Never enough ...

I have 31 binsful. A dining room sideboard stuffed with plarn (plastic bag yarn). Half a ping-pong table loaded with T-shirts ready to be cut into strips. And two shelves stacked with reels of VHS tape.

This isn’t going to last me a lifetime.

In fact, I’m totally out of green DK because I used all of it for an oversize shawl that blends about 10 shades and hues (in different amounts) into a progression of dark to light. I’ll show it to you next week, after the fringe is on.

I recently staggered into the house totally disheveled and covered in sweat, dragging an overstuffed yard-size garbage bag. On the stoop was another near-splitting garbage bag, plus a pair of smaller ones. My load was so big and heavy I’d barely made it across the street and through a parking lot to the house.

It was the semi-annual Bag Day at the Third Street Alliance rummage sale. You can practically hear the crickets chirping in the gym throughout the event—until the final day. Then all hell breaks loose.

Five bucks pays for whatever you can jam into a yard-size garbage bag and drag out of the building. A smaller bag is just a dollar.
I was part of the waiting crowd, ready to stake my claim at one of the long tables piled high with clothes when the doors opened. Pickin’s were good. (Right now I’m wearing a T-shirt and a cardigan I picked up there.)

The crowd thinned after the first two hours. By then I had already claimed all the clothes I wanted to wear or upcycle into useful and fun crafts. Yet I hung around because I wanted to grab all of the remaining VHS tapes. I can jam 23 kid-themed VHS tapes into a smaller bag; I filled two this time.

Did I mention that The Boy and I don’t have any people-children?
The Third Street Alliance cares for at-risk women and children, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the rummage sale volunteers were wondering if I was one of those Bad Mommas who parks her kids in front of the TV all day. Little do they know that those tapes are destined for a big crochet project. Me, crazy?

My neighbor said I was. Until I pulled out a never-worn, never-washed, tags-still-on pair of white jeans in her size.

This isn’t a run-of-the-mill iron. It’s a hundred-dollar Rowenta; the pro model with a heavy-duty shot of steam. I used to use it all the time to block my Aran-style knitting and crochet, especially the sweaters I knit annually for my husband, which are almost always loaded with cables and other dense textures.

I blocked last year’s sweater with the wet towel method because the iron has been AWOL for about a year. That’s about the same length of time I’ve been playing with plarn (plastic bag yarn), tarn (T-shirt yarn), wire, and binding twine.

Hmmmm. I’ve heard other stitchers say that their housework is often ignored. I guess that means I’m in good company.

Last night I dreamt that America had a new reality show, called The First Family. In this episode, Papa Obama was trying to bolt together the frame of a bunk bed. As the girls bounced around him, he struggled along. But the bed kept collapsing. And I kept yelling at the screen, “get your staff to do it!”

It seems the pressure of self-imposed deadlines for my Grand Adventure—and fear about letting down my partners—was on my mind at bedtime yesterday. Usually I’m in the editor’s seat, badgering designers to complete projects and send me the written instructions. Maybe I need a staff…

Crocheting with alternative materials has changed the way that I look at the world: Cruising hardware store aisles is now exciting. I slowly scan every shelf and pick up anything that looks pliable or can be cut into strips. My last foray netted a huge spool of plastic-coated wire, the kind used for phone hookups. On sale! The coating is a dull ugly gray, but nothing a bunch of beads won’t spice up.

Last night I tried stitching with it. I’m disappointed. The wire is stiffer than I thought it would be. The stitches are big and ugly. Just a couple of rows were enough to slow me down. I stared at the small stitched piece—something that usually fires me up— and got … nothing. I let my younger dog run away with it.

Now I’m working with prettier, more pliable copper and (surprise!) strings of Christmas lights.

Yesterday, before placing an order for thread that changes color in the sun (check it out here, I took stock of my sewing supplies. It turns out that I have way too many spools of thread colors I’ll probably never use, as well as a gazillion bobbins half full of thread in colors that I’ll probably never use.

Before the recycle/upcycle bug really took root in me, I would have pulled the thread off the bobbins and tossed it all away. Not anymore. I spent most of the evening mulling over project ideas. At the same time, I was cutting t-shirts into strips. This cutting is one of the early steps in a fun and easy process that turns tees into yarn that I can crochet into really cool stuff.

Then it hit me: Use the unwanted and leftover thread on the spools and bobbins to sew together fabric strips.

What a great way to add interesting visual texture to my crocheted fabric, as well as double the thickness of the T-shirt yarn.

I can’t wait to show you the Bucket Hat I’m making. The project will be in the alternaCrafts ebook that’s in the works. It’ll include step-by-step instructions to create the sewn T-shirt yarn and crochet the hat.

So I recently planted myself on the couch in my studio, equipped with a big ball of binding twine and some test fabric strips cut off a T-shirt. I much prefer to indulge in mindless stitching while glued to my shows … but time’s a’wastin. (I’m committed to designing and completing 20-some projects in the next two months. There’s lots of experimenting involved because I’m working with non-traditional materials.)

There I am working up a single-crochet swatch in binding twine. That stitch, which I’ve now used for oodles of projects made from plastic bag strips, is boring me to tears. So I start playing with stitches that create a star effect. It turns out that it isn’t worth the effort because stitch variations have to be really dramatic to be visible in the twine.

I need dense crocheted fabric that’ll almost stand on its own, so single crochet it is. And I’m going to try wearing a driving or golf glove on my non-dominant hand while I stitch.

The rough twine is doing a number on my pinkie and left index finger when it feeds through for tension control. The twine dragged on the thin cotton glove I tried last night.

Revising and correcting instructions is tedious work. It’s also necessary. Some designers don’t do it at all. Instead, they just stitch up an item and then work out the instructions. I fear I’d forget things if I did that.

My first step after visualizing a project is roughing in the instructions. Only then do I start stitching … with the laptop, fired up, right beside me. I like to type and revise the instructions, row by row, as I make the stitches. Later I clean up the wording. Little notes become tips and hints. Sometimes I add end-of-row stitch counts as I complete each row; other times I add them at the clean-up stage.

Aimee Ray has been making things from paper, fabric and clay for as long as she can remember. She has a head full of ideas and is always working on something new—currently,  a sequel to her first book of contemporary embroidery designs. You can see more of Aimee’s work at her website; she also sells her handmade goodies on Etsy.

Embroidery is one of the easiest crafts to learn. It’s fun and relaxing, and can be as simple or complex as you want it to be. As an avid embroiderer and author of Doodle Stitching, I’m constantly inspired and amazed by the awesome textile artists out there who push embroidery to its limits! Here are a few of my favorites.

Andrea Zuill has a great eye for the bizarre—yet another thing that has always caught my attention. I love her brightly colored quilts with their unexpected motifs. She also gives away a free embroidery pattern on her blog every month.

MimiLove creates some amazing work combining watercolors and embroidery on canvas. Eyecatching colors, animals, and words come together to make truly unique artwork. Mr. Bun here is hanging on my wall at home. She also has a great sense of humor; her quirky, fun blog always leaves me in stitches (catch that pun?).

Lisa Solomon does a variety of mixed media art, combining painting, drawing, and embroidery. I love her recent series of stitched furniture combined with fabric and wallpaper-style patterns.

Of course, no embroidery writeup would be complete without a nod to Jenny Hart. Jenny is well known in the craft world as the founder of Sublime Stitching, the original source for hip embroidery patterns. I’ve always been in awe of her elaborate embroidered portraits, which draw you in by combining multiple stitches and colors to form fascinating, one of a kind tributes to the people they represent.

Generally speaking, geometric shapes are a smidge tricky to work out when there are rounds rather than rows. It’s a breeze in knitting. If you have a piece of hand-knitted fabric pull it out and look at the stitches: Each one lines up perfectly with the one directly below it. Now look at a piece of crocheted fabric. In rows, the stitch position zigzags back and forth.

A knit stitch is formed by making a new loop in the very center of the loop in the row or round below. A new crochet stitch, on the other hand, is worked to the right side of the corresponding stitch in the previous row or round. There are exceptions, of course, such as working into a chain stitch.

Crocheting back and forth in rows keeps colors and stitch patterns aligned because you’re flipping the fabric. Working in the round, however, doesn’t allow for this correction. Every round shifts the pattern another stitch to the right. This means that working out a pattern for stitching in the round isn’t a matter of simply charting the work before stitching.

Though I know this all too well, hope springs eternal that I won’ need to think about my design before I start stitching. Besides, I was too distracted by a really good TV show. So there I was, watching my star turn into a swirl or—even more aggravating—get lumpy at the edges. I finally solved the problem by strategically placing decreases at the lumpy spots. I’m making a tablecloth, though, so I had to make increases to compensate, plus work additional increases to keep the crocheted “fabric” flat as it grew larger and larger.

That, thankfully, has all been worked out. My last challenge is to make the increases, decreases, and color changes rhythmic, repetitious, and predictable. Instructions should be elegant, so they’re easier to follow.

Off I go to rip out my work again. I could stash each partially stitched tablecloth, but why? No way this Greenie’s going to toss out that failed-and-incomplete…thing. Besides, I spent a lot of time collecting and cutting those bags.