Coneflower Ranch

It's all because of Anne Rice

I became a fan of Ms. Rice's writing when she introduced me to Louis de Point du Lac. I was swept away. A dozen books later and she's like an old friend. I know when I pick up one of her books I will be transported. Some of her chosen subject matters are not my taste but the lady turns a phrase so well it pirouettes. A few years ago my brother talked me into getting on Facebook. We have a huge family and it's become the best way to keep current with each other. Imagine my delight when I found the page of my darling Anne Rice. The best part of joining her page is that she herself interacts with her fans on Facebook.

I don't always agree with her point of view but I enjoy the conversations she has with her fans. The topics are wide ranging from ebay to her recent decisions about her religion. Somewhere in there she mentioned, many, many times, that she loved the BBC series Lark Rise to Candleford. I had never heard of it but her praise got me curious. A trip to the library yielded the first season and before episode one was over I was hooked. It's not high drama and it's not Jane Austen but it is sweet, sincere and delightful. Several times it reminded me of Little House on the Prairie if it had been done by the BBC.

The story is set in the late 1890s and for me half the fun of watching is the costumes. Being the late nineteenth century there are handknits and a crocheted shawl that caught my eye.

 

The actress is Claudie Blakley and she plays Emma Timmins, the mother of the main character Laura Timmins. In several episodes she wears this shawl and I kept finding myself distracted from the storyline by it. I've concluded it's a large granny square folded on point and draped over her shoulders. In a few other screenshots the underlying portion of the square shows through. After abusing my DVD player's pause button I figured out the color sequence. Unfortunately the center of the square wasn't visible in either of the first two seasons so I made an educated guess. I'm pretty pleased with what I created.

 

This is the square folded on point.

And this is the square laid out flat.

 
The finished size was larger than I had planned but it's not so large that I can't wear it. The entire design is based on staring at my TV, thumbing through the Knit Picks catalog and guessing. I think the yarn colors are a good match but if I were to make it again I'd probably go down a hook size or two.

Emma Shawl

Crochet Hook G (4.0 mm)

Knit Picks Palette Yarn:

6 skeins of Bittersweet Heather

6 skeins of Marble Heather

3 skeins of Sky

It is a basic American double crochet granny square which is treble crochet for those using the British system. Each cluster is 3dc with a ch1 between them. The corners are 3dc ch2 3dc. You can find basic granny square directions here or here or here and adjust them to the stitch count I used to get the same square I made.

The color placement is as follows:

2 rounds Bittersweet

2 rounds Marble

3 rounds Sky

3 rounds Bittersweet

3 rounds Marble

3 rounds Sky

3 rounds Bittersweet

3 rounds Marble

3 rounds Sky

3 rounds Bittersweet

3 rounds Marble

6 rounds Bittersweet

3 rounds Marble

6 rounds Bittersweet

3 rounds Marble

2 rounds Bittersweet

1 round Sky

2 rounds Bittersweet

6 rounds Marble

1 round Sky

1 round of shell edging in Sky: 11 dc in each corner, *7dc in first ch1 space, sc in next ch1 space* repeat between * and * around. You may have to fudge it a bit just make sure you do the 11 dc in the corners or it won't lay flat.

Here is the link to the Emma Shawl on Ravelry. If you make this let me know. I'd love to see it.

Sixth Annual Brigid in Cyberspace Poetry Slam

 

Just like last year and the year before

 

A Poet to His Beloved

by: William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) 

BRING you with reverent hands

The books of my numberless dreams,

White woman that passion has worn

As the tide wears the dove-grey sands,

And with heart more old than the horn

That is brimmed from the pale fire of time:

White woman with numberless dreams,

I bring you my passionate rhyme.

Wordless Wednesday - Bee and Buddleia

Wordless Wednesday - Coneflower

Wordless Wednesday - Petunias

Wordless Wednesday - Peace lily

Not quite a money pit

We are the third people to own this house. We bought it in 1999 from a lovely elderly woman, Bernadette, and her brother. They purchased it from one of the original owners who was the widow of the other original owner. Many of my neighbors bought their homes from the builder and knew the original owners of my house. Over the years, as I've come to know my neighbors better, they have told me a bit about the first owners that explain quite a few of the odd things I've found in this house. Let's just say that decisions they made have cost me money. Bernadette and her brother didn't repair or replace any of the wacky stuff in this house which is why we were able to buy it from them at such a good price. That has been a mixed blessing.

One of the things I really didn't like about this house was the kitchen. Specifically the floor. It was an ugly ceramic tile that wasn't quite even. The first year here we all tripped on it, stubbed our toes on it and generally agreed that it had to go. Everyday I would sweep this horrid thing and when I bothered to mop it no one could tell that I had. Almost every tile was cracked and in spots pieces of the tiles had come up completely. But the roof was leaky and the fridge stopped working. The stove was an inaccurate beast and the dishwasher died just before Christmas. The water heater leaked all over the garage and then the transmission went... the floor wasn't the most urgent thing on my plate.

It has been over ten years of living with this floor.

Oh, did I mention that this floor

was paired with this tile backsplash?

The cabinets were dark walnut. Just so you get the whole picture. It's also on the north side of the house so there is never any direct sunlight in this room. We moved in in September and by the following June I had long since realized we weren't anywhere near ready to renovate the kitchen.

I pulled colors from that hideous floor and bought some paint. By the way, if you ever have to paint over ceramic tile, Zinsser 123 is absolutely the way to go. I painted the cabinets and backsplash with the Zinsser and then painted over it with two colors. One that looked like pumpkin pie and the other like pumpkin pie filling after you mash it up with lots of whipped cream. It brightened up the room and made it all much less busy. I didn't even mind working in there so much.

Then the cabinet doors started falling off. So I made curtains. Curtains are seriously one of the easiest and least expensive ways to solve the broken door problem. Every closet in this house now has curtains instead of sliding doors. Not a one of the sliding doors stayed in it's tracks and a few had no tracks left.

This year we had some money to fix a few of the things that were costing us. The tub was a ticking time bomb and we thought, wrongly thank goodness, that it was nurturing a colony of black mold. The livingroom windows might as well have stayed open year round for the quality work they were doing in keeping out the cold and the bugs. The kitchen window was no better. Sun shines in around the front door and our garage door is no match for the cold or the mice who wander in trying to escape it. 

When Dennis and I were deciding what repairs were and were not a priority those things that were costing money made the top of the list. It was a long list. We aren't going to be able to do it all this year. Maybe not for a few years. We stood in the kitchen drinking coffee and thinking about this when he said, "How much do you think it will cost to get rid of this floor?" We both agreed that whatever it was it would be worth it. To get all this other work done and still have to walk on that floor would feel bad. It's one of those things that chips at your morale day after day. You can be philosophical about it and grateful to even have a floor to call your own. You can make the room work around the flaws and somehow find them charming. But, when you get the opportunity to actually fix the problem, it would be foolish not to.

So we called around and by "we" I mean me. Lowes had the floor I wanted and they use local contractors to install it. It cost about half of what I thought it would. In keeping with the rest of the shoddy "improvements" done to this house, this floor was spot glued on top of a linoleum floor. There was no rigid subfloor as is needed for ceramic tile which is why they all cracked. We aren't sure what was used for grout but we know it wasn't grout. The installers showed up at 9am and by 6pm my kitchen floor looked like this:

It's Pergo Suffield Oak and it's wonderful! Just looking at this picture of it makes me happy. 

Of course now there is no need to keep the pumpkin pie colored cabinets. They are looking kind of old between the new floor and the new window. hmmmm
 
   

Lilytopia

Last week Sharon Silverman put a new pattern up for sale. She'd been talking about it on Facebook and posting photos of her finished shawl. I was hooked. I love crocheted shawls. As soon as she announced that the pattern was available I pounced. Sharon named her beautiful design, Lilytopia. It was inspired by the scrumptious Blue Heron Yarn she used to make the original: Blue Heron Egyptian Mercerized Cotton in Daylily.

PDF patterns make me way too happy. I order a pattern, pay for the pattern and then get the pattern right there on my laptop. And while all that immediate gratification is thrilling it's not very good for exercising impulse control. So, of course, once I had the pattern I had to then order the yarn. And when that took more than ten minutes to arrive I went stash diving for some suitable laceweight to tide me over.

I went with Kauni Effektgarn in their EQ colorway. It's delightful! I kept going and going watching the colors slowly fade from one to another. Every so often I'd stop, stretch my hands and wrists and giggle at the results I was getting from the combination of that yarn and this pattern. I'd spread it out, pet it, get excited, crochet through another color change and do it again. I was possessed! Actually, maybe obsessed is a better word. This shawl was started the afternoon of June 23rd and finished on the 27th. It is a big shawl. I blocked it on my queen size bed and it took up the whole thing.

I wish I could say that I carefully planned this stunning combination but I didn't. This was a happy accident. It's one time when having the impulse control of a toddler has paid off. The long, gradual color changes of the Kauni work very well in this shawl. 

I used nearly two skeins of the Kauni, which was about 900 yards, and got gauge with the hook recommended in the pattern. Then talked my beautiful daughter, Abaigael, into modeling it for the camera.

I had her stand with her back to the sun, in a wool shawl on a 94ºF day. She's a good sport. 

Maybe I'll crochet her a shawl. 
 

We've been busy

This is so satisfying to look at. Our forty year old tub needed to go. It was chipped, scratched and wedgewood blue. Very 70s! The walls have been making nervous. The tiles were being held in place by mildew and gravity because the sheetrock behind them was melting away.

I was so relieved when all the old sheetrock was out and the underlying studs were not corroded and rotten. I really thought that the contractor was going to find a disaster that would double his estimate. I'm such a Pollyanna sometimes.

The tub fit without a hitch

This is such a vast improvement I still smile whenever I walk into the bathroom. Of course, now, the forty year old toilet is looking a little shabby
 
 
 
 

Chloe and Friends

 

Part of the reason I like Doris Chan's patterns is that they are worked top down in one piece. The first time I saw a knitting/crochet pattern with this type of design it was an epiphany. Most designs are planned out like sewing patterns: a left front, right front, back and sleeves. This concept works when turning two dimensional fabric into a three dimensional garment. Knitting and Crocheting are inherently sculptural and treating them as only a means to make fabric for sewing patterns is to minimize their potential. Top down construction lets the garment grow organically which gives you a freedom and control that you don't have with the sewing pattern scheme. It also eliminates seam sewing so when the Knitting/Crocheting is finished the piece is basically finished. For impatient needleworkers like me, that's a big plus.

There is a flexibility to this type of construction that allows changes and corrections as you work. With Chloe this came in handy. When I got to the portion of the pattern where the front and back were differentiated by joining and creating the underarm, I ran into a problem. No matter what I did my stitch count was off. Up until that point the count was perfect. Spot on! At the join it went wrong. I ripped it back and recrocheted it three or four times and each time I was off. In desperation I went on Ravelry. I assumed that I had screwed up at first but after counting, recounting and still ending up with an error I began to suspect it wasn't me. I posted a plea for help on the Everyday Crochet group and the Interweave Crochet group. No one responded. I was frustrated. The temptation to just power through was intense. I was worried that if I didn't figure out the mistake I would compound it if I just kept going.

 
So I put Chloe down and started on Cinnabar. This is a very nice, simple pattern from Everyday Crochet and I'm making it in Naturally Caron Country in Peacock. But I had plans for Chloe.

I was going to a convention at the end of April and wanted to wear Chloe. It would be the perfect jacket: light enough to wear indoors but heavy enough to keep off the chill of the AC in the conference room and, like most of Doris' patterns, you can dress it up or down. I would only have to pack the one cardigan. 

Having no better idea, I did what any thwarted crocheter would do: I pestered the designer. Isn't Ravelry great? Ms. Chan was wonderfully helpful. After apologizing profusely for bugging her personally I explained where I had gotten lost on Chloe. Neither of us could figure out what had gone wrong. In the time between my posting to the groups about the stitch count issues and hearing back from Ms. Chan I received several Ravelry messages from other crocheters who had the same problem I did. Doris gave me her blessing to just power through. She said that as long as the stitch pattern was lining up properly I could fudge it and have it all still work out. I took a deep breath and drove on.

She was right. After the underarm join I was two ch-3 spaces short of what the pattern called for but I just worked with that. It didn't become an issue until I got to the waistband. Once there I just eliminated two spaces and followed on from there.

Once the body was done I joined the yarn to the underarm and worked the sleeves without a problem.

It's lovely if I say so myself. I'm really happy with the finished product and I was smart enough to make notes on the pattern so I can make this again without bothering Doris. And most importantly: 

 

it fits.