30 Years of Crocheting the Wrong Way

That's what I learned from teaching single crochet to the kids in my needlecraft class this week - I have been making yarn overs and therefore all the crochet stitches a slightly wrong way without even noticing it. For as long as I remember.

The funny thing is, I don't remember when and how I learned to crochet and knit or who taught me. I do remember my mother knitting in the 80s and my Russian grandmother crocheting elaborate doilies, craft books for children, different projects and half a year of needlecraft in 4th form at school (where I worked on a sweater with a lace pattern - no beginner anymore). My mother didn't teach me, she just told me recently. So as long I can remember, I can knit and crochet.

Or thought so.
 
OK. I can make chain stitches the right way.

While trying to demonstrate single crochet to the kids, I found it very strange that I pick the yarn with the hook on top of the yarn for the yarn overs...

... while for all the rest of the yarn overs (pullling the yarn through the loops on the hook) I have the hook under the yarn.

Back home I consulted some books and the Internet. The hook comes from under the yarn all the time (though I found one lady online doing it my way, too). Does it matter anyway?

It very slightly does. Hardly visible, but if you look at the last 4 half double crochet stitches (my way) and compare them to the 4 stitches before that (the correct way), you see that the bottom of my stitches is twisted and only one "leg" is visible while the other stitches stand on two "legs". The same applies to single crochet, half double crochet, triple crochet etc. stitches.

Nothing you would notice from the back of a galloping horse, though.

To Russia with Love

The last one of last year's traveling shawls is traveling to its final destination - St. Petersburg/Russia. Finished the last rows during the quiet moments with the girls, in the backseat of the car, to and back to Wild Camp and Rostock.



The pattern is yet another (and probably my last) Multnomah - 004 to be exact. My uncle takes it home to Russia, as a gift for my babushka, my grandmother, whom I haven't seen since 2008. She is 85 now. You know, Russian winters can be c.o.l.d. and 007 can do a lot, but not knit, I suppose. My Ravelry notes here.



Tomorrow more travel-inspired sewing, but more on the sunny side...

Birthday Stories

For my Mama's 60th birthday the towel tote was filled with stories. Stories to be told. And stories to keep you warm. A little book to write down those special moments of life, add photos or recipes for happiness. There are already quotations and pictures in it. OK. Not really imaginative and narrative. The book is more of a filler for the main gift.



A scarf. Inspired by the Story Scarf from Reinvention, sewn from vintage fabrics my Mama gave me.



You see, I like giving back ;-)

And to practice some decorative stitches on my new sewing machine.



For the dog lover my Mama is.



Label from Mollie Makes Nr. 15.



A doily for some grannie style and a button Clara found on her kindergarten playground.

And as my Mama likes collecting stones and also seems to like to put them in bags I give her for her birthday (like last year),



Clara twisted the tradition a bit by painting some stones this year.



Painted together with my Russian uncle whom I hadn't seen for 10 years. What will he take back to Russia (stones?)... tomorrow more about that.


(By the way, I got a new stash of vintage fabrics from the attic)

Rostock

It can be fun being a tourist in the town where you grew up. I left Rostock right after school some 16 years ago and it is usually only once a year we as a family go there in summer. To see what has changed and what is still there. The house where I had my first own apartment - gone. The student nightclub where I danced to sixties music - gone. My first school - gone. My second school - shut down. My third school - roof cut off, but still there, all renovated in her Bauhaus style (sounds like I survived some kind of war...).

The old has gone, the new has come... New places for me:



Yarn shop Pruenkist (their website here) - really big with a huge range of wool, buttons, fabrics and accessories. Courses and knit nights.



Indian and Singapore-inspired restaurants Jyoti and Arjun.



We had a good vegetarian lunch at Jyoti, which means light or flame.

Another flame that accompanied family life this week:



The Olympic flame in London accompanied by Russian bubliki - more from the Russian side of family, knitting, sewing, handmade birthday gifts and painted stones in the days to come...

Couch Potato, no, Doll

Everybody needs a couch doll, I do declare today. The couch is an important place and needs to be as comfy and gaudy as possible.



Couch doll in a slender matryoschka-style
(although Hubby says she looks kinda Dutch)
pattern: improvised
fabric: bed linen and felt (for the face)



an easy one-day project, the face was appliqued and embroidered while baby Carolina had her afternoon nap



and sewn together and stuffed in the evening together with Clara (while she sure had fun, she asked me whether we really need it... but who really NEEDS wallpaper for example, Hubby said, I need making something...)

Sewing Continued

After the warm-up on the weekend I took some time out for sewing, especially late at night after all my mundane work was done. The fabric I had used for Clara's doll skirt reminded me of some little cute baby kimono I had seen in the book Weekend Sewing by Heather Ross - "Lucy's kimono".



Just too cute. Great book with great projects, but with some mistakes in it, which can be confusing for a beginner. I am not the first to mention it, just check the errata of the book online. Nevertheless, after I had figured out that one pair of the straps has to stay inside and not both of them outside for binding like suggested, everything was all right. Other bloggers mentioned the same mistake on their blogs. As I had already attached one strap to the outside, the kimono is bound to the other side then in the book, but as internet research showed, the correct way of binding a kimono for a woman is with the left side over the right.
Lucky me.



And as there is no little baby girl around at the moment to wear something airy like this, Clara was delighted when her doll Lilly got a new garment this morning.



Remember the Inspiration Corner: Russia?
Finally I made a little project from that.



It is a fabric cover that can be used for books or booklets, in this case it is for a German document called "Mutterpass" - "a mother's pass", an expectant mother's record of prenatal and natal care. With the matryoshkas as symbols for motherhood and fertility just a perfect fit.
I had seen covers like this on dawanda. I am always amazed how it is possible for a sewing beginner like me to see something I would like to sew, with no real idea how to do it, and then find a tutorial on the internet, get started and have a satisfying result in the end. Magic!



I used this video tutorial here. I would only suggest that you add a little bit more seam allowance if you want to topstitch around the cover in the end.

Vintage Weekend

Lots of family fun and loads of fabrics this weekend.
(This is going to be a long post.)

To make space for all the new stuff that was about to come into our house I eventually found the time to do something that had been on my list for a while - declutter our wardrobes in Clara's room. I took radical measures - empty all the contents of the closet.



So much more fun with the help of two lovely ladies.




And my parents' she-dog.
(the men were watching sports in the living room)

Before:





And after:





Very proud.

The thrifting could start!



Clothes from a church sale on Saturday (remind me of Clara's Clothes...).

A couple of weeks ago in my chatter from the sewing box I kind of asked the blogging universum for a knitting basket. I got an answer from a basket that had been in an attic for twenty years (my parents').



A knitting bag full of vintage fabrics from the Eighties from the East (Soviet Union, bought by my mama) and the West (Western Germany,
I had a grandaunt who was a textile designer, the basket is also a one of her gifts).

And then my grandaunt Ilse, who was also very well-traveled, went to the Soviet Union and bought these tunics (the left one is hand embroidered with cross stitch).



Those tunics were only available in hard currency shops called "Beryoska"("little birch").

Filled with these fabulous fabrics I thought I was pretty immune to the big Dutch fabric market (more about it in this post) that comes to Oldenburg twice a year.










Pretty immune.

PS: A new entrant to the Doll Couch. For weeks and weeks I have been hearing a certain b-word over and over from Clara. So I said: if Barbie, then thrifted.


befitting her rank on the vintage chaise longue

Inspiration Corner: Russia

Matryoshka dolls! Sometimes also known as babushka dolls, which I find funny because no-one in Russia calls them like that. A babushka is a grandma. And the matryoshkas don't look like grannies at all, being also a symbol of motherhood and fertility.



These little girls seem to be a lot around these days, as you can see on fabric and boxes. I have plans with them...

Modelling Russian Style

Introducing... my adorable mama!


"Babushka"

As she is just visiting our house for the holidays, I needed pics for my Citrons and my mother is a natural born Russian fashionista and good fun, this was a very good idea.



The Plum Citron was the first attempt, knitted with my very first Schoppel Zauberball, sockwool in blackberry. After this I was hooked and got some Lace Zauberball, colour charisma. It took me a long, long time to knit the 800 metres - the whole of November.



The Lace Citron is delicate, elegant and yet warming and my mama likes it - her christmas present.