Tawashi

I BROWSE the internet -- EVERY MORNING!

There is an endless list of things to learn, discover and then do-it-yourself!

I discovered TAWASHI on Saturday Morning.  These are scrubbie/wash cloths, depending on what you use to make them.  Basically Tawashi is the Japanese term for dishcloth, so it encompasses all sorts of designs and it just happens that these little round ones caught my eye.  I found the idea on the Ravelry (you have to sign up and be a member) and there is one free pattern but I sort of adjusted my project.  You can also check out  tipnut.com (http://tipnut.com/ ) and do a search on the site for the word/project tawashi, which is the pattern that I used for these.

To use them as a scrubbie for the kitchen, a "rough" acrylic type yarn is suggested because it will softly scrub your dishes, also the acrylic or nylon yarns are more antibacterial.  These ones though that I made I used a no name "overstock" cotton, that I purchased at Wal-Mart for $12 for two of those huge balls, not those piddly little ones that cost $1.50 each.  

These ones that I have made, will be my new face/bath cloth -- they feel really nice on the skin and hold lots of soap for a good scrub down.  They are simple -- infact an excellent beginner project, and fast and satisfying. 

I have some yucky blue acrylic yarn, that I plan to use to make another couple and see how they work as the kitchen wipe up cloth. 

I have let my hubby use one to wipe the counters in the kitchen -- he says he likes it because he doesn't have to be folding and refolding a plain square 'rag' to do any wiping up and it fits his hand nicely.

 (I cook, he cleans)

Too bad I have discovered these so late, I think they might have been close to ideal for my Mom's arthritic hands, not too big and heavy, like the square ones we are all used to.  Well, if she had tried them out, she would have given me her honest opinion as she was never one to hold back on her opinion of things...

Well, must get on with my day...

Patriotic Salvage

Is anyone up for doing a Mystery Quilt?  I hope so, after you hear some of the details, it may just entice you to take part!

Patriotic Salvage is what it is going to be called -- This year, July 1, the Canada Day celebration is on Thursday, and July 4th , Independence Day, is on Sunday so if you are going to stay home and enjoy your own back yard how about taking on a 4 day Mystery Project?   This will be a small quilt, with some fairly small pieces, but we will be using an interesting piecing technique that will keep your pieces accurate and inline.

Supplies that you will want to have on hand:
Fabric - cottons work best - as described in the next paragraph
about 1 meter/yard of light weight, non woven, fusible interfacing -- must be fusible!
Rotary Cutter, Cutting Mat, Acrylic Rulers of various sizes, but AT LEAST a 6 x 24 inch, works for everything, scissors, thread, sewing machine and all that goes with it.

As the name of this Mystery Project suggests, it will be somewhat Patriotic and the idea is to work from your stash.  If you are Canadian, you will want to check through your stash for REDS and Whites -- reds from pink to dark red, and Americans, I would suggest using light blues and dark reds or light reds and pinks with dark blues.  Of course if you do not want to follow those colour choices, you will be looking for lights and darks -- that is very light and medium to dark of any colour, so this is basically a two colour quilt -- or you could just use two colours, but using salvage fabrics from your stash will be part of the whole idea -- oh, and you will not need more than about 1 metre (a little over a yard) of light and  about the same of dark fabric choices...

The project will not take up more than a couple hours each of the days of the long weekend, starting on Thursday and ending with finishing details and suggestions of purposing this little quilt on Sunday, and that way, if you need you can use the Monday for final touch-up and finishing...  The Project will be appropriate for Beginner to more experienced sewer and you may just add to your repertoire of quilting knowlege.

Hows about that?
I sure would appreciate it if you leave a little comment on this post to let me know if you are interested and plan to work along on that weekend.  Thanks!

PS - there will be no charge for the pattern or tips that go along with this project but if you do not work along with the project, it may not be on this blog after about July 8...

Still on the Crochet Kick.

Just a quick update of the progress of the Quick? scarf.

This is the first 4 rows, or you could call them rounds, cause this doesn't go back and forth, it goes around, with the foundation chain being the very centre.  The foundation chain is 253 chains, the first 3 being the first dc, then dc to the end, in the last chain, dc three times, now without turning over make a dc on the other side of the previous chain, continue to dc in each chain til you get to the three chains that form the first dc, in the base of this dc, make 2 dc then slip stitch to the top of the first dc. 

 Next round change colour (white in this case) chain 4, this makes half of the "V" stitch, dc in top of previous round dc, skip 1 stitch, *dc ch1 dc in next dc* of the next round for 250 stitches now as you go around the curve you will make a "v" stitch in every dc of the previous round, then continue the "V" stitch for the 250 stitches around, again to form the curve, form the "V" stitch in every dc, join to first chain 4, in the 3rd chain with a slip stitch.  the fourth round is worked the same as the previous round, except at the ends, you will form 1 extra "v" stitch between the 3rd and 4th "v" stitch of the previous row...

TO BE CONTINUED...

Oh and as an afterthought, I decided I would mention Plan 52 -- it is not abandoned and is progressing along, not as quickly as hoped but it is going in the right direction -- I am considering a name change to Plan 38....

My Camera -- Out of Commission...

Good thing I have two!  The older camera has given up the ghost.  It is a Sony well made. I suspect the whole aspect of being digital and all the bits that go with being digital, makes for a shorter life span.   I guess it just doesn't have the capability to go on for an almost unlimited number of years.  I mean, I still have an Olympus Trip 35 purchased roundabout 1978.  When I am feeling old fashioned I can load it with 35 mm film and point and shoot and it works...  The sony digital is about 5 or maybe 6 years old, I am told that is a good life expectancy for that camera... Progress?

Long Thin Scarf

I am still working on the idea of long thin crochet scarfs.  The first one from the pattern link I gave in the previous post is an excellent example of quick and easy -- to create quick and easy is not so easy as one might think.   I took a hint from some of my Mile-A-Minute booklets that I have, but did not want to copy straight out of it.  I want to create something from my own brain.  I am sort of stuck though, I have five rows and am now stuck for a border or an edging. 

I went to the second hand store this morning to see if I could find some inspiration there and picked up three older knit and crochet magazines....  There is a border used on a sweater pattern in one magazine that I think might be just the right finishing touch on the current scarf.   I will get working on it later today.

Crochet Stitches Dilemna

Another place that I have looked for inspiration is an old instruction book that I have had forever; Mon Tricot Knitting and Crotchet Dictionary a french publication but printed in english.

 I have had this book for probably 30 years and until recently never thought too much about the descriptions of stitches!  Probably because I don' t refer back to much anymore.  It is the european system.  I always thought that the American compared to European was fairly simple, dc in american being tc in european.  I went to do the stitches according to the description in Mon Tricot, I found that a American/Canadian double crochet was not a triple crochet in European as I had previously thought (or is french crochet different than english?), it is actually a half triple crochet!  A triple in Euro, is another loop yet! 

Then, of course something simple like YO is not what it is called in the Mon Tricot book that I have, it is WRH meaning wrap round hook...  The book also has no single crochet stitch it is called a double...  I have concluded that this book is very difficult to use if I read the instructions.  If I look at the picture of a pattern I can fairly easily figure out the American/Canadian version of what it describes...

And still on the subject of differences -- using the diagram system for following a crochet pattern, which seems to becoming more and more popular, the stitch symbols used are also different. 

The American/Canadian symbol for a single crochet is a short up right stroke with a cross piece half way,  and as I said there is no sc in the euro system, or maybe it is a dc, which is symbolized as a single upright stroke.

So then the Am/Can double crochet has the same symbol as the Euro treble crochet, but as I said, a double crochet doesn't actually translate to be a treble, but a half treble, for which the symbol resembles a capital "T"-- then there is the double treble in euro but what do you think that might be in Am/Can??  Well at least the chain stitch is the same in both systems of crochet - a oval on its side...

Does any of this make any sense, to you? Me Neither!  I guess my gramma taught me the stitches and didn't really name them for me, so when I finally figured out what stitches were called I was following the Am/
Can language and not the Euro language of crochet.   It really makes the translations difficult as I said earlier, but for some strange reason after more than thirty years (maybe closer to 50 years?) of this old Mon Tricot Stitch Dictionary being in my possession, I am not ready to give it up, just yet.  It has some interesting pattern stitches that I have yet to tackle...

Give me a few more days to figure out a finishing round to my own long scarf...

Project Process - Processed Project

I have taken up another little challenge, you may notice a "button" near the bottom of this page on the left side, it is the Project Process Challenge.  Not really a challenge per se, but a pledge to show how a project progresses from idea to completion.  I will try to post some of the things that I do and how ideas percolate, get started and the road to completion.

But, not today.

The middle day of a long weekend.  I started and finished this scarf today. 

I saw this scarf on another blog yesterday -- and I am sorry I cannot point you to that blog, but I can point you to the instructions for this super quick crochet scarf. 

I often like to test out things with 'less' expensive yarns to see how well I like it -- I do like to crochet, but oddly, often I do not really like what I make for myself -- other than afghans, so a test with a acrylic yarn (worsted weight) - (the "super saver" size ball is more than enough) produced the above result.   This pretty, One Skein Crochet Scarf will probably be passed along or donated to my local Christmas bureau and I think, I may just make one for myself, now.  It is so long that it wraps around me little neck twice.  And still has rather long dangly loose ends. 

If this pattern interests you too, go to http://www.patonsyarns.com/data/pattern/pdf/instruction_1858.en_US.pdf

It is quick to crochet, especially on the middle day of a long weekend -- if you stay at home.  Well, we did go explore the Flea Market this Morning and the Veggie Market where we got the weekly supply of plant goodness...  And still, I got this whole scarf completed.  Yes, I think I will make another...

A thought that I did have while working on this scarf was that I thought perhaps, those Mile-A-Minute Afghan Patterns would also work well to create a quick scarf similar to this one today.  I am going to have to look up some of those to see how they might work as quick scarfs and maybe keeping it to one skein...

We'll get back to that idea in a day or two...

Spring Fever

I was mostly raised on a small hobby farm.  I think, because of that my nostalgia impels me to grow things come spring and summer.  The last few years my little town house yard has not been able to support life in any great abundance.  For two of those summers the complex I live in has been undergoing major exterior renovations and even the plants that I had, ended up trampled and destroyed by worker men...

Late last summer we decided to build a new deck, refurbish the old and create a step down system in our sloped yard.  Now we have no grass or exposed earth, so everything that I want to grow is done in containers except for the small back corners where a wild fern has sprung up and I planted some given-to-me Hostas.   Now, I am able to start to learn about Container Gardening, what works and what doesn't.

My yard now is not only 'earthless' but in past years has been very overshadowed by surrounding cedars that were long ago planted, they are in the 50+ years, I'm sure.   Recently though the owner of the cedars has had them trimmed up on his side so we also took the opportunity to trim back some branches on our side.  Now our yard is opened up and it can be considered partly sunny.  A few spots in the yard may even support sun loving plants.

So this is the beginning of my little garden.  I went so far as to create a name and a sign for my space.  I happened to have a piece of wood so painted it and then -- I don't know where this idea came from -- placed 4 left over blocks from a previous quilt onto the wood, wrote the garden name (THE PATCHWORK DOG GARDEN AND SANCTUARY) and with a sponge brush and a small can of Varathane paint, covered the whole piece with about 5 layers of Clear Gloss Varathane.

I certainly adds that quilt lovers element to my space!

A week early of the established and recommended planting date here in Canada (May 24, or Victoria Day Weekend) I have set out the seedlings that I started in doors -- BASIL and THYME, and planted some purchased starters.  Mostly Herbs will fill my container garden, SAGE, ROSEMARY, LAVENDER, and even CATNIP.   Now with the opened sky, I decided to try tomato and being sometimes a bit odd, I saw a do it yourself project to grow tomatoes upside down.

Here is the beginning of the upside down tomato plant.  This is a small grape type tomato.  The do-it-yourself project that I read about used a two litre pop bottle but said that it did not produce very many tomatos possibly due to being root bound, so I decided to try it in a 4 litre milk jug.   Lots of time to go, to see what happens with this tomato plant...  I will try to keep you posted as to this WIP!

The Big Bang Theory

Another post with no pictures...

Did you ever have an idea pop into your head that you thought must be so funny that everytime you thought of it all through the day, you would smile or giggle to yourself?

Well, I had one of those the other day and had to send my son, who is somewhat of a science nut and definately into astromomy and other such things, an email to tell him about it -- fully expecting to get the usual Ha Ha Mom, response.  

So what I sent him was this question.  If there was nothing before The Big Bang , how big could the Bang have been?  It may have been so small that it couldn't even have been heard if there was anyone or anything to hear it, so it may not even have been a big bang.   This question seems so far out and so rediculous that I did giggle about it all day.

So my brilliant (well he thinks he is anyway) says, yeah, Mom that is quite likely, anything to start is always smaller than what comes after, cause everything expands or grows at it progresses...  Do you think the Big Bang was smaller than when your irritating neighbour starts up the lawn mower on Sunday Morning?  Mind you this all depends on whether you are privy to the idea of a Big Bang theory or if you go for the idea of everything being created by a specific entity...

And no, I don't ALWAYS write about quilting or crochet...

Quick organizing idea.

no pictures this time...

anyway, the other day I was making a fabric cover for a journal type book and somewhere in the back of my head I was thinking about what I call my Password Book...  The two ideas sort of melded.

I have a old notebook that I write down the username, web address and password to a multitude of websites.  I know they (who are they anyway?) say that you should memorize your password and not give it out to anyone.  BUT GEE, there are more websites that I visit that need some sort of password, so I have to write them down -- AND because I did have a computer crash a number of years back, I now also write down not just the web name but its "http://" address too.  It is amazing how hard it is to rebuild a Favourites list or the RSS Feeds list from memory.   So everytime I log on to a new site I put it into my little notebook.  Handy, but still has problems the main problem being finding where I wrote down which site...  So thats where the bright idea popped in.  REDO all those website addresses and passwords into a regular address book -- the kind with the A, B, C's with tabs on the sides.   I have now discovered I have more web sites that I visit than I have actual friends.... hmmmm...  Sure makes it easy to check the password for any particular site -- by the way, there are a couple of my websites that are not written down -- the bank, is the most important, it is easy to remember that password because it is different than any of the others.

Another tip to do with keeping your web pages and passwords relatively easy to get back into is that I only use about 4 different ones that I use over and over and over,  but never on financially sensitive sites -- I don't think anyone looking to steal from me will care that I have a password for Lion Brand Yarn, or for the Ravelry site....   And the last computering tip...  You know those sites that insist that you have a question and secret answer?  Well, I have the same secret answer no matter what the question is-- so, What High School did you attend?  twofoursix  or how about What is your Mothers Maiden Name? twofoursix  and maybe they might ask What is the name of your Pet?  twofoursix...   (by the way, twofoursix is not my actual answer for anything it is just an example in this case)

Hope these were a couple of useful ideas -- mind you if you have money sensitive sites or sites that can give away personal information, I would advise a more secure system, but for the web sites that really just want to know how often you visit using the same answer for everything should be fine... 

Next up -- part of the Challenge to Finish

I haven't been very attentive to the ongoing Challenge to Finish, but finally I have some progress to report on one of those old WIP's that has been around just a bit too long.  I have 80 some squares made up -- these were an exchange of blocks with a local group of friends, 5 of us exchanged completed blocks.  I think I am the only one who has not finished (this was about 2 or maybe 3 years ago we traded blocks!)  Well, I have pulled out the blocks and decided it is time to put them together -- though a bit differently than my friends.  I have decided to make 2 quilts from those blocks, so I sorted through and the first quilt is using all the red, brown, purple, yellow blocks and the second will be using all the greens, blue, and yellows...

So I can say I have finished up the red brown top...

Now just to get it layered and quilted...

Who's Quilt is That??

Do you make a label for each quilt that you finish?


And What do you put on the label? And how do you make the label?
Well, on the third question, I can offer a couple of suggestions to really SPIFF up the label.
Most Labels that I see are square and hand sewn on the back of the quilt. A few years back my friend Doris, who doesn't particularly like to hand sew -- but she does anyway... Came up with the idea of the triangle Quilt Label. The triangle Quilt Label means you only have to hand sew along one edge.
This is how we do it.Depending on how big of a label you need, cut a square between 6 inches to about 8 inches square. Fold over the square to make a triangle with a already "hemmed edge"

Next, SPIFF it UP. I (and Doris too, who does this part mostly freehand -- she is a good draw-er) like to include a motif of some sort on the label to grab your eye. Most of my motif's come from old iron on embroidery designs that I have collected over the years. The little design then is coloured -- thats my short cut anyway -- or you could actually embroider it!

I use coloured pencils, or sometimes regular wax crayons, or just as often pigma pens -- all need to be heat set with your iron.

So now you have a really nice label, I just write on it a date, and who made it or who it is for. This particular label is for the quilt that I finished up this morning and will be donated to my guild's charitable quilts program. I don't usually put my name on it, but the person in charge of the donated quilts has a numbering system so she can keep track of who made what quilt. Often the recipient of a quilt will write a thank-you letter to the guild and then it will be passed along to the quilt maker...

So, I made a little quilt, well, a nice lap size type of quilt -- 3 1/2 inch squares made into four-patch blocks and then the four patch blocks alternated with 6 1/2 squares. 

(and made an error in placement of the blocks, which I didn't notice until I started quilting down the middle of the light smaller squares!  Oh! Darn! )

Quick, Simple, Uses Up lots of SCRAPS....

Now, squint your eyes a bit - the next picture shows the backing and the label, I just described how to make -- the back is awfully bright!

Whew!  Can you believe that for a backing?!  Aw, Well it is flannelette and is warm and cosy.  And there you see how the label is attached to the quilt. 

 You simply match it to one one your corners -- on this quilt which corner doesn't matter, but on a directional quilt, you might want to think about which corner you want the label on. 

Align the label with the edge of the quilt and pin into place, after you have sewn the front side of your binding on the quilt. 

While you either hand or machine stitch your binding around the back, sew the binding onto the label but also make sure that you catch the backing underneath.  Once you have finished sewing your binding on, just go back to the label and tack down either with a hand stitch or a machine along that angle edge.  There.

You Are Done.

Remember, do the drawing and writing and heat setting on the label BEFORE you attach it to the quilt, because if you use a poly batting the heat will flatten the batting...  If you forget to heat set, it will not affect a cotton or wool batting like it will a poly...