Thursday, September 15, 2011

Fairytale Mittens

I've been so excited about figuring out how to do colorwork crochet the way a knitter would: working with color, small repetitive patterns and playing with embellishments! As I thought about it over the summer, I decided I wanted to create a visual record for myself of my early experiments. I completed the first of these mittens a couple years ago and needed to make it's mate. Thankfully, I had taken notes as I created the first one. Last week they became a pair.

My objectives were: to design a project that would put crochet on display by incorporating borders, working the largest design element into the fabric, and then embellishing to catch the eye. The technique that really came home to me as I worked the intarsia ogee is that stranding with a double twist of the carried yarn looks superior to carrying inside the stitch. My ogee appears to be solid red with no hint of the carried blue in the fabric. I'm pleased to learn that.

My prototype mittens are imperfect but they provided a great learning experience.

Busy Summer

Greeetings! I took three months off without intending to. Over the summer Richard and I spent a good bit of time working in the yard and trying to improve the garden while keeping up with our grandchildren. We also took time for siesta in the afternoons, napping and reading, hiding from the sun. It was so humid that I didn't want to crochet.

Now at the end of the summer, the children have grown, fall veggies are in, ten blueberry bushes are on their way, and we are hoping to plant three evergreens along with some grapevines to form a natural fence on one side of the back yard.

I laughed at Richard's over-large but sturdy bean trellis. I told him it needed to survive the next hurricane but when it was finished I wondered if the pole beans could rise to such an expectation.