CHEMUNG New Cable Crochet Hat Design

I am so excited about Chemung! It is still not finished but I couldn’t wait to post about it. This thread will ultimate become the posting thread. The idea has pushed past ll the others in queue and said, ”I’m new, I’m next!”

These are shots of the second one -- I couldn’t finish the first because I ran out of yarn.
However the first one -- in worsted -- seemed to want to be in dk.

So I began again, refined the pattern and made the body of the second hat.

Now the part that is not yet completed is the brim, but now that I’ve seen and felt it without the brim -- I think I will present the hat with both versions.

It is named for the river which runs through my micropolis and the Valley we inhabit which shares the same name. It is said to mean “land of the saber tooth” but since they predate humans I don’t think it’s an accurate translation of the indigenous name.

I love how the cable says river and hills and valley -- that it resembles the terrain here -- and that you can wear it to look like a helmet, or a side braid.

The brim went very fast-- i guess it was slower the first time because I was making it up. I really love this hat as an evocation of place and time. It can be worn with its peak or pulled down as the beanie it is. As soon as I write up finishing directions, I’m ready to test.

Doily Rug Finished!

Finished!
This is the third of three doily rugs, but the first with 10/32 cotton

piping and the first to be finished. Loved the feel of the cushy cotton through my fingers. Watching Doc Martin and MidSummer Murders helped me run the last laps! It needs to be blocked--but I don’t know how I can manage that, given its size and my challenges.

A Favorite Flower

This flower blew my mind. It satisfies what I like most -- a huge reward for a modicum of effort. It's insightful, crunchy, deliciously dimensional.
I've used it in my exhibited wall hanging.

 I've made gifts of it. I've felted it and changed its character.

I've made a couple of changes to it,as one does to beloved patterns, when you are fully engaged in the dance, I prefer using adjustable rings mostof the time unless I want a hole in the center. And I vary the lengths of the petals.

This pattern taught me something new when I met it. I took the lesson to heart about ways to texture and shape. I salute its creator.
The picture on the website doesn't do it justice. I'll add some as I make them.
It could be described as a sort of  chrysanthemum or a zinnia. It is simply called Flower.

Thank you CrochetNMore for Flower!

http://www.crochetnmore.com/flower.htm

Swapping Catalyst for Creating

One of the wonderful things about the internet is the ability to communicate with people around the world, who share your interests. No longer is the lack of local interest a limitation on growth and experience. For me, a once wild urban child in the country, the net has long been a lifeline. Early on, back in the late 80s, I began to exchange work with those of similar minds. And now in the 21st century it is my routine to kick start my creative endeavors by participating in swaps. 

I've been hard at work on a piece for the 2012 International Freeform Association's show & book and the rules say that I can't share any of the work in progress. This makes me sad as the fascinating part for me about freeform is how the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It's sometimes hard to even find the part again once the whole has been formed. But I've got other freeform images to share. 

I just participated in a scrumble swap hosted in the fabulous Prudence Mapstone's group on Ravelry. My only regret is that I did not have sunshine any day long enough to get great pix and I didn't have the energy to do much staging. But I'm pleased at their difference -- due to the specifications and personalities of the recipients. And the exchange recharged my batteries for working on what seems to be on its way to becoming my largest freeform work yet.

AKUA BIRD MASK

I was emailing my sister about a new "friend", a red cardinal that chats, sings nearby,
and makes his glorious red self visible. There was another, a larger female that i sued
to see outside my kitchen window regularly. It took awhile for me to figure out what she was, and that she was a female of the same species. Last night this idea cam to me and I couldn't stop until I finished it. I took a few notes along the way, but at a certain point it's easier to just make it than to write.

So Much to Say, So Little I can Tell

This media, this forum, this internet is wonderful, wondrous, a life saver for me, physically and psychologically, as I live in a place of bereavement that is culturally impoverished, though blessedly, there is electricity and cable, water and shelter...
I digress, but needed this bit of scene setting to say, there is so MUCH I wanted to share here, but could not.

Because sharing would preclude the possibility of audience in other venues and remuneration.

Alas,most pattern publishers say that if an image of your creation has appeared anywhere
on the net, they won't consider it.

I've got ten patterns being considered in several places. I hope they make it, because if they do, I can make more. Ferris Wheel Cowl, I had decided, was a gift of an idea
that arrived after I committed to give money to Pakistani flood victims. As such,
I will self publish it, so that it might earn funds to send more quickly.

I miss those carefree times of showing working in progress.

Help Me Wtih This Bag

Bag with Amber Resin Button

Bag with Amber Resin Button

Flowers on Handle






Back of Bag

Back Detail

Round Button

Bag with other Amber Resin Button


Help me design my bag. I love flowers, but as this bag is not for me, I don’t know whetherto have any and if I do, how many? This bag is not yet felted, all the fibers are wool. The flower is brand new to me, I realized that while I wanted to add a splash of color, I didn’t want it to be another stuck on the front of the bag, circle of fiber. So this is my not quite fuschia not quite lily form. So what iteration works for you?

Who Will Buy?

The cleaning lady, one of my supporters, admired my free form/free design* cream hat.
I call it Ivory Temple Tower and it uses donated cream acrylic to unusual effect.
She said "someone asked me to tell you that they were interested in having you make a a hat for them."
I told her i don't do commissions--- I make things and offer them for sale, but commissions put me in the position of working to please someone and it wouldn't be worth my time. She looked at me quizzically.
"Well how long do you think it took me make this hat, " I asked her.
"Two weeks." she said.
"Well it took about four to five hours," I said.
"Yes, well there's that time for your own design..."
"Yes." I agreed, pleased.
"So how much do people get paid for two weeks of work? Two hundred dollars?"
She balked.
"Some people make $2,000 for two weeks, but let's just say it's low wage-- $200 for two weeks work? Okay," I continue," but if we use just five hours at $10 dollars an hour, that's fifty dollars for a hat."
She looked startled. I knew she expected it to be less, but I didn't want to know how little she expected. I remembered how she had thought a $20 doll too much-- and I had lowered the price just to make it a possibility for her, though I had already made her the snowman she had glimpsed in Noreen Crone Findlay's idea-rich book Creative Crocheted Dolls
http://www.tiny.cc/jHfOy


"Yes," I said, "that's why I don't make hats to order for people--- because I won't get a fair price for my time and I didn't even figure in the cost of materials."

Now as I am reading a discarded November Vogue for research (I can't wander the streets of my fabuous home town, NYC, and fill my eyes) and I see the $200 t shirts and how the Olsen Twins went everywhere in search for a couture approach to T shirts with a "french seam" down the back and the article on what people will pay for what when.... when will the woman pay five figures for a dress and go to Costco to buy her pile of T shirts( a place I've only heard about as the Corning Elmira area, where last I walked, didn't have any).

So in this little corner of the world, there are those willing to buy, but none, I fear, willing to pay.

* the freeform group, a wonderful community of crochet creators, has had a number of thought-invoking discussionns about the nature of and describing freeform. Freeform crocheting
is a way to create a fabric using crochet without a pattern for the unit/area. It begins with a
scrumble, a unit involving a variety of stitches ( or not). LOL! I think of freeform as the jazz of crochet.
You use fiber and a hook, you know stitches and you combine these at the direction of your own muse and then combine these units of expression to make an object. Given this sort of defintion,, my
hat , evolving as it did at my whim, it could be considered free form... however someone suggested
that this kind of continuous "straight ahead jazz" of it, might be called free design. I'm not scrumbling
there are no subunits, but one continuous working....