Yarn Mania

Like many people, my husband and I have been using our coronavirus-enforced seclusion to sort and tidy. The other day while cleaning out my study, I came upon this photo that my husband took when we traveled to Peru nearly two decades ago.

I think this woman was selling her wares in the marketplace in Cusco. She was also using her time productively by doing some spinning. You can see she is holding a drop spindle in her right hand, but I think she’s gotten to the stage of removing the spun yarn once the spindle is full and coiling it into a hank, which is what we see wrapped around her left hand.

She seems to be spinning with wool–maybe alpaca?–that was dyed before being spun: “dyed in the wool” actually.

I found this gorgeous granny-square afghan at a pop-up flea market in a school yard near where my son and daughter-in-law live in Brooklyn.

I love the way the creator used navy blue yarn as a background for the amazing assortment of colors in the individual granny squares–including neon orange and pink. The afghan is similar to the traditional style that rims each multicolored square with black, like the one I made based on one my grandmother gave me, but the navy blue and neon give it an interesting twist.

The different shades of navy blue suggest that the creator was frugally using up navy yarn left from other projects–or she ran out midway through and couldn’t match the dye lot.

And I love the elaborate border that carries out the neon theme.

The craftsmanship in this afghan is really marvelous, and the yarn gauge is quite fine so the work must have been slow-going.

The afghan is huge–huge enough to cover a twin bed. Based on my experience making my own granny-square afghan, it represents years of labor.

I suspect that most of the vintage items offered at flea-market stalls come from estate sales. When I go out on my estate-sale jaunts, I often see afghans for sale. Usually, since the point of an estate sale is to clear out a house so it can be sold, they can be had for just a few dollars. I’ve rescued a few myself and like to think the creators would be happy that someone else appreciates their work, even if I didn’t pay much for it.

I did, however, pay quite a bit for this flea-market afghan. In fact I had to bargain quite vigorously to bring the asking price down to where I didn’t feel too extravagant. But the flea-market booth’s proprietor deserves credit–and a good mark-up–for recognizing and rescuing this gem.

In my rambles through estate sales, tag sales, and rummage sales, I often come upon wonderful needlework projects in need of a bit more (or a lot more) additional work. Sometimes my finds are needlepoint canvases on which the crafter did all the stitching but then tucked the work away without going further.

These little pillows started out as completed canvases I found at two different sales. I turned them into pillows by cutting velvet backs from a velvet remnant I had on hand, stitching the velvet backs to the needlepoint fronts, and stuffing the result.

Here are the backs. My velvet remnant was a perfect color to complement the flower designs.

This stool is the result of a double rescue. A neighbor was getting rid of a little stool whose fabric top had become worn and grubby. I removed the old fabric and substituted a completed needlepoint canvas that I found at an estate sale, adding some cotton batting underneath.

I can’t resist anything with pansies on it.

This pillow came into my life as a partly finished kit with yarn and directions included. Some ambitious crafter had gotten bored with it and set it aside, and it ended up at a tag sale. I worked on it for a while but then I got busy with other things so I passed it on to my mother, who is a long-time devotee of needlework and very talented.

Lo and behold, the following Christmas it came back to me–complete, and made into a pillow by my sister. As you can see, the design uses a wider variety of stitches than the simple needlepoint technique.

Sitting on a shelf in my study are two more partly finished kits I rescued from, I think, a church rummage sale. This one is a needlepoint kit, maybe the type that comes with the complicated part already worked–in this case, the flowers.

The crafter then has only to fill in the background. This crafter apparently started but didn’t get too far. One of these days, when I finish several other projects, I will take up where the original crafter left off.

The other is a really cute thing–a crewel embroidery kit that definitely deserves some love and attention.

My mother gave me this wonderful vintage knitting basket the last time I visited her.

She was an avid knitter for much of her life–though now her favorite craft is needlepoint. But I don’t recall her ever using this knitting basket. I think it’s a recent tag-sale find. Like mother, like daughter: I can never resist a tag sale and must have gotten my love of vintage treasures from her.

It’s quite cleverly designed. As you can see, it has a wooden frame that enables it to stand on its own.

But it can also be collapsed for easy carrying–though it doesn’t hold as much when it is collapsed.

I recently saw exactly this same knitting basket–though with a different flowered fabric–in the wonderful British series All Creatures Great and Small. (Highly recommended!) The series is based on the books of James Herriot and follows the adventures of a veterinarian in Yorkshire from the late thirties to the early fifties. In one episode, his sweet wife, Helen, has her knitting stored in just such a basket.

And on a recent tag-sale outing I was delighted to see that a twenty-something woman had snapped up a basket just like mine. These old objects seem to have so much more charm and personality than new things.

When my son was born on November 25, 1979, my mother gave me a needlework kit to make him a Christmas stocking. It might seem that the first month at home with a new baby (my first and only) would be too busy to think of crafts, but I found the needlework a relaxing diversion and finished the stocking in time for Christmas.

We have gotten it out every year since then as part of our Christmas decorations, though over time it has begun to show its age.

It’s hard to believe how quickly forty years have passed!

My granny-square afghan is finished at last.

Inspired by the granny-square afghan that came to me from my real granny, Grandma Ehrhart, I decided to make one myself. This was more than three years ago, before I launched the Knit & Nibble series–otherwise maybe I would have tackled a giant knitting project rather than crochet.

Grandma Ehrhart’s afghan featured random colors with black borders so I used that color scheme too. I love the afghans in that style because they seem to derive from the same impulse behind patchwork quilts: a way to use up leftover odds and ends–in this case yarn remnants from other projects. Not having a huge backlog of yarn remnants, however, I went to the hobby store and bought skeins of yarn in every color that caught my eye.

First I made the squares. Here’s an early batch. Eventually I gave each a black border, but it was so much fun working with all those colors that I did many middles first.

I planned for the afghan to be 15 squares by 20 squares, so the goal was 300 squares. Then I started sewing them together, using a yarn needle and the black yarn from the borders. They can also be crocheted together.

I sewed them together into sections that were easy to handle in my lap while sitting on my sofa. Eventually I had many sections and began to fit them together like a puzzle.

Near the end, I discovered I’d only made 299 squares, not 300!

So I made another square.

Eventually the project got too big to hold on my lap so I moved it to the dining room table. The strip draped over the chair was the final piece.

Since it is now August, we won’t be needing an afghan to keep us cozy for a few more months. So my new afghan is folded up on a trunk waiting for cold weather.

Granny squares are really fun to make and they’re the perfect portable craft project. It’s easy to find tutorials online or in how-to-crochet books at the hobby store.

In my post of July 23, 2018, “A Genuine GRANNY-Square Afghan,” I talk about Grandma Ehrhart’s afghan.

My daughter in law found this antique darning egg for me at an estate sale. Like many utilitarian objects from the past, it’s made of wood and finely crafted–more of an art object now than something a person would use.

Darning eggs can be made of other things too, like porcelain or stone–or even gourds.

Darning eggs are still manufactured and can be purchased online, naturally. But in an era of cheap disposable clothes, who would take the trouble to darn a pair of socks? You can see though, in this picture, how a darning egg would keep the problem area stable as the darning proceeded.

People did take the trouble to darn socks once–women mostly. Picture a domestic scene before screens took over our evenings. A man and a woman are sitting before the fireplace listening to the radio. A dog is stretched out on the carpet. The man is wearing slippers and smoking a pipe. The woman has permed hair and is wearing a neat housedress. He’s reading the paper. She’s darning a sock.

Perhaps she learned this skill as part of the training young women received to prepare them for their future role in life.

Here’s one of my own creations. To make this Easter bunny, I used the directions for Cozy Cat that appear at the end of Died in the Wool. Instead of the simple garter stitch, though, I used the stockinette stitch, and just for fun I knit him from an ombre yarn in the wildest color combination I could find.

Instead of Cozy Cat ears, I gave him bunny ears. (Scroll down for ear directions.)

And I found these amazing eyes at a local bead store.

Of course he had to have a bunny tail. (Scroll down for tail directions.)

Here are directions for the ears:

Cast on 10 stitches. Knit 18 rows. On the 19^th, begin decreasing one stitch at each end of each row until you have just one stitch left. Slip it off your needle. Cut your yarn, leaving a tail of a few inches. Thread the tail through the loop you slipped off your needle and pull tight. Thread a yarn needle with the tail and stitch along the edge of the ear for half an inch or so to hide the tail. Cut off what’s left of the tail. Using the yarn needle again, sew the long edges of the ear together just to where the decreasing started.

Repeat these directions for the other ear.

Sew the ears onto the head with the seam facing the back.

And for the tail:

Cast on 12 stitches. Knit five rows. On the sixth, begin decreasing one stitch at each end of each row until you have just four stitches left on your needle. Knit seven rows. Cast off. Sew the edges of the 12-stitch-wide section together to create a tube. Fold the flap down and sew its edges to the top edges of the tube. Stuff the tail with a bit of the same stuffing you used on the body of the bunny—see directions for Cozy Cat. Sew the tail on the back of the bunny body. Try to sew around the open edges rather than flattening the edges together and sewing straight across.

My sister wove this blanket as a gift for her soon-to-be nephew when I was pregnant with my son, Matt. At that time (forty years ago!), my husband had abundant red hair and a luxuriant red beard, so we all thought that Matt might turn out to be a redhead, and the blanket’s colors were chosen as a reference to his possible appearance. As it turned out, he inherited my looks and has dark brown hair and eyes.

Another view of the blanket.

The blanket is about 30″ by 30″, not counting the fringe. As you can see, the pattern is an interesting irregular plaid.

The weaving technique my sister used created a twill effect.

And the ends are finished with fringe.

I found this wonderful Christmas tree at a tag sale last summer. It’s about nine inches tall, perfect to display on a shelf or table. 

I can’t exactly tell whether it’s knitted or crocheted, though I tend toward knitted. Up close you can see that the knobs look like a version of the popcorn stitch.

Here’s a view of the inside.

One of my friends saw it and at first assumed it was one of those ceramic Christmas trees that the New York Times says are enjoying a resurgence in popularity because of their nostalgia factor.

Today in the window of a shop in my town I saw another yarn Christmas tree, very obviously knitted. The knitter had created a scalloped effect that looked even more like one of these ceramic trees.