Yarn Mania

Ages ago, my first real job after college, with my BA in English, was proofreading audit reports for an accounting firm in San Francisco. One of my friends there was a woman quite a bit older than me, Jean Curtis, who was the secretary to the senior partner. Soon, but not soon enough–proofreading audit reports was monstrously dull–I managed to get myself accepted into a graduate program and went off to the University of Illinois to study medieval literature.

A year later, I was engaged to be married to a fellow graduate student. I had kept in touch with Jean and I told her about the engagement. One day a package arrived in the mail, and I opened it to find this needlepoint pillow.

I already knew that needlepoint was a hobby of Jean’s. The pillow was signed with her initials and the date in a contrasting shade of yarn. The colors are faded now, but you can just see traces of the letters and numbers at the bottom of the left-hand border.

The design, which has an op-art feel, is wonderful. I still remember the wording of the note that Jean enclosed with it: “For a couple of modern medievalists.”

I still have the pillow (obviously) and it sits on a chair in my entry. A great many years have passed, but every time I see it, which is many times a day, I think of Jean Curtis.

These knitted flowers were a gift from a friend, who admitted that she was not the creator. They look like tulips–though the leaves are not exactly tulip leaves. June is a little late for tulips to be in season, but they make for a summery post. Enjoy the summer, everyone!

Easter can be chilly enough for a fashionista to choose a cozy knit ensemble, but in a spring-appropriate pastel color.

Some doting mom or grandma made this doll outfit ages ago, and it was valued enough to be stored away, emerging at an estate sale long after the doll that once wore it had vanished.

In fact, there might have been twin dolls. In my rummaging, I found two identical skirts. Here you see the back of one (with button) and the front of the other.

Here’s closeup of a skirt front. It was probably knit starting at the waist, and the flared effect was created by gradually increasing. If you look closely, you can see the spots where stitches were added, creating an interesting texture that almost seems intentional. The band of alternating knit and purl at the hem is a stratagem to keep the edge from rolling up as it would if the whole skirt was done in the stockinette stitch.

Here’s a closeup of the skirt back.

I think the lace straps were just intended to keep the skirt up, like suspenders, not for show.

Here’s a closeup of the top’s front–very cute with the little flower buttons, the cowl neck, the white trim, and the puffy shoulders. And note the ties at the sides.

A closer look at the flower buttons.

And here’s a closeup of one of the ties.

Here’s a back view of the top. Note the placket with button.

I found two matching hats, also very cute with the white trim and bows. The scale of the hats compared to the outfit’s top and skirt suggests that the outfit was intended for one of those dolls whose proportions are more like those of a baby than, let’s say, Barbie!

The hats have delicate little chin straps, complete with flower-shaped buttons.

And to complete the head to toe look: booties! Three of them! The fourth one must have disappeared somewhere along the way.

Northern New Jersey is experiencing a polar vortex at the moment, too cold to even venture outside, and cozy is very much a desideratum. This granny-square afghan is too small to provide total coziness, but its cheerful pastel colors look ahead to spring in an appealing way.

You can see a wonderful assortment of colors, lovely pinks, yellows, greens, blues, and lavenders, with just a few darker tones mixed in. Adding to the pastel effect is the fact that, unlike many–even most–granny-square afghans, it doesn’t feature dark borders around the separate granny squares. The different colors flow into one another with minimal interruption.

The granny squares are also very small–barely even “squares” at all. Each measures only two inches across, and the afghan is 30 inches by 34 inches, with a total of 143 squares.

One of the most appealing aspects of granny-square projects to me is that they are often clearly the result of a frugal crocheter using up odds and ends of yarn left from other projects. In this afghan, I counted 13 pink squares–but they weren’t all the same shade of pink. Two different pink projects lent their leftovers to this enterprise.

There are two different shades of olive green too, two squares of each.

I also counted six dark-green squares, 16 seafoam-green squares, and three variegated light-green squares.

The crocheter even used up some bits of ombre yarn. There are four like this . . .

. . . and there’s one like this.

The crocheted edge is a dark olive green.

Here’s the back–quite a contrast with the front. (Actually rather messy.)

The afghan’s creator could have used a much less conspicuous color to join the squares, but perhaps she wanted a tiny dark edge to show on the front and mark the squares off from one another.

Stay warm, wherever you may be!

From an estate sale, of course. The lady of the house had been a busy crafter.

Candles, in whatever improbable form, are welcome symbols at this cold and dark time of year.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO ALL!

With Halloween just around the corner, this cat potholder seemed a good choice for a Yarn Mania post, though it’s not exactly spooky. It is clearly a cat, however, and there’s also something reminiscent of a pumpkin in its color and in the shape of its lower body–not to mention the green trim evoking a pumpkin vine’s leaves and stems.

It has eyes, whiskers, a muzzle, ears, and a wraparound tail. It also has a loop on top so it can be hung in a handy spot near the stove.

The head and body are based on crocheted circles, with ears added to the sides of the head, as you can see more clearly in this back view.

I detached the tail on one side to give a clearer sense of it as a tail.

Here’s a closeup of the tail.

It was created using the “corkscrew” crochet technique, which is easy to find demonstrated on YouTube. The crocheted band just naturally curls itself up as a result of its structure, longer on one edge than the other. Here I flattened a bit out to show what causes the effect.

Based on the state I found it in, at an estate sale that also yielded a set of wonderful 1950s drinking glasses, I don’t think the potholder was ever used for its intended pot-holding purpose. Much better that it should survive in pristine condition to be rescued by an aficionado of yarn crafts like me!

Happy Halloween to all!

Crewel flowers seemed appropriate for a late-summer post. I found this partly finished crewel embroidery kit ages ago at an estate sale. It looked so unpromising that I put it away and almost forgot about it.

But I wanted to do more crewel work after finishing the pillow project that was the subject of last month’s Yarn Mania post, so I got the kit out again. Despite the fact that it had been carelessly abandoned by the embroiderer who started it, all the components were present. This chart shows what colors of yarn go where and what types of stitches should be used.

And there was plenty of yarn.

I got out my embroidery hoop and took up where the previous embroiderer had left off. Here’s an in-progress photo. One of the things that made this project so much fun was the great colors of the yarn.

Here it is finished.

I was so pleased with it that I took it to Michaels and had it professionally framed.

The summery flower design on this embroidered pillow makes the project an appropriate subject for a mid-July blog post. I think the flowers are carnations. The embroidery technique is called crewel, and it’s very old, dating back to the seventeenth century or even earlier. Because of that, the patterns used in crewel are often reminiscent of decorative motifs from the Renaissance.

I made the pillow from a kit I came upon years ago at an estate sale. Everything needed for the pillow was included, and the kit hadn’t even been opened. I paid $2.

There was lots of yarn, in these gorgeous colors.

I worked on the embroidered top for a very long time–years, really–just a little bit now and then. I didn’t start taking pictures until recently, so here it is already quite a ways toward being finished. You can see the printed pattern in the spots that haven’t been embroidered yet.

After such slow progress for such a long time, I decided to get more ambitious and work on it every day, if only for five or ten minutes. Things moved along faster as a result. Now just one big flower section was left to finish. There was a problem though–I had run out of the very lightest shade of pink yarn that was so crucial to making the flower petals look realistic.

Then I remembered. Frugality runs in my family, and my mom had saved all the leftover yarn from her many needlepoint projects. The bag of yarn leftovers had at some point been passed along to my sister, who had passed them along to me. Among the leftovers I found some light pink yarn very close to the shade of pink that came with my kit.

The key thing was that the yarn used in needlepoint projects is the same three-ply wool yarn in rich colors that’s required for crewel embroidery. Even though it’s three-ply, only one of the strands is actually used at a time.

The substitute yarn was a little brighter but blended in so well that it’s really impossible to tell where I used it. Here’s the finished top.

The kit included the edging for the pillow, as well as a piece of linen for the back. Here I’ve basted the edging in place.

And here you see front and back sewn together around the edges. You’re looking at the reverse side of the embroidery because the pillow will be turned right side out and the raw edges hidden inside.

Here the edges have been trimmed and the corners clipped so the pillow will turn right side out smoothly.

The right side is facing out now. If you look closely, you’ll see a gap along the top where the seam had to be left open so the pillow could be turned, and later stuffed.

The pillow has been stuffed and the top gap sewn closed by hand.

All finished and the colors are nice with the chair.

With the butterfly-themed Last Wool and Testament a May 2025 release, this crocheted butterfly I found at an estate sale a few years ago seemed ideal for today’s Yarn Mania post. If you look closely, you can see the crochet stitches.

It’s about 3 1/2 inches across at the widest part, maybe a little larger than an actual butterfly but not too far off, though the fuzzy texture of the yarn chosen by its creator puts one more in mind of a bee. And the fuzzy pipe-cleaner antennae aren’t exactly delicate!

I suspect that the pattern for the crocheted butterfly appeared in a craft magazine at some point because on a more recent estate-sale expedition I came upon a large batch of exactly the same creatures. Some other crocheting crafter had seen the same pattern and decided to try her hand at butterflies. Hers were different colors though, and actually a touch more like real butterfly colors.

I didn’t buy them and now I’m kicking myself. It would have been fun to have a whole swarm of crocheted butterflies.

The posting for the estate sale, complete with photo, advertised a miniature trunk containing vintage doll clothes, but by the time I showed up, all that was left was the trunk and this sad little dress. Of course I had to rescue it.

It was quite grimy so I washed it, very gently. Even so, the moth holes I had already noticed appeared larger and more numerous when it had dried. Moth holes were clear evidence that the dress had been knit from wool yarn.

More holes . . .

And yet more holes . . .

I mended them as best I could. The dress was very cleverly designed, with lovely details that included contrasting textures on the bodice and skirt. Instead of being knit from top to bottom or bottom to top, the bodice was knit sideways, and using the garter stitch. You can see that the garter stitch rows on the bodice run vertically rather than horizontally.

Belt loops had been provided, though there was no sash to be found, and little pearl buttons. The crocheted edging in pale blue is a charming touch.

The skirt features an interesting pattern, as well as pleats. The effect of squares divided diagonally into triangles of contrasting textures is achieved by simply using the stockinette stitch, but treating the reverse side as the front for the half of the square that appears as a purl stitch. The pleats are created by inserting a purl stitch at the edge of each square in every row. The column of purl stitches creates a kind of dimple that forms a pleat.

I’m sure the dress was hand knit, by some doting mom or grandma. This photo, taken of the dress’s reverse side, shows the joint where the bodice was sewn to the skirt. It has a very hand-done look to me.

Other evidence of the dress being a homemade creation is a glitch involving the skirt. The skirt was knit as two separate panels, and when it came time to join them with a seam the knitter discovered that the pattern came together oddly. The purl triangles were facing one direction on one panel and the other direction on the other panel. You can see the result here.

Here’s the other seam, showing a similar mismatch, as well as the fact that the pattern’s rows are misaligned.

The dress fit one of my cloth-body dolls, and I found a piece of ribbon to use as a sash. At first I thought the back of the dress should have the buttons and the bow that anchored the sash.

But then I decided the buttons and bow were too cute to hide.

You might recognize some of these creatures from earlier Yarn Mania posts, as well as Knit & Nibble projects.