Primary Hand Skills

When I brought home my first kindergarten report card, my mother unconsciously stood and read it aloud. Toward the end, she read one category of growth called "large motor development" and another called "fine motor development." They sounded funny so I asked what they meant. I was especially intrigued, even then, that my teacher had been watching my hands, or at least, watching what I did with them. I believe the grade was something as simple as "satisfactory." I was probably too young to absorb any kind of criteria if such had been written on the card. But I am curious about those criteria now.

What do we want children to be capable of doing with their hands? We focus so much on intellect in our schools and, secondarily, large motor development through sports but if we were to focus on developing children's hands, what characteristics would we want to develop?

I have four core criteria that I think are important: strength, control, dexterity and grace. Strength is required for all the grips and grasps we use to hold all kinds of tools. No one wants a hammer to go flying out of the hand while in use. A needle, thin though it is, must be held firmly to sew on a button. Every day we wring out dish cloths and wash cloths; tasks that take strength. When I was young, I slipped off a rock while crossing a creek. My father wrung out my wet socks so well that when it was necessary to head home, my socks were nearly dry on a rock in the sun.

Strength needs to be moderated by control. When we change a light bulb, we must meet the friction of loosening it with strength but also with the control not to break it. When we learn to use a saw, we require the strength to draw it back and forth and apply pressure yet the control to allow the saw to do its work without too much pressure.

Dexterity allows our hands and fingers to adjust to a variety of tools and manipulations. These can be as simple as a good grasp on a mixing spoon or a pocket knife to as complex as the movements required to use knitting needles, a crochet hook or a sewing needle and to adjust the position of the material we are working with.

Strength, control, dexterity and grace are all required to play musical instruments. Grace allows for fluid movements and expressive timing. Grace should also be inherent in the expressions our hands make as we communicate. I would want a child to have a graceful hand for the sake of pure beauty, for the ability to create beauty and to be beautiful merely to look at.

In the photo of Liam you can see the strength to hold his tool and break the crab shell, the control not to knock his plate off the table, and the dexterity to steady the crab with his other hand. Grace will enter this picture most obviously when he brings his food to his mouth and eats in a manner appropriate to the social setting.

Liam's Hat

I gave Liam his new hat today, the day after our first snow. It fits him well and he likes it. I'm glad. This is my second original hat crocheted with stranded colorwork. The gold-brown color matches his new winter coat and I chose two blues to go with the brown. This colorway is a bit more subtle than his baby stocking cap I made him in green, blue and red.

I had the overall idea for the color patterns in my head when I started this hat but I worked the checked section up intuitively, started the second section and tried it on him. At that point I knew I needed to change to the vertical stripe pattern for the crown and then worked the decreases intuitively according to the pattern. I told Liam that we needed to put something on the top of his hat to show that it is finished, and I asked him whether he would like a pon-pon, a tassel, a crocheted button or a curlicue. And there it is- a classic!

Gabe's Hat

I especially enjoy making warm things for people, not just window sills. Having taught myself to do stranded colorwork in crochet and having played around with the smaller peerie patterns from the Faire Isle tradition, I am thrilled with the outcome of Gabe's hat. I started it without a plan, trying to intuit, first, which color I should use for the "ribbing" and then getting a sense of how each color should flow into the next. The two blues looked exceptional right next to each other, but I needed a way to blend in the cream and brown. I had recently remembered and told Gabe's mom about a sweater a friend once made in white and blue stripes with brown seed stitches between the blue rows. It was an unexpectedly stunning ski sweater. With that in mind and in a dreamy state the "ribbon" pattern came to me: a twilight background, dusk edgings, a creamy center with little brown seed designs for each ribbon. Three of those wrap the crown with the short, stocking cap end blending all four colors in a regular way to create a stronger match with a cream, brown or blue coat. Gabe is a cute boy and he looks loved in his hat with his new teddy bear coat. I'll try to post a photo of him soon.

Starflower Purse

In my June 23rd post this year, I suggested that crocheters find creative ways to design with motifs. Here is my second item made with that idea in mind. This purse is worked in Cotton Classic mercerized yarn. Small, simple flower motifs made from perle cotton were attached to the dark teal circles and then I crocheted the circles to the dark blue body of the purse with metallic embroidery floss. I love that the metallic embroidery floss sparkles under lights. I put the button closure at the back so as not to interfere with the design on the front. This purse is presently for sale on Etsy.

Baby Hands

Several days ago I had fun playing with my grandbaby in the car as her Mom ran errands. I began to move my hand to the music from the stereo, slowly weaving large arcs and little ones, sometimes letting my index finger lead the others in following a curve, other times letting pinkie choose its path. Kate seemed to enjoy following with her eyes. And then, in time to the music, I touched the tips of each of her outstretched fingers gently, one by one.

Today I read this from Wilma Ellersiek's Giving Love-Bringing Joy: "If careful, loving contacts are imprinted in the body, the child can also more easily establish a careful, nurturing relation with plants, animals, people and things in their surroundings."

Sill Sweater

It's done! My second sill sweater is finished. This one and the first one are both crocheted, having been inspired by knitter, Kristin Nicholas', work. First I played with graphing out some of the smaller stitch pattern possibilities, while working around the quirkiness of crochet. The very smallest patterns that are used in knitting don't look especially good in crochet; they become blurred in the highly textured nature of the fabric. I also needed to pay attention to which stitches were worked on a back side row and which were worked on the front. It was pretty easy to figure out the repeats since none of these patterns are complex.

Kristin doesn't tend to work with neutral colors but I wanted to see how cream colored yarn could be worked into my first piece. I used it in all the four-stitch checks. The effect reminds me of nautical signal flags.

Then I decided to try a second piece (at the top) in a more condensed colorway and make the sections a little longer. I find the densely packed color very exciting!

I completed each piece by sewing a 7 inch zipper into the seam, crocheting circles for the ends, making a drawstring muslin lining and filling it with dried baby lima beans. For more information about this project see my September 13 post.

New Post - Old Quote

"There is scarcely a field of human experience which is not enriched through contributions made by human hands or which a student may not enter with keener zest and fuller understanding if his hands play their rightful part of subduing and shaping concrete materials to his thoughts and his purposes."

Louis V. Newkirk

A Festival. A Book Signing and Three Classes

My calendar is filling up and I am looking forward to sharing my fiber skills with others.

This Saturday, tomorrow, October 16th I will have my spinning wheels and a crochet demonstration out in front of Classic Cottage for the Fall Festival in Bowling Green, VA.

On October 30th I will be signing copies of Contemplative Crochet at the Fredericksburg, Virginia Borders between 2 and 4 PM.

Beginning knitting classes at Classic Cottage will be October 23rd and November 13th and the first crochet class is scheduled for November 6th.

Developing Will

"So much of handwork has to do with waking up, seeing things and noticing details."

Patricia Livingston in Will-Developed Intelligence

It's Crochet!

I love this technique and the possibilities it opens up! Usually stranded colorwork is the domain of knitters. Crocheters almost always carry their unused yarns inside their stitches which can make the resulting fabric more stiff than it would otherwise be. Also, crocheted colorwork is most often done in continuous rounds. In this sample, single crochet is worked back and forth in rows with the colors carried along the back. It could have been worked back and forth in the round, or I could have carried the unused strands up the outside edge, eliminating the ends to be sewn in later, but, since I am still experimenting and I like fussing with the edge when I come to the finishing process, I chose to cut the yarn free of the ball at the end of each section.

The yarn is some Brown Sheep wool from my stash and even though I didn't choose colors specifically for this project I have been reveling in the cheerful,playful effect. Thomas likes it, too.

Preliminary School

One of the many reasons the Amish keep their tools and techniques simple is so that their children can grow up observing and practicing how work is accomplished, starting with the earliest inclinations to imitate.

A Steiner School teacher in Denmark presents her children, each with his own pocket knife on celebration of the child's sixth birthday. Children start this kindergarten at three and a half years of age so that by the time each one turns six he has observed the older children using their knives over the course of several years. The pleasure and the safety of using a real knife have been absorbed through the intense observation and imitation that belongs to the early childhood years.

Imitation nurtures my grandson, Liam, when he copies his father using manual and power tools. Of course, he will not be allowed to use a real power tool for a very long time but he can imitate the use of a chain saw (with a yardstick) so effectively that his friends all demand yardsticks to play with. Last year's Christmas gifts of a real hammer, pliers, wrench, measuring tape, work gloves and safety glasses coupled with observation and imitation, take him one step closer to turning play into work, training his hands, his body, his whole being, to useful activity.

Growing Creatively

"Creativity always has the stamp of the individual upon its product, but the product is not the individual, nor his materials, but partakes of the relationship between the two."

Carl Young from On Becoming A Person

Old Knitting Form

In March of this year, I spoke of seeing a piece of ancient South American fabric that looked like i cord or spool knitting and was described as being made with a needle. That was a long time ago and I wasn't even sure I trusted the curator of the museum to be correct. Turns out that textile specialists know a lot about some very early forms of needle looping. Shortly after making that post, I came across a beautiful, special, knitting publication from Interweave Press called Knitting Traditions. There is a short article in it by Kax Wilson, author of A History of Textiles. She describes, and includes a picture of, a tiny, detailed strip of looped fabric very similar to the one I saw so long ago. This fragment was found in a 2,000 year old burial ground on the south coast of Peru.

Textile historians call this looping technique "needle knitting" or "cross looping" or "looped needle netting" and it is made using cactus thorn needles. Only a needle and some very fine yarn were used to create miniature figures of people, plants and animals with lots of color changes, connected along a needle looped band of the same fabric. This article is followed by another, written by Jean Scorgie detailing a way to experience the technique while creating a finger puppet. I recommend these articles and further study to all my fiber friends. My only disappointment is that a photo of the fiber tools wasn't included in the article.

The Joy of Hands

I love this quote by Elizabeth Gilbert from Eat, Pray, Love...

"So I stood up and did a handstand on my Guru's roof, to celebrate the notion of liberation. I felt the dusty tiles under my hands. I felt my own strength and balance. I felt the easy night breeze on the palms of my bare feet. This kind of thing - a spontaneous handstand - isn't something a disembodied cool blue soul can do, but a human being can do it. We have hands; we can stand on them if we want to. That's our privilege. That's the joy of a mortal body. And that's why God needs us. Because God loves to feel things through our hands."

Crochet Motif

Many crocheters, frustrated by years of seeing crochet used only for the ubiquitous granny square, have been ready to throw the baby out with the bath water. Yet motifs are one of the glories of crochet. A color-playground is created while easily constructing unique shapes from the center out. I invite all crocheters to join me in seeking new ways of looking at these little wonders.
The purse in the photo represents my response to my own challenge.

Bob Dylan's Hands

"His indescribably white hands moved constantly: putting a cigarette almost to his mouth, then tugging relentlessly at a tuft of hair at his neck, inadvertently dumping the cigarette ashes in dusty cavalcades down his jacket. He would stand thinking, his mouth working, his knees flexing one at a time, right, left, right, left. He seemed to function from the center of his own thoughts and images, and like a madman he was swallowed up by them."

from AND A VOICE TO SING WITH by Joan Baez

Payin' Attention to Details

When my husband gave me a Turkish spindle for Christmas last year I began to automatically produce a beautiful center-pull ball as I spun and wound on. I learned that when I am ready to remove my cop and consider plying it, an intermediate step to pull both the inside and the outside strands from the ball and wind them into a new ball helps make the plying go more smoothly. But I kept having to ask my husband to hold the ball for me to keep it from bouncing around, especially at the end when it became lighter. A similar problem arose when I plied. One day I got out my hat with earflaps and ties, knotted the ties, hung it over my wrist, plopped a ball of unplied yarn into it, and discovered I had a new kind of distaff.
Maybe I could make something prettier and more to the point? I did, and I found myself paying a lot of attention to details, in particular at transitions, as I crocheted. When I started the sides of my yarn distaff, I worked the first round from the inside. This made it bend up from the flat bottom more easily. When I changed the color and started to work in a row of bobbles, I also worked from the inside, allowing the bobbles to pop out on the outside. I made my bobbles with only two double crochets each so they would be more subtle. I expected to make only two rows between my bobble rows for a balanced look but found I needed three and, voila, I could work the second row of bobbles on the inside also! I finished the body of my distaff with a variation of the crab stitch. A silky lining, a balanced, corded handle and a loop and button (to guide sticky strands) and I was ready to make another to post on Etsy.

Showing My Stripes

I almost always carry a small, drawstring shoulder purse that my mother gave me. The truth is that I was the ungrateful recipient of a gift that has served me well. The poor little thing has evenly spaced multicolored stripes and the first thing I noticed was the misfit of two colors with the rest of the colorway. Yet its size and shape are practical and lightweight. Cashiers rarely fail to remark about how cute it is. That I thought I could do a better job has come home to me. Today I put these three mini shoulder purses up for sale on Etsy. Each was an experiment in stripes. The green purse was worked in textured stripes of back and forth rows alternating with continuous rounds. Consciously spaced rows of pastel stitches give the effect of a flower garden. The blue, purple and pink mini hobo bag is an experiment with single-row color stripes worked back and forth in a tube. And the chevron striped stitch pattern of the last purse automatically shape shifts the colors. What fun! I'll probably carry my little misfit shoulder bag until it falls apart but I hope someone else will enjoy traveling light with well-chosen stripes.

Fingernails as Fiber Tools

Last night I read that our fingernails are made up of flat, dense, dead cells that grow from specialized cells underneath and below our cuticles. As these cells move forward, they change and harden into a kind of protein called keratin. Human beings and most primates have fingernails. My author says that the main function of our nails is "to provide both a rigid backing and a protective carapace for the pulpy fingertip,...." He goes on to joke that people who bite their nails are depriving themselves of a "built-in tool kit of cutters, pliers, scrapers and screwdrivers." This makes me think of the way I use my nails as I pursue a variety of fiber crafts. My fingernails act as needle-nose pliers when I pick bits of seed and hay from wool that I am preparing to spin. It is also my nails that pinch out nubs from a yarn single in progress and create a smooth, finished yarn. When I crochet, I use my nails to tighten the starting knot after the first loop is on my hook and, often, I push a loop of a previous stitch out of the way with the tip of my nail as I pull a new loop through. This morning, while taking a stitch, I guided the point of my sewing needle up onto a fingernail to keep the point of the needle from catching in the knit fabric of a stuffed toy. I've gone from seeing my fingernails as something to constantly trim, to seeing them as my own specialized tool kit!

Springtime Inspiration

Visual inspiration is everywhere whether we are looking at a soul-stirring sunset, the veining pattern of a leaf or manmade items such as a fine art-glass vase or the detailing on a restored Victorian house. This month, I am charmed, as always, by lacy springtime leaves, early flowers and preliminary excursions through seed catalogues. My imaginings for gardening and landscaping around our new home prompted me to write a short piece that compares crochet work to the gardening process. You can find it in the new issue of Crochet Insider (http://crochetinsider.com/article/cultivating-your-crochet-garden) along with my original pattern for a crocheted zinnia to be worked in number 3 perle cotton.

Sisters of the Cloth

Knit and crochet have something special in common. Each can be worked from the starting end of a ball, skein, cone, or other supply source until the supply runs out. To realize how important this idea is, think of how, when you sew, you must cut a length of thread, knot the end, and then pull the entire length through the first stitch until the knot catches. Each consecutive stitch requires that the remaining length be pulled up. Not so, when you knit or crochet!
I got excited while I was writing Contemplative Crochet and reading about the Turkish lace-making craft of oyasi. My author said that early oyas (edging lace on fabric) were needle-made but that after crochet was introduced, many were worked with a crochet hook. I remembered seeing a bit of what looked like knitted i cord from South America in a museum and noting that the label said it was made with a needle. I was incredulous. But it's true; the origins of stretchy fabrics come from, none other than, the original, primitive and simple, sewing needle. Recent understanding of and resurgence in the craft of nalbinding add another piece to the puzzle. With nalbinding, shorter lengths of thread or yarn were spiced in to create the looped fabric that was needled into ancient versions of socks, mittens and hats. The needle is the Mother-of-All and her work is recognizable by her short lengths.
Over the course of history, we have created many variations of: needle, shuttle, and bobbin. But with the invention of first knitting, and then crochet, there was literally no stopping us, especially no stopping to cut, splice, wind or thread and no pulling through, trying to avoid tangles until the end of the strand was snug.

Beautiful Hands

" I remember quite vividly the occasion when the penny first dropped, and I discovered that aesthetically the hand was the most beautiful part of the human body." HANDS by John Napier

Handwork, especially the fiber crafts, have been one of my major passions since childhood, crochet being my favorite mode of transport. Yet few have brought the hand itself into the picture, and so, I here and now charge myself with a heightened observation of the hand and encourage my readers, also, to be aware of your hands and all they do.