Maureenie Makes Things

Thai Temple Scarf - A Start

The embroidery is growing on me, can't decide whether I'm happy with the "roof tiles" section.  

Maureen

don't wait for people to be kind; show them how.

… and I want to go here, too (a quick p.s.)

Another place to hit while out and about:  Bokja Design, headquartered in Beirut, Lebanon with locations in various other places.  These make my heart beat faster!  (And provide inspiration for knitting and quilting.  Of course.)

Maureen

It's really hard to have too much color.

I want to go here (or, rabbit trails justified)

I remember shopping with my mom and grandma and going to places that looked like this.  I can't tell you now where they were.  I doubt they are still there.  I know for sure that I didn't appreciate them in the way that they deserved.  But enough melancholy: evidently such places still exist.  At least in Paris.

Le Comptoir.

I have a love-hate relationship with the internet.  All the wonders and delights that await make me feel truly fortunate to live at this point in time.  And then there is the black hole of time that one (well, I) can fall into while following rabbit trails on the way to said wonders and delights.  And while I try (occasionally) to limit myself, my willpower wanes when I find a gem like this; it makes the exploration wholly worthwile.  Check out this delight: Eclectic Gypsyland.  

True, some of the Engligh translation is less than perfect.  But I can't complain as I certainly couldn't do better going in the opposite direction.  And it really doesn't matter, as the pictures convey all that needs to be said.  Go there and just keep scrolling.

And don't miss her fantastic creation (pattern available here):

Maureen

Just keep asking, what wonders and delights await today?  

Felting find

 I haven't been this tickled by a new find in a while. The pics speak for themselves. Enjoy!   www.rosiepink.typepad.co.uk

Maureen

take delight in simple things.  or in complex things if it suits you. just take delight whenever you can.

Design journal

For inspiration in the how-to-photograph-your-knits department, a friend suggested that I look at a blog called Man Shops Globe and at the Anthropologie catalogue .  The Sundance page (evidently it's not just a blog but an entire series!) contained a bit about temples in Thailand, and one of them had a lovely bit of trim on the roof that caught my eye.

Wonderful pattern (I am a sucker for pattern) with a nice border on the border (beautiful contrast between the brights and the earth tones) and little dangly things.  Little irresistible dangly things. Surely I can knit this.  It will make a fantastic edge on a sweater or a scarf.  It will take a little engineering to get the right shape to the edge and to get the layers of colors to reveal themselves in the proper order.  Three swatches and many pages of notes later, I think I've got it (I am being so organized!).  But I can't decide on the color. Certain aspects are clear in my mind's eye, but then logic kicks in to fill in the blanks, and that seldom goes well.  And as I narrow in on the pattern for the rest of the scarf, the myriad possibilities must be played with, to say nothing of the question of whether it will it be one all over pattern, suitable for stop light knitting, or an organic mixture of pattern. Sketches for both are required.  Actually that one was resolved fairly readily - one all over pattern with a break in the middle where I can do some grafting, since it will need to be cast on from both ends.  (Yes, it would be possible to graft within the stranded pattern, but what a pain in the neck.  My intution tells me that this is one of those things that actually will end up being a creative opportunity, making the scarf more interesting.)  But as I start actually putting the pattern to graph paper, I realize that it's ending up a different scale than I originally envisioned, so I start playing with a bigger scale, finding that there's interesting possibility to transition from the edge into the larger pattern. (Translation:  even less repetition, hooray!  The irony is not lost on me that seeing pattern makes my heart beat faster but making pattern does not.)  

Anyway, here it is, bedtime, and I haven't done the first thing that I planned on accomplishing today.   

But the thrill of an idea, how can you compete with that?

Maureen

 

I love a good before and after. And an embroidery how to just for kicks.

Some say that you shouldn't reveal your process.  Me, I think it makes for some of the most interesting reading.  Nothing heavy or terribly insightful here today, but I got a kick out of seeing what a big role the flowers centers had in the overall appearance of the hat.  They do, after all, take up less than 1% of the surface area of the hat.

Before:

And After:  

(I know, it's a repeat from the other day.  It's more informative - and convenient for you - to have these pics side by side.) 

The centers are called a rosette stitch.  (Not to be confused with the rosette chain stitch, which sounds the same but looks very different.) Here's the step-by-step:

Come up just below the center:

Next, insert from front to back just above the center.  Come back out to the front in the same spot where you began.  Pretend you're doing a backstitch:

The idea here is to center the rosette right around the knitted stitch in the very center of the flower.  Do this by grabbing the "bars" above and below the stitch.  Don't pull the needle through yet.  A close up of this step:

Now the fun begins.  Working from the end of the yarn that just came through the fabric, i.e., NOT from the end in the eye of the needle, start wrapping it around the base that you've created with the needle.  The thread is coming out of the knitted fabric at the pointy end of the needle, so pull it under the eye end of the needle for your first wrap.  We'll call this half of a wrap actually, since the yarn has only done half a lap around the circle:

and then keep going, wrapping it next under the pointy end of the needle.  We'll count this as one full wrap, having come back to the starting point:

Now snug it in before the next wrap.

Keep wrapping in the same direction, bringing it next under the eye end of the needle, and then under the pointy end, and so on, until you've gone around 3 1/2 times.  Whaaa?  3 1/2??  After you've wrapped under the pointy end for the third time, bring it back up to the top/eye end.

So now, admittedly, it gets a little tricky the first time you do the next step.  You're going to anchor the wrapped yarn with your finger.  Hold it down right where it passes under the top / eye end of the needle.  Keep it right there while you pull the needle out to the front.  The yarn will make a right angle as it heads down toward the center of the circle.

To be continued (probably with a lighter color yarn!)

Maureen

to live a creative life, we must find the courage to be wrong.

Synchronicity (or, how did I get so lucky?)

I've been playing around with embroidering and appliqueing on my knitted goods lately.  
The more I do it, the more ideas I get.  My journal is bursting with ideas and I can't make them fast enough.  And right in the midst of it, under the heading of I-am-just-one-of-the-luckiest-people-I-know, Sue Spargo shows up for a workshop at our quilt guild.  

Okay, a teacher of her status doesn't just show up.  She is highly sought after and teaches around the world, keeping a pace that makes my head spin just thinking of it.  Her work has been on not one but two major magazine covers just this spring.  She is one of quilting's "it" girls.  As our local quilt guild's workshop chair, I had to make reservations years in advance to get her here.  I chose her because I love her folk art style.  It's primitive but not in a country nightmare kind of way; cute without being cutesy; warm, rich, and genuine.  What I didn't know at the time, though, was just how much embroidery she'd be doing by the time she got here.  (Or how warm and gracious she would be.  The general consensus was that two days was just not enough!)

Her work has been evolving to create more and more texture.  It is exquisite.  The colors!  The materials!  The stitching!  Pictures fall short of revealing the richness, but here goes anyway:

Talk about a booster pack for my momentum!  

Maureen

You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have. Maya Angelou

The Flower Power Hat

A friend approaches:  "I have something to ask.  It's okay to say no." Wow, this sounds serious.  I am feeling really pressed for time these days.  Remind myself that she and her husband have been truly good and kind to me.  I am going to look for a way to say yes.  I take a breath.  "Sure," I say, "what is it?"  Her husband's daughter is sick, would I make her hat?  They think it would be nice for her to have something so happy. I almost laughed.  Not at the illness, of course.   I am tickled.  Something I made is seen as uplifting.   And I am relieved.  I can fit this in.   The answer is simple: "Of course!"  Here it is:

Pattern to follow.

Maureen

-to 11-year-old Franz Liszt...Off with you! You're a happy fellow, for you'll give happiness and joy to many other people. There is nothing better or greater than that! (Ludwig van Beethoven)