Knitting Iris

Cushions/Pillows, old and new.

On Left: Pillow cover, made a couple of months ago on Mother's Day, with thrifted fabrics, a gingham, a paisley, and a piece of linen embroidered with a fawn in the woods, all from the same bag sale, almost just as they presented themselves here (as Amanda implied, sometimes it's easier to just grab what's on top rather than digging into the piles of fabric.)

On Right: Triangle pillow someone made for me when I was little.  (A close up of this print also seen here as one of Lisa's fabric all-stars.) and pink gingham pillow cover someone embroidered with my first and middle names.  I'm not quite sure who made these but I think my mom told me that at least one of them was made by a babysitter/neighbor, maybe projects they made in girl scouts or home ec. classes?

In mid June, when the grass is at it's tallest and therefore provides the best cover, the deer give birth to their fawns.  Last year, as an incentive, I promised the boys a chocolate bar, to be shared by all of us, after seeing the first fawn of the year.  Unintentionally, it became an instant tradition.

This year, we saved a bar of good Norwegian chocolate, bought at the scandinavian grocer in Ballard while we were in Seattle.  Two nights ago, on the way home from the movie theater, we finally spotted our first fawn.  It didn't stick around long enough to get much of a picture:

Embroidered Knee Socks

Pattern/Idea:  Vogue Knitting Fall 2006.  Yarn: 3 balls Cascade Fixation #3919.  Thrifted DMC embroidery thread. 

Modifications:  Where do I start?  I used the needles one size too small, #2 dpns, because that's what I had with me when I cast on, accidentally started with the wrong number of stitches, 28 (56 total), changed the placement of the shaping in all three places that it's called for to better fit my own calves, didn't even read the toe and heel shaping using instead my usual standby, and did different embroidery.  Still, it was worth having the pattern as a guideline and as inspiration.  There are several other sock patterns in that issue I'd love to try, including another fun pair of colorful embroidered knee highs designed by Kristin Nicholas.  Seeing as it features sock knitting, it's strange that I missed this issue when it first came out on the stands.

They took all but a small amount of the three balls of yarn, certainly not making it up and over the knee.  There is row of eyelets at the very top edge of these socks and, if need be, I'll crochet two chains from the extra yarn to string through the holes and tie to help keep the socks from falling down.  It seems, though, that the elastic in the yarn and the calf shaping may not make this necessary.  If these do stay up and hold they're fit, I can see making more of these in different colors.  The yarn was under $15 and you could substitute Elann's Esprit or Esprit Print putting the price at less than $9.   

So, the knitting part of these were nearly done when I came across this picture, which sealed the deal on how I would end up embroidering them, except I only put the flowers on the outside each leg:

Christmas (1975? 76?) at our cousins' house, a few blocks away from our own.  I remember those knee highs well.  I was wearing them in several other pictures at different times.   I think their polyester and elastic content were a fair bit higher than the current pair.

Another reading picture, summertime, in the bow of our family's sailboat, probably somewhere on the British Columbia coastline of Canada, wearing those favorite cut-off pants from yesterday's post.  These shorts reminded me so much of my old pair, only far more mod.  Speaking of which, if you've never seen the SLOPPOP shop or her Flickr pages, go check them out now.  Such fun clothes and toys, made from thrifted Austrian fabrics, I believe?  It makes me want to go cut up curtains à la the Von Trapp children's play clothes!

The fabrics of life and the genetics of nostalgia

Aptly put by Heather of Freespirit Freshcut fabric fame, I'm regularly  "zapped by the nostalgia fairy.", particulary with each return to my childhood home in Seattle.  This last time, I brought back from there an envelope of pictures from when I was little, a couple of bundles of my grandmother's letters from the 1920's, and a few other things from my childhood.

September 1972.  I turned 3 that same month.  In the yard at my grandma and great-grandma's house in south Seattle. (After my grandpa died, my grandma  moved in with her mother.  They were gardeners, not sewers or knitters, by the way.)   Flowery pants and smiley face sweatshirt.  Even the plastic margarine containers on the table had great prints on them.  And that picnic table with chairs that folds down into a suitcase?  Someone gave us one a few years ago and we turned around and gave it away for some silly reason.  They weigh a ton, but I'd loooove to have one now. Instant picnic table for a family of four anytime, anywhere.

March 1973.  Sun Valley, Idaho.  I was three and a half.  My first placeable memories are from this spring break trip with my family and I remember SO MUCH about it, I suppose because it was outside of the rhythm of everyday life.  My grandma,
"Nana",  came along to spend the days with me while my parents and older brothers skied.  I skied for the first time here, as well, and there's a great family movie my brothers made called "Nana Goes Skiing" from that trip, too.  AND I remember those flowery stripey pants so very well, too.  HOW I LOVED THEM.  I wore them until there were holes in the knees and then my mom cut them off and made them into shorts (more on that in another post, maybe tomorrow.)  Those reindeer fur boots from Norway?  I still have them and both of our boys wore them, too.

Is it any wonder I'm attracted to the prints in the quilt from yesterday's post?    My family was in no way hippies.  They were middle class parents busy raising children, oblivious to much of the counter culture of the late 60's and early 70's.  These are the fabrics of my childhood, just the fabrics of the time.  Bright, naive, optimistic prints at another time when our country was in the thick of a terrible war, one that I didn't even know had taken place during my own lifetime until I was half way through high school, believe it or not. 

I had pants in that Tic-Tac-Toe print and I know there are either pictures or a movie of me wearing them and playing baseball in the backyard but I couldn't find one anywhere.  Melody commented yesterday that her grandma had a blouse in that same print and that she herself had a whole wardrobe in the light blue with daisy print!

One more, just because:

Oh, and one more treasure brought back from Seattle:

A binder Nana put together of the pictures I drew for her throughout my early childhood.  She put together one of these notebooks for each of her six grandchildren but, being the only grandaughter, mine is flowered.  There are also several binders full of my dad and his brother's drawings from when they were young in the 30's and 40's.  Yeah.  She was one of those grandmas who saved everything.  I'm afraid I've inherited the nostalgia gene.

More trips to come down memory lane through the fabrics of my life throughout the next week or so.  Sorry.  Hang in there.  I'd love to hear others' stories and read posts about the fabrics of your childhoods and how they intertwine with your own memories and work their ways (or don't) into your lives now.

       

Church rummage sale quilt

Ta da!  Wow, tying makes for an easy and quickly finished quilt, especially when you get the quilt top already pieced at a rummage sale.  The backing is several yards of fine wale corduroy that a friend recently passed on to me and it's tied with yellow Red Heart yarn we already had on hand.  There isn't any batting since the corduroy already lends some thickness to it.  It took less than a couple of hours to sew long lengths of the yarn through the two layers in continuous parallel lines and then one rainy day in late May I laid it out on the floor and recruited the boys to help:  E cut the yarn in between the stitches and helped with a few of the ties,  and R helped me do quite a bit of the tying.  E instantly made himself at home, pulling out other blankets, quilts, and pillows to make a cozy spot for himself to "read."

Finally, now the binding, in fabric thrifted last winter, is done.  I wasn't really thinking when I chose a mostly white fabric for the edging. This quilt is going to live in the VW Bus and thus will have to survive quite a lot of dirt and sawdust from camping and C hauling his tools to and from jobsites.  Oh well.  It seemed right for the quilt and I'm not changing it now.

Working on something like this or with thrifted fabrics and yarns always gets me thinking and wondering about the person who started this.  Who were they?  Where did they live?  How old were/are they?  Where did the fabrics come from?  Why didn't they finish it?  All unanswerable but enjoyable ponderings while working away.  It's nice that someone else did most of the work for me and I can only hope they'd be glad to know someone finished their work, even if it might not be how they would have chosen to do it themselves.

Focus

On the flowers?

Or, on the fresh, new snow?

Fortunately, the rain and cold didn't come until Sunday night, AFTER returning home and unpacking from camping.  That doesn't mean I didn't end up setting up the tent in the middle of the night half asleep by lantern and flashlight because it was too cold (for me, at least) to sleep in a hammock hung from the trees, even with socks, hat, long underwear, and a couple of layers. 

The oldtimers say that 4th of July, give or take, is when the last of the snow on the mountain tops visible from the valley melts off.  You can, and apparently they used to, place bets on it.  I was just thinking a few days ago that it would be a little bit early this year, but it ought to prove pretty true again.  It's already warming up.

Clouds and camping

E:  "Mama.  What do you think that cloud looks like?"

Me:  "Hmmm.  A snail."  E:  "That's what I thought, too."  Me: "Look at that one!"

E:  "It's a C!"  R: "Or a crescent moon!"  Me:  "How about that one?"

R: "I think it's a duck."  E: "Me too."  Me:  "I think it looks like a caterpillar."  R:  "That's the fun thing about looking for shapes in the clouds.  People see different things."

Gone camping for the rest of the weekend.  Be back next week sometime.

Summer is a very busy...day?

Just some of the books picked up earlier in the spring at the local "Friends of the Library" book sale.  These are almost all discarded library books and were part of what I stuffed into a very full grocery bag for $3, which included 3 or 4 of the Moomintroll books, as well.  The illustrations in some of these books are fantastic.  Some from Summer is a Very Busy Day, by M. Jean Craig and illustrated by Don Almquist.  Copywrite 1967.  Can that really be 40 years ago, just two years before I came along?  I could of sworn I was just born yesterday.

Sorry about the quality of the pictures.  I just couldn't plant myself in front of the scanner when I could be sitting outside in the warm, breezy shade instead.

 

Midsummer Midday Meal

Sunny and 80 degrees.  Not a bad way to start the summer.  Our celebratory feast:  Chive flower fritters, dipped in batter and fried, then dipped in tamari.  We've been eating a lot of these lately but this was probably the last batch before the blossoms go by.  This time we did some edible flowers and tarragon sprigs, too.  Huckleberry muffins made by R, all by himself (almost), with this recipe, then smothered with frosting and decorated with johnny jump-ups.  E made "potion"  Again, something the boys have been making quite a bit of lately.  It's just water with any edible flowers or plants in the yard, this time snippets of chives and johnny jump-ups, served with a welsh onion "straw".  E's straw was particurly looooong. 

They're a bit obsessed lately with edible and poisonous plants, asking about nearly every plant we see.  They're almost paranoid, actually, to the point where if I tell them that some flower or plant they've touched isn't edible (at least to my knowledge) sometimes they insist they have to go wash their hands right away.  Everywhere we go, they ask if there's any poison ivy which is funny because there is virtually none in this area. (Well, except for one, very small patch which I found out about the hard way while clipping pink blossoming crabapple branches one spring!)

The wreath R made from garden and wildflowers to give to the host of the solstice party we'll be going to tomorrow evening.  (The bell used to be worn by my great-grandma's cow.) 

Happy Solstice to all, whether it's the longest or shortest day where you are.

p.s.  For the chive fritters we just looked up a tempura batter in The Joy of Cooking, using either the beer batter or the one recommended for fruit and flowers.   

p.p.s.  Tempura:  After winning the school spelling bee in 6th grade I went on to the district spelling bee.  It was down to the last three of us.  Only the top two would continue on to the next competition.  I was given the word "tempura".  I asked for the definition and then went on to spell the only thing close to that that I knew, "tempera," as in the powdered tempera paints we used in school back then, knowing, somewhere in my heart, that I wasn't giving the correct spelling but sticking with what I knew.  Our family almost never went out to eat when we were young and if we did, it wasn't for ethnic food, so I had never seen or heard of the word and it was still years before I ever actually ate tempura.  I know it's silly but even now it still kind of hurts when I say or see that word, but you can be sure I never get it wrong.  Just don't check any of my posts or comments for misspellings.  I don't even know how to use spell check.

Oops.

So, I lied about no yarn buying in Seattle.  Not more than two days into our trip to Seattle and I found myself at yarn store "just to look" ya know.  About an hour later, I walked out with 3 balls of red Cascade Fixation and a copy of Vogue Knitting, Fall 2006.  Oops.  You see, it's just that I'd seen and fallen in love with the idea of these knee socks in Lolly's post here  (at bottom of post) and then from there, these ones here.   And then there I was, in my first and favorite yarn store, where they had both the yarn and the back issue, so....well...you get the idea.  Casting on wasn't more than a few hours behind that.  One and a half socks down already and then onto the (hopefully) fun part, the embroidery.

As for the sock on the right, it's the project I brought along to work on while in Seattle.  It's one of a pair that may or may not end up being for a friend of my mom.  I sent this one off with my mom when she left on a hiking trip so that her friend, who she was going with, could try it on.  The plan was, if it did fit, then I'd make the other one and send it off in the mail to her.  I'm waiting to hear about it and I think they get back home from their trip today.  Problem is, I forgot to take a row counts for between the toe and heel and for the leg section.  Guess I'll have to wait until they get back and have my mom send this sock back to me so the second one can be matched to it.  Whoops. 

My Agenda

It doesn't hurt, either, when the stops we make in our travels coiincide with my own hidden agenda: picking wildflowers and sagebrush or to return to places I've been before, for nostalgia's sake.  Other stops:  at a thrift store on the way there, another one on the way back home, at A Child's Dream Come True, at a quilt/yarn store, at a little shop in a little town that sells marbles singly or by the bagful, to fill our water bottles with cold, clean spring water on the side of the road, or just to take pictures of old rusty trucks or buildings seen along the way.

Possibly my all-time favorite old building anywhere.

Truck parked just to the right of garage above.

Globemallow outside George, WA.  One of a handful of Rugosa rose bush that have seemingly planted themselves and thrive on the side of the road in Montana about 30 miles from a town in either direction.

A spring coming out of the mountains just a mile or two inside the Montana border.   Orange/blue containers headed west.

Fabrics from a nice fabric/yarn store I'd never been to before in Sandpoint, ID.  You don't suppose these choices were in any way influenced by the wildflowers, trucks, trains, blue skies seen along the way?  Price was a huge factor as well.  All of these were 20-40% off.  I'm feeling a big sewing and quilting phase coming on.