Retro Crochet Wednesday!

I got this Royal Society Book No. 2 at the Benicia Peddlar's Fair on Saturday.  Since I am in a crochet phase at the moment, it was interesting to find a booklet devoted to crochet garments and toys.  The booklet dates to 1943.  'Royal Society' sounds like it would be a British publication, but the back cover gives New York as the location of the company.

 These were the days when, instead of strollers, moms had baby buggies and would take their child out for airings.  It would have been nice to have a little dress-up outfit for the baby. This outfit and the one shown below were crocheted with Royal Perle, an imported mercerized pearl cotton.  My mom also had a baby buggy, a big black buggy with big wheels.  I remember it because after my littlest brother was too big for the buggy, she let us play with it in the side yard.  One of us would get to be the rider, sitting in the buggy with the top down, and the others would push it while running like crazy.  It was fabulous fast and wobbly fun until the bottom of the buggy fell out.

The photo below shows a toy and a rug.  If I were trying to make a scary toy, I couldn't do much better than this one which I would hate to have in my crib when the lights went out.  The rug has a nice shape, but as a gardener, I have been battling the California snails for decades and don't find them cute.  Both of these are crocheted with rug cotton.

 This doll is named 'Susan' and has lovely hair made of rug yarn.  The instructions are given for the doll body, hair and features, but it says to 'dress doll as desired' and doesn't give you a pattern for the dress.  The features are crocheted into the face, not embroidered except for a few accents. The doll was stuffed with cotton batting like the quilts of the time.

 The duck pictures and bib are crocheted in tapestry crochet, though it isn't called by that name.  The instructions just tell you how to do it and provide a chart for the pictures. Crocheted in pearl cotton, these would have been hard-wearing, comfortable, long-lasting bibs.  I have an ancient cotton crocheted bib from my husband's side of the family, and it is still in great shape.

Flowers

44 flowers complete, 39 to go.

So far there are no duplicate flowers.  In order to make as many originals as possible and to use the 7 colors equally without ending up with too much red, for example, a nerdy solution presented itself.  I printed up 3 charts just like the one below:

One page is for the outer edge, one for the petals, and one for the second row.  The center colors are listed across the top.  I am making 12 of each center color, more or less, so the charts help me keep track of that without having to count all the flowers multiple times every day.

I saw an afghan online that had a lovely border that incorporated a few rows of tapestry crochet for a spot of color.  I am going to try it, so stay tuned.

An Inexpensive Yarn Caddy

My yarns for the afghan were getting a little tangled up so I put them in a cloth tote bag, but it wasn't big enough for all 9 skeins of yarn.  While out shopping at a discount store (like Marshall's, Ross Dress For Less, etc.) I saw this plastic caddy.  It was made for floor cleaning and came with a scrub brush, but was only $5.99 so it soon belonged to me.  It is very convenient to carry around the house and keeps the yarns nice and neat.

To keep the yarn strands separate, I used what was free and available to me, alligator clips stuck around the rim.  It works great.  Another idea for a yarn caddy is to make or buy a big enough cloth tote bag and sew buttonholes around the upper rim for the yarn ends to go through.  Or you could have an inner tote bag liner with  buttonholes tucked into an outer bag for carrying places.  When you are not crocheting, you would tuck the yarn ends between the inner and outer bag sections.

So far, there are 28 complete flowers so over 1/3 of the flowers are done.

African Flower Pincushion

  When I first found the African Flower block pattern, I made a sample.  After the color scheme idea had changed, I was using the orphan block to hold  the crochet hook and my big needle for sewing in the yarn ends .  There are some lovely photos of the blocks made into pincushions on Ravelry, so I took the little flat block and made it into a useful pincushion for my crochet hooks.  The sides are made by crocheting into the back loops around the edge of the block using single or double crochet (I used double), and just crocheting until the pincushion sides are as long as you want.  Then you make a bottom piece and either sew or crochet it on.

 The first problem I had to solve was what to stuff it with.  Fiberfill would leak out of the holes in the crochet, so I found a piece of brown felt in the stash and attached a piece, trimmed to fit, to the inside top and bottom.  I also wanted to make the bottom more sturdy, so I found a square of plastic canvas and trimmed it to fit the inside bottom.  You can't even see the felt, really.  I didn't want to stuff the pincushion with fabric scraps because I tried that once and it is hard to stick pins into that kind of stuffing.  What I ended up using was yarn pulled from an ugly skein of mauve yarn.  I just pulled out loops and loops of yarn and stuffed it into the pincushion, held it down with the plastic canvas, then crocheted the bottom on.

I started out making another flower block for  the bottom, but sort of ended up crocheting a more solid block, making it up as I went along.  Now I'll always know where my hook and needle are, and the holes in the flower pattern are great for sticking the hook through across the top of the pincushion.

So far, I've completed 22 flowers for the afghan.  There will be 8 blocks across and 11 blocks down so I will need 83 blocks plus some half blocks for the sides.  Every other row has one less block because of the way the hexagons fit together.  It will work out better if I make all the flowers first, then decide on the placement and crochet on the borders and attach them to each other at that time.

African Flower Afghan

Since I finished off the One-Color Afghan so quickly, I was looking around for something new to crochet.  I was going to avoid a project with many color changes, since I hate sewing in the ends, but I discovered that I have a big 3"-long needle that slides right through the work easily, so I no longer hate sewing in the ends.  Looking around on the internet, I ran across the African Flower hexagon pattern and decided to try it out.
http://www.craftpassion.com/2011/04/crochet-african-flower-paperweight-granny.html

I always start these afghan projects to use up my extra yarn, but then I get caught up in the fun of the color combinations and end up buying more yarn, so as a stash reduction method it is a big fail.  This afghan will be pinks and reds and a gray blue, and there will be some stash reduction since the cream color and some of the pinks were already in the stash.  There will be a net gain in the stash though because I ran out and bought more pinks, and thinking of the next afghan, some greens and turquoises.This flower hexagon is really easy and fun to crochet, and seems to go much faster than crocheting a granny square.

Since I also do not enjoy sewing the blocks together, this time I am crocheting them together which is absolutely fabulous.

Here's the basic flower before the border is crocheted onto the edges.  You make a bunch of the flowers, decide where you want them placed, then crochet the border  and attach them together at the same time. With the border, the blocks measure about 4 1/2" across.

This was one of my first blocks.  Do you notice the mistake?  I ended up having to cut off the white border and re-crochet the petal row, because as a 'hexagon' with 7 sides, it didn't fit.

These are much more fun to crochet than granny squares, and it is wonderful to try different color combinations.  I'm not sure how big this will end up being, but I am already thinking about the next one.

Out Of The Storage Cupboard

My husband is helping his mom clear out a few storage cupboards because she is downsizing soon.  He brought me some old linens in a bag, and he also brought me this poor unfinished cream-colored afghan.  It was only about half finished and was approximately 36" wide and very long (6 to 8 feet).  I washed it several times and then decided to crochet a border around it and call it finished.  It ended up a good size for a small lap robe or a generous warm shawl.

It looks like the afghan was crocheted with several dyelots of yarn so my border fits right in.  I will have to ask my MIL who crocheted it originally, and I'm glad their work wasn't wasted.  In addition to keeping us warm next winter, it is also a good size to drape over the pillows at the head of the bed.

 I had been planning to make a one-color afghan, but I didn't expect it to take only a few days.  Now I'm eager to show my MIL how it turned out.