Maple and Oak Leaves

Ahh! Now to just doublecheck the patterns--- hard to do them as if I don't already know what I'm doing-- or more often, to add a stitch here or there and not write it down.
Here are the other two maple leaves and the oak leaf!

I like that the maple leaves are different as well as different approaches and the oakleaf is smaller than the others I've seen, and not worked in a chain! Ahh all four patterns are free from the chain.

Freeform Fall Flower and Leaf Lariats, Neckwarmers, Garlands

What to call these adornments?
Arranged alliteratively these are Freeform Fall Fiber Flower and Leaf Lariats or scarflettes, neckwarmers, garlands.

I returned again to leaves and decided my flower necklaces could lengthen and loosen and whoa! What fun and excitement!
I was gifted yarn that I made hats and squares for charity( through All Crafts for Charity on yahoo) and realized
that the fall colors worked together.

Loss and Giving

I'm feeling a bit adrift.

Sekou Sundiata, an old comrade, poet, teacher, creator, died last week at a mere 58. This opens afresh the wounds of loss, my dear friendf since high school, Doulgas David Walker, founder of the electronic music group Alien Planetscapes, died last year, as did another once-friend and brilliant musician, Hilton Ruiz. And earlier this year, a poet of long (30 year) acquaintance, Judith Dothard Simmons,

The folks touched me and shared incredible mythic and magic times with me. Douglas was such a touchstone, because he and I were among those in high school who organized and worked for creating a better world. And I learned that Sekou was an organizing progressive force as early as college.... not a surprise, just an affirmation of what was manifest when I met and knew him (1970s-80s).

So I am sorrowing and am making many little things, keeping myself busy. I'm experimenting with fiber and fabric and realize I need a teflon sheet or parchment paper to complete this experiment.

Thank you, MD, for the wonderful box of fibers. They are inspiriational! Tell me how to be in touch with you.

I working on several multimedia pieces using crocheted female figures as the focal pieces.



And I realized I need to recommit myself to giving, especially as my crochet workshop here has stoppped, I've got to make something with the intention of giving it away.

The Black Crafters Group is holding a green challenge and so I've focused on that for these figures and for the fibers I've been experimenting with---I intend to use this for wings, and for aTCs.

Speaking of wings--- perhaps I'll do another entry on them. I've not hit upon the wongs that I want for my women. Then I realized my leaf pattern would make a great wing, especially joined.

I want to mention this wonderful group on the web that continues to inspire me and remind me of ways of giving and the good good goodness that exists in the world as people fufill their desire to make and create and use their hands and hearts and then point this desire to meeting others needs. All praises!

All Crafts 4 Charity http://groups.yahoo.com/group/All_Crafts_4_Charity/

CORD THRILLS

I am so excited and delighted with the scrumptious texture of the front post double crochet cords.
They are so easy and emerge looking complex and architectural!

I started a triangular one and kept on going, knowing I wanted it for a necklace, did a round one and stopped the sample.

Played with the sample and it immediately reminded me of Fulani earrings that the Met (museum of art) used to sell, so I tried it again. I made a mistake with the second one and so had a six ridge vs. a five ridge and so got to see what that looked like, too. I think I'll try the four-ridge tonight, just to have a sample.

I felted a five ridge/circle and it became tighter than i expected--- a textured bead! I'll post these pix, too.

Thanks again, Bonnie!

Cords, Necklaces

I've found the stitch patterns to serve as necklace cords, vines and backdrops for my flowers.
My online search yielded the lobster stitch. Fab and fun once I realigned my stitch perception.
Then I asked and it was answered on the FreeForm Crochet Group on Yahoo, my crochet home away from home. Bonnie P. has amassed a treasure trove of stitches and motifs.
I'm cord happy!The
cluster braid looks like little triangles or pennants, the doublecrochet chainless spiral also filled the bill for me as did the bobble braid. So now I have 4 necklaces in progress, and more flowers to make.

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....

Crochet Architecture

Structure and pleasure derives from the the right stitch meeting the right fiber using a comfortable implement that allows you to twist and manipulate the fiber with far more ease than your fingers lone could. So you create a structure a fabric, an object that began as a straight line with which you drew.

This drawing made the singular multiply and made the line dense and multidirectional.

I stand in awe of the ancestors whose genius though to spin filaments into thread, to gather animal and plant fibers and ply them together, and then from that, knot and weave and then pattern these knottings and weavings into ever more complex designs.

This doing is a healing. This making is a healing. A way to breathe and calm. A flow into which to go this exploration is a comfort and a glory, an itch and a hunger. A restlessness and roaming with many arrivals.

My latest design foray had me up late and discomfited as I sought a solution. Having found it, I knew joy and then I reinterrogated the solution, found I was less complacently fulfilled than I though, but not as anxious for an answer as when I began.

I find I must look at things again and again and again as I am still building my vocabulary of stitch forms and how to accomplish them. My practice is reading patterns and then envisioiong the form that is described... like sight singing.

Some patterns like some computer code are just wasteful. I can sometimes dsicenr that there is an easier way to achieve their
effect or even that a small ealboration, night yield an even grander effect. As this latest return to the crochet path is only a few months old, these insights are headier than they migt be had I been steady processing, reading and making.

But I return to crochet because my other physical visual artforms are not accessible to me. I miss my gloassmaking, kilncasting,flameworking, sculpture making, my floor loom, my polymer clay, my paper making, my beaters, my plant stuff,
my wires.

I am grateful for fiber whioch enabled me to make handsome bracelets, pins and other accessories for some of the many
who have supported me in this challenging time.
At All Crafts for Charity, I met women across the country who are churning out handmade joy to gift the less fortunate.
As I am now among the less fortunate, it is a balm to me to find a way to yet help some others as others help me.
And so, to prarphrase Charlotte of Cahrlotte's Web (heard discussed today on the Diane Rheim (sp?) show " to lift another a little" and so lift myself.

I am gratified that I was able to turn the gift of yarn into hats and booties for poor preemies.

This blog will record my fiber exploration and fiber contemplation as I work with the tools I am able to use: hooks and yarn
and try to construct a way onward, a bridge, some wings, a habitable place, a vessel, an airship.