Fair Trade Sewing

I haven't linked with Lily's Quilts Small Blog Meet in a long time, but this month I'm going to join in the fun.  So, if you've wandered here from Lily's place, "Welcome." and "Nice to meet you!"

I mentioned in a previous post about Son #1's new adventures in retail.  He has been working on the structure of his new booth at a local farmer's market.  He hopes to set it up on a fair trade model and have a variety of sewists contribute items for sale.

So far I've made him a sign:

 Some pot holders:

Some pillows:

Some placemats:

And a few zippered and drawstring bags:

This was the "new stock".  He sold out of some items in the first batch and had a few requests so that determined the items in this batch.  I'm anxious to see what sells the next time around.

It's been fun to have something to work on together.  It can be difficult to find things to enjoy together with grown male offspring so this has been a great activity in so many ways. And it's nice to have reasons to use other features on my machine like decorative stitches and the embroidery module.  My quilt output has suffered a bit but it has been a lot of fun to work on this stuff.
 

Good-bye Knitting; Hello Crochet

I'm ready to move on from knitting.  I've made an amazing amount of dish cloths in a variety of patterns which will probably be distributed around the holidays and after I go back and hide all those start and stop strings.

So now I'm moving on to crochet.  The learning curve is steep here.  Reading written crochet directions is like learning a foreign language!  I've been watching YouTube videos which are immensely helpful and then also downloading different patterns to try.  As you can see, I have nothing to show even after several nights of "practice".  But, I'm now ready to go buy some yarn and start on a small baby blanket.  I've figured out two different patterns enough to give it a go.  And just in time too....The Walking Dead has started a new season and I'm in serious need of a TV distraction!

My Yarn-ly Heritage

Yesterday you got to see the exciting product of my vast knitting skill.  It doesn't really do justice to the rich knitting/crocheting heritage passed down to me from my mother.  So I thought one more post was in order.
My mother was the best seamstress on the block.  She enjoyed every aspect of sewing.  But much of it was a necessity.  There was mending and alterations and the need for "fancy" clothes which, in years gone by were much less expensive to make than to buy.  But she also liked to crochet and knit and reupholster and embroider and do needlepoint.  The crafts other than sewing were all recreational.  While she often knitted hats and sweaters, mostly she did them for the challenge or the beauty - not to save money or provide warmth.  So in a way, these were hobbies she did for herself.

Many of the items she made are still around the houses of various family members. Each of my sons has a "Nana afghan".  None of the boys  men are sentimental, but they all treasure their Nana afghan dearly.  There are hats, a baby sweater, balaclavas, a rug  sprinkled throughout the family that all stand testament to her talents.

When I got back into knitting my sister gave me a bag filled with our mother's knitting needles.  The bag itself is amazing.  I wish I knew the story behind it.  It's handmade and rather worn.  But I always remember it being worn so it must have been in her possession for a long time.  I washed carefully.  I have no idea what the fabric originally looked like.  And I don't know if what I washed off was dirt, dye or more likely, a combination:

Here's what was inside:

They weren't organized like that.  I tried to group them by size hoping that I could use some of them.  There are wooden needles, plastic needles, aluminum.....even a few marked "made in Czechoslovakia".  There are double sided needles and stitch holders for doing cable stitching, several rulers and some instructions.  The plastic needles are pretty fragile.  Sadly, I broke one trying to use it during my recent knitting revival.  Some had been used so much that the color was worn off the tips.

They will continue to live in that bag as they have for my entire life, and probably for years before that,  as a tribute to my favorite crafter of all time.

A Tale of Two Needles: Adventures in Knitting

A long, long time ago a little girl sat and watched her mother knit and crochet each evening while watching TV.  She wanted to be just like her mother so she asked if she could learn.  So the mother taught the little girl to knit.  She never really made anything - she just learned how to do a knit stitch and a purl stitch and learned about different needle sizes and knitting accessories.

The little girl grew up and went to college and got married and had children.  She didn't think much about knitting during those years.  Then during the busy years of children she remembered the soothing rhythm of knitting and started to think, "One day I'm going to take up knitting again."  Years later with the wisdom of years she wondered why she didn't just take up knitting back then.  It might have made her days more content and her mothering more relaxed.  But nevertheless, it wasn't until about eight years ago that she again picked up the needles.

So many years had passed since her mother taught her to knit that she had to resort to a book to again learn the stitches.  The pictures weren't very good but somehow she managed to produce a few pieces that seemed to look like properly knitted stitches.  A co-worker at the time pointed out that something didn't look quite right with the stitches but they were generally right and created patterns as intended.  Of course she could only knit flat things so everyone in the family soon had scarves.

The little girl (now a grown and almost old woman) had a young son in high school at this time.  He decided that knitting looked like fun and he decided to knit also.  He shared this knitting hobby with some high school classmates.  They were the ones to point out to him that his technique (identical to the woman's since she was his teacher) was indeed backwards!  In fact everything about it was backwards.  So the woman went back to the book and with much trial and error finally learned to knit properly.

But eventually everyone had a scarf and the woman couldn't think of anymore flat things to knit and the needles went back into a bag and were stored in a closet.

Today the woman is indeed an old woman and no longer needs to work thanks to a loving husband who encouraged her to retire early and have time for all the things she gave up for many years to raise her children.  She took up sewing and quilting and eventually her thoughts returned to knitting.  She was encouraged by knitting projects shared by some of her online friends like Stella and Nita. 

But when she returned to knitting, her natural tendency was to again knit backwards since she had knitted backwards much longer than knitting properly.  And even though she knew there was another, more proper way to knit she couldn't figure it out.  So again there was a lot of book reading, trial and error and UN-knitting done until she finally figured it out, again.

So, recently she has been knitting dish clothes (a flat project that is easy, fairly quick and everyone can use more than one ).  Her loving husband thinks that she takes a lot of time to make something that can be bought for pennies at the store and teases her quite a bit, but still she perseveres.

After two weeks of knitting she has produced:

FOUR glorious dish clothes.  The first one (top left) was knit backwards and didn't exactly come out square.  Not only did she learn to knit correctly but this time she also learned how to add a new piece of yarn to the project!
What does the future hold?  Well, recently the woman was shopping and found this yarn called Chenille yarn.  She decided that she could use this same dish cloth pattern and larger needles and turn it into a small baby blanket.  So that's what's on the needles now.  So each night she happily knits away while watching a bit of (usually bad) TV.

The End.

A "TV" Project Finish

We watch a bit too much TV but I've stopped feeling guilty about it.  It actually has several benefits that get little press. The husband and I watch together most of the time so it's a shared activity and it creates a sort of "down time" activity to close the day.  Not to mention that by evening I don't really feel like doing anything that takes muscle or brain power.

Many of the shows don't require a lot of attention to follow so over the past few months I've started doing some TV projects.  They make the endless commercials or silly zombie killings a bit easier to deal with.  Presently I'm knitting...but, more about that later.  (Turns out that I've spent a life time knitting backwards...a habit difficult to unlearn.)

I had another go at a rug made with tee shirt scraps.  The first one is pictured at This post.  I learned a lot from that one and modified a bit of my technique and came up with this one which I like a lot better:

This took an amazing amount of time to make even with my modifications.  But it was an easy project, no cost, and perfect for in front of the TV.

Knitting on the other hand....well, let's just say that I'm enjoying it, but presently time spent knitting is equal to time spent un-knitting.  I'm getting a lot of mileage out of a little bit of yarn.