Eskimimi Knits knitting blog

This post has been updated – Please see end of post for a new FAQ and suggested tagging system.

A couple of weeks ago I thought it would be a good idea to try and organise a week of blogging for knitters and crocheters, where individual bloggers could all simultaneously post about the same topics over the course of seven days, so that for one week readers might be able to read from blog to blog and enjoy a community of bloggers all talking about elements of their craft in their own unique way.

So, after a conversation with some of the members of Ravelry’s Blog Hub group I have been working away on how the week will run. So, hoping that you might be interested, here are a few details:

The Knitting and Crochet Blog Week will run from Monday 26th April – 2nd May 2010.

OK, that’s the date out of the way. I thought that was probably important.

How do you take part? It’s quite simple. Every day between 26th April – 2nd May 2010 there will be a blogging topic (relating to knitting and crochet) asking for your experiences, opinions and hopes on various aspects of your hobby, one topic and a short explanation is provided for each day, plus a ‘wildcard’ topic in case you just don’t fancy one of the blogging topics for any particular day. The entire list of 8 topics (seven daily topics +1 wildcard) are listed below. They are hidden in case any blogger happens to want the topics as a surprise, day by day, but I have published them early as I know that knitters and crocheters are often an organised lot, and might want to get photographs, etc, taken in advance. For explanations of tagging codes, please see the bottom of this post. OK, here are the topics (click any topic to expand):

Day One – Monday 26th April 2010 (show) »

Starting Out

How and when did you begin knitting/crocheting? was it a skill passed down through generations of your family, or something you learned from Knitting For Dummies? What or who made you pick up the needles/hook for the first time? Was it the celebrity knitting ‘trend’ or your great aunt Hilda? TAGGING CODE: knitcroblo1

Day Two – Tuesday 27th April 2010 (show) »

Day Three – Wednesday 28th April 2010 (show) »

Day Four – Thursday 29th April 2010 (show) »

Day Five – Friday 30th April 2010 (show) »

Day Six – Saturday 1st May 2010 (show) »

Day Seven – Sunday 2nd May 2010 (show) »

Wildcard Topic (show) »

Use these topics and brief descriptions as a springboard for your posts and take them in whatever direction you fancy. If you are a Ravelry member and fancy chatting about what others are going to do to take part, then feel free to pop along and find out what other folks are up to, or if you have any comments or questions please don’t hesitate to leave a comment below and I will be sure to get back to you ASAP.

If you’d like to spread the word, please do feel free to blog about Knitting and Crochet Blog Week on your own blog, and feel free to use the banner at the top of the post if you’d like to.

Frequently Asked Questions

An FAQ can be found here. (Disclaimer – some questions are not that frequently asked. Maybe it is more of an OAQ – Occasionally Asked Questions).

Suggested tagging System

People have been asking if it would be possible to compile a list of every person taking part. Whilst I will do my best to find as many as possible, it is quite difficult for reasons explained in the FAQ, therefore I have had an idea for a tagging system to use in posts. Most blogs allow you to add ‘tags’ to posts. If we use these to insert a google-able tag in, then once all of the entries have been crawled by the search engines it should allow people to type that unique code into google and find the entries posted for that topic. If a blogger doesn’t wish to use the ‘tags’ feature of their blog they could alternatively add the code to the end of their post – it will still be found by Google.
For the tagging system to work the code has to be something not already in google (ie, not a recognisable ‘word’, therefore I suggest we use the following format:
Day One: knitcroblo1
Day Two: knitcroblo2
Day Three knitcroblo3 etc
Wildcard: knitcroblowc

The ‘problem’ with crochet, some would have you believe, is that in the eyes of folk uneducated in the ways of hook twirling it’s all acrylic granny squares.

The poor, misunderstood granny square.  Coverer of sofas, cushions, and armchair rests throughout the seventies – usually in shades of brown, green and orange.  Also sometimes seen as a covering for human beings – joined in any manner of combinations to make gilets and waistcoats, and any other boxy shaped garment you could cover in identical acrylic tiles.

I had never actually crocheted a granny square before the other day.  I still haven’t, but I have made a hexagon.

I chose this motif as seen on Attic 24 as I thought that with a decent colour choice it would look like a flower in a ring of foliage and I am pretty happy with the appearance.  Unfortunately it does share some features with the granny squares of old, most notably the habit of multiplying and replicating, slowly forming a colourful carpet of motifs over any unguarded furnishings:

I am often reading on the forums of Ravelry crocheters bemoaning the bias in the fibre world that seemingly results in crochet being seen by some to be a lesser craft to knitting. To be honest, I haven’t noticed it that much myself, but as I have been told in reply ‘ah, but you are primarily a knitter therefore you are not sensitive to the jibes and comments’. This may be true, though in general I have seen good support of both crafts (which is not to say that I think they both receive the same amount of coverage – as far as I can tell there are more knitters than crocheters on ravelry and other such gathering places for fibre enthusiasts, so I’d assume that the greater number of patterns, etc for knitting is a direct reflection of that – but am I right in those assumptions?

As for my own feelings on the matter – I think that there is plenty of room in the fibre-crafts world for both past-times. I learned to crochet only shortly after (a couple of weeks, maybe) learning how to knit. I have definitely advanced further in my knitting than my crochet in that time. I prefer the fluid fabric of my knitting for most item, but I appreciate the rigidity of crochet can benefit the construction of many garments such as hats. The popularity of Japanese pop-culture and the amigurumi explosion also gives good support to crochet being king of the soft toy castle, but in general I prefer the smooth surface of stockinette and the manipulations of knitted lace and cables to the fabrics generated by crochet in many instances. This is not craft snobbery, and I do not look down on crochet, it is just a personal preference of aesthetics and form, and I think that must be separated away from the idea of a craft bias. An amigarumi maker may extoll the virtues of their craft in the formation of their adorably cute creations, but again this isn’t snobbery against knitted forms, just the personal preference of one way of creating a fabric for a specific function over another.

I am still confused about to what extent members of the knitting community do ‘look down’ on crochet as a craft, and how keenly this is felt by crocheters, so I have written out this short and completely anonymous survey to hopefully just break the surface of opinion. As it is completely anonymous (the clicks are registered as numbers and nothing more) you can be totally honest, so if you are a knitter that hates crochet, vent your frustration with a click. Conversely, if you are a crocheter that thinks that knitted things are soooo 2005, and hate the way crochet is treated, anonymous clicking awaits.

If you have any comments to make that aren’t covered by the survey, please feel free to leave them in the comments section, though obviously if you fill out the field with your name, then that is less anonymous – though this still cannot be linked with your poll results. I’ll close this on the 8th of February, and by then hopefully there will be enough results to make a fancy graph or two…

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The survey is now closed.  There were 704 (!) responses in total. I shall try and make a few graphs and publish the full results tomorrow, as it will take me a while to compile the information.  Thanks to all that took part

There are times when the lily just begs to be gilded.  I’m all for the elegance of simplicity, but there are times when you just want something a little bit extra, and flowers are a feminine and timeless way to embellish garments and accessories.

Lesley Stanfield’s beautifully produced book promises 100 flowers for knitters and crocheters to make and use in their own work, but the title is a slight misnomer.  The book actually features patterns for 70 flowers, rather than 100, the remaining patterns being for a mixture of vegetables, various bugs, acorns, fruit and leaves.  This does not detract from the book, however – these additions compliment the flower designs very well and can be combined with the actual flowers to make larger motifs.  Apart from the asparagus – that’s just weird… and wonderful.

As a knitter who is only vaguely familiar with the wonderful voodoo that is crochet, I was slightly disappointed to find that the designs are rather weighted towards those that wield hooks.  Only 40 of the designs are knitted motifs, and of those there appear to be quite a few that only vary slightly in their design – the patterns for ‘large leaf’, ’small leaf’ and ‘citrus leaf’ do not present enough variety in their design to make them particularly distinct; the dahlia and chrysanthemum are also very similar in finished appearance.  There are a couple of beautiful knitted flowers – the sunflower and arum lily are wonderfully constructed, but in this book many of the more interesting designs are designed for the crocheter.  This may turn some people off, but for others it might just act as that extra push to pick up the hook and try twirling some yarn.

So, is it worth spending your money on?  Well, there’s the pinch, really.  It was only after buying the book that I was made aware that many of the designs included in the book were available online, for free, from the Lion Brand website in the stitch finder section.  If you only intended to use the book to occasionally find a little embellishment for a hat or purse, then you might well be satisfied with the selection available to you on the Lion Brand website without cost.  If you then find that you enjoy these patterns and would like more of the same, then it is certainly a charming little personal knitting library filler and be one of those books that you turn to when you want to make a standard garment that little bit special.

Felting is an inexact science at the best of times. Add to that the fact that I cannot really crochet (I have tried to teach myself a few times, but I always forget how to do it as soon as I put the crochet hook down) and what emerged from my washing machine today was a little green mangled lump of inevitability.

Made from Rowan Pure Wool DK, it resembles a comedy lump of slime.  I’m not even sure you can make out quite what it was supposed to be.  I’ve pinned it out to block as I think it has a certain charm to it anyway, and I don’t have the heart to throw it away.  What did surprise me is how much lighter the felted item looks from the original yarn:

As I have used this same ball of yarn for a few different projects now I have seen that it does lose quite a lot of colour in a cold wash even, but I wasn’t expecting the colour change to be quite so drastic.  I am not sure if this change in colour is due to the washing process or if the fluffiness of the now fulled/felted fibres alters the appearance of the yarn and the way it behaves in the light, but I haven’t noticed this drastic colour change in any other yarn I have so far used in my stumbling journeys through the alchemical processes of felting.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to find a use for my new lumpy creation, but I’ll have a think about how it might be put to use.  If anyone has any suggestions, please list them in the comments and I’ll see if I can act on them!

This was my first attempt at writing up my ideas for a pattern.  This instructional is all about one way of handling colour changes in yarn that has long, gradual lengths of colour that fade into each other – the inspiration coming from Rowan Colourscape Chunky (in colours by Kaffe Fassett).

download the PDF for the Self-designing Scarf