is linked to a tutorial for the Foundation Single Crochet… which would have been awesome if the technique so clearly illustrated was actually the way I prefer to do it.

Please look at these two foundations. On top is the Fsc version that is described in the Crochet! magazine tutorial. On the bottom is the Fsc version I have recently posted about here. This is the view from the RS (the side you’re looking at while you crochet it).

This is the view from the WS (the back side of the single crochet).

The difference is all about the chain part of the foundation. Each single crochet stitch has a chain at its base. In the Crochet! version the chain has one strand running across the foundation row. In my preferred version the chain has two strands.

It may seem a small thing, rather trivial to you now, but trust me, it makes a world of difference in how the foundation behaves when you continue to work more crochet on both the sc and chain edges.

My friend (and boss) Vashti Braha has just done a gang of research about this foundation and posted her own photo tutorial on the DesigningVashti Crochet Companion blog, which goes a long way toward getting this confusion sorted out.

Leaves of Summer is a pretty little vest that is made from the neck down seamlessly. The instructions begin with a strip of Fsc that forms the back neck; work begins across the single crochet edge of the foundation. The chain edge of the foundation will be finished later with a simple row of sc edging. Fortunately, which Fsc variant you use this time is not totally critical, however if your Fsc isn’t like mine please understand that you may not achieve the result as intended.

Crochet Obsession: Trellis

Posted on May 16, 2011 by dorischancrochet

This happens to me often. Certain crochet stitch patterns keep pinging around in my brain and I can’t let them go until I’ve pushed them into the Cth dimension. By no means the only stitch currently in my head, but certainly the one that pinged the most insistently this season is Trellis.

Adapted from a vintage thread crochet table runner, Trellis resembles filet crochet technique where the rows form a grid. The stitches make either filled or empty blocks and, when viewed as a whole, the alternating blocks create a positive/negative design, pattern or picture.

Trellis starts out as though it’s going to be just a little variation on filet. But once you’ve grown a good length of fabric, magic happens.

Blocked and draped on the body, the rows shift and stretch, tilting the neat vertical/horizontal alignment to the bias. What you get is a pattern of holes that have distinctly diagonal movement. I love when that happens.

I thought when I turned Trellis into a lovely fine-gauge stole for the e-magazine Knitcircus, Spring 2011 issue, that I was done with Trellis. But Trellis wasn’t done with me. It took a week of intensive yarn/weight/gauge/shape swapping before it finally squirmed out of my head as two new versions, the Trellis Multi Scarf in a long color repeat full worsted weight yarn;

and the Trellis Cowl Wrap, in a tonal DK weight yarn.

So what was I supposed to do with the Spawn of Trellis? I could just add them to my crochet wardrobe. I love the colors. Or I could put them aside for gifting (if the day comes when I can part with them!). Or I could share the Trellis obsession with you.

I went with the latter. Now available exclusively at DesigningVashti.com, the new DJC: Trellis booklet includes the original Trellis Stole plus the Scarf and Cowl Wrap, packaged with full written instructions, stitch diagram, and tips for making any of the three in practically any yarn you like. Finally the pinging has stopped.