fiber arts and handicrafts

[RoseMorninStar]

So adorable.

[Maria]

I actually had trouble finding baby yarn in those colors. I ended up getting a bamboo/acrylic baby yarn on Amazon with NO reviews. It turned out to be really nice, so that was fortunate. (I guess I should go review it on Amazon......) It has FIVE strands to it and each strand is separately coiled. Maybe that's why they called it anti-pilling? Anyway, it was nice that when I unraveled the yarn to make the tassel, little pieces didn't come off much. Some yarns shed a lot when you do that.

[Frelga]

How cute is that!

“A man walks down the street in that hat, people know he’s not afraid of anything.”

[Inanna]

Adorable!!

[Impenitent]

Great hat! But it's the squeeable munchkin I'm looking at <3

[Maria]

I made one for my husband, too.

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When we next get those two together, I can get a pic of them with their matching hats.

[Impenitent]

LOLS!!!

[Maria]

I've been crocheting gifts for family members at work during my free time and carefully packed up my current project this morning to bring with me.... but I forgot the crochet hook! Ahhhhh!

[Maria]

I decided to use up as much of my leftover yarns as I could this weekend, and this is the result:

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I sized it for Neo, but Denna likes it too.

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[Impenitent]

Very nice! It's given me ideas!

[Inanna]

Really very nice. And just a weekend!!

[Maria]

Well, it was a 4 day weekend for me, and I sort of obsessed over it. I spent all day yesterday and the day before crocheting and unraveling and re-crocheting until I got the tension right.

Impy,
For rugs, I chain 3 or 4 yarns together to create one big yarn and then use a huge crochet hook to crochet whatever shape I've decided on.

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It doesn't take all that long to crochet the whole rug, because a big yarn like that works up really fast. I'd have been done in two days if I hadn't kept having tension issues. Every time I replaced a yarn with a new variety, the thickness and the stiffness of the big yarn would be affected and I'd have to unravel however much I'd done before I either noticed the problem or decided it wasn't going to correct itself. One time I was ALMOST done with the whole thing and put it on the floor and there were ripples and it wouldn't lay flat. I decided the problem lay in the first 3 circles and unraveled the whole thing and started over. Another time I decided my basic premise of increasing per round was flawed and watched a couple of youtube videos about "How To Crochet The Perfect Oval". It did perfectly for the first four rounds that the vid showed, but a couple more rounds after that and it started warping.

I ended up a hybrid version of how I started vs the you tube suggestions, and it finally came together properly yesterday evening.

Frankly, I was pretty surprised that the colors worked out as well as they did. I was trying to use up both my old leftover yarn and my mother in law's stash. She had some neon yellows and greens and some deep dark rose colors and some browns that I didn't think could possibly go with the blues and greens that I had.

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There's even a whole lot of sparkly baby yarn in 90% of it.

Anyway I'm pleased with the result.
Neo and Abby have decided to share.

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That one is with my husband's phone. It does colors a whole lot better than mine does.

[RoseMorninStar]

I think it's stunning Maria. Well worth all of your effort. And obviously the puppers approve!

I don't know how to knit or crochet. I've only been able to make hats & scarves using a loom.

[Maria]

My maternal grandmother taught me how to crochet when I was quite young- maybe 6 or 7. Over half a century ago. She had some absolutely fabulous crocheted rag rugs that she'd done some time before she went blind. My mom still has those. Very pretty. I've made a few rag rugs, but have found them to be difficult to clean for use in a farm house. The yarn rugs are my attempt to make a cleanable "rag rug". They are pliable enough that I can stuff them into the washing machine when they need it. I've done that with the smaller old school rag rugs, but they take forever to dry. The yarn version dries relatively promptly. The only problem with them is that they are extremely slippery on tile, so every one I make has a non slip thing under it, cut to fit. Like these:



Crocheting keeps my hands busy. I've always needed something to do with my hands, whether it was braiding clover blossoms together as a child or making macrame out of baling twine. I suspect if I'd been born in modern times I'd be fiddling with a fidget spinner all the time. Handwork is soothing. Best of all is when I can listen to an audiobook and crochet at the the same time. I finished two audiobooks this weekend while on this project.

When I first got diagnosed with osteoarthritis by that quack back in 2009, I gave up crocheting and was despondent enough over it that I eventually got a knitting machine and proceeded make a large elaborate intarsia project depicting a tetris game. My son has that blanket. I eventually figured out that I didn't really have arthritis, just inflammation that when away when I avoided certain foods. I tried crocheting again and found that if I took it slow and built up the muscles in my fingers first when starting a project (no more than half an hour a day) my fingers felt fine. I also changed how I held the yarn and hook and was OK with crocheting again. I have a crochet style that will look weird to any other crocheter, but it works.

The earlier parts of this fiber arts thread was a lot about what I was doing with wool.
Since then, a couple of my needle felted creatures have been damaged by wool eating moth larva.
I'm somewhat disenchanted with wool nowadays.
It's no fun to have a creation destroyed by bugs.
So I've been ignoring the bags and bags of wool ready to be spun into yarn and have been making things out of acrylic and cotton yarns. They'll last longer. I really ought to just sell the clean, combed wool to someone who will use it. The wool room has lots of cedar in it, and that wool didn't get touched. The felted animals were in another room and not guarded by cedar smell, and most of them got holes. I put them in the deep freeze for a couple of months, and then stored them in a wool cabinet with the other wool.

[RoseMorninStar]

What a shame Maria, is there any way of treating wool?

I would probably have taught myself to knit/crochet if I didn't already have so many hobbies. Painting is a hobby that is not so easy because it's such a mess/the paint can dry or be toxic so one has to commit a block of time where they are not going to be interrupted or be around pets, children, food, etc...

[Maria]

I detest the smell of moth balls, so we rely on cedar smell to keep the moths away. It works if the wool item is actually in the same room as the cedar. Not so much if they are on opposite sides of the house.

I used to paint when I was young, but I never stuck with it or got good at it. I tried to paint things as realistic as I could, with the result of.... why bother? The photo I was working from was better than what I painted.

[RoseMorninStar]

Photo-realism is not the only reason to paint and indeed is not the goal of most artists. But I'm sure you know that and you have enough things to keep you occupied so..

[Maria]

Yeah, I know that. I was told in high school art class to "draw what you see" and never got past that, really.

When we lived in Germany, I fell in love with marquetry pictures... probably because you can't do photo realism in that medium.
The first one I ever saw was this model:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/175509269520?c ... gK2C_D_BwE
And no, I'm not selling mine. They must make a lot of this design. Anyway- that's the first time I'd ever been greedy for something like that. It was expensive for those days, but I HAD to have it!!!

For years afterwards, when we moved back to the states, I thought I'd make marquetry pictures. I bought veneers and made designs and tried to cut out the little pieces to make up a picture.... and utterly failed. I just couldn't cut the little bits without splitting the wood. I couldn't cut the pieces to where they'd fit together properly. I gave up and a few years later ran across some on Ebay. For a couple of years, there, I was buying one every few months or so until I had one or two in every room of my house. And then I made myself stop. I really like those marquetry pictures but I wouldn't waste any more resources collecting something so un-usefull.

So... that's something I couldn't do with my own hands. I suppose I could cut out veneers now with our computer controlled laser cutter- but why? I've got wooden pics that I like. Besides, I don't think burned edges on the little pieces would have the same effect in a picture.

[RoseMorninStar]

Yes, it is important (from an artists perspective) to learn to draw what you see, pretty much the first thing someone being trained in the arts learns to do. It helps one learn about structure, proportion, etc.. etc..

The marquetry is lovely. We have a few intarsia wood pieces which I love.

[Frelga]

That marquetry looks like a souvenir my in-laws brought from Germany.

It was a popular craft when I was a teenager. That, and applique with straw. It looked something like this although the one I made was simpler.

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