Inspiration: Irish lace

When visiting Ireland in summer, we stumbled upon a small museum of lace in Kenmare, “Kenmare Lace and Design Centre”. With me being a textile addict we, of course, had to go and check it out. Here is a souvenir set of cards: 

 
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The centre is very inspirational: not only it has a very impressive examples of antique lace, but also a selection of contemporary crafts as well as craft supplies for sale. After seeing that, I was itching to go back home and crochet something as intricate as possible. Here is what I’ve done.

There was a small green organza bag lying in my supply box and waiting to be used, so I decided to decorate it with crocheted flower (the same pattern as for the legwarmers) and make it into a lavender pouch. I used a plain green sewing thread and, just to add more history to it, a 100+ year old hook that I got from my grandmother. Now that must qualify as lace! The bag is available in my shop.

 

Flower pincushion

I finally got to handle the REAL sheep wool. Having grown up in a city, it was an unforgettable experience! During our trip to Ireland, Beara peninsula, I saw children playing with sheep wool. I didn’t know exactly what I could use it for, but I wanted some anyway, and a kind farmer gave me a whole bag.  What I hadn’t realized was that the wool was in its most native state and needed some work before it could be used for anything. On the way back from Ireland it felt like we had a live sheep in the car, even though the wool was sealed in two layers of plastic bags... But a thorough washing (according to instructions found on the internet) turned it into something soft and fluffy and very pleasant to handle. 

After washing

Yuk!

I read somewhere that sheep wool is the best stuffing for the pincushions, as the residual oil on the fibers lubricates the pins and prevents rust. Don’t know how much oil is actually left after washing the wool, but I wanted to try. A new pincushion was on my “to do” list for months. A piece of an old green sponge that I used as a pincushion was an eyesore, and it was tiring having to crop it off the photos. Here is what came out of it:

It’s too early to say anything about rust, but it’s definitely better than sponge, cotton wool (both too hard) or polyester wool (doesn’t hold the pins well).

Crochet leg warmers

Hmm, it has been a long time since I've written here. Not really in line with my «9th of June Resolutions», but I don't give up. Especially that I have lots of projects to share, enough for several posts. 

Here are the leg warmers for my older daughter:

They are crocheted from 50% merino wool, 50% acrylic double knitting yarn, hook sizes 5 and 6. The instructions are modified from here.

Lower cuff:

Starting at lower edge with smaller hook, ch 30, join with sl st to form ring, ch 2, do not turn.

Row 1: Sc in each ch, join with sl st in top of ch-2, ch 2, do not turn.

Rows 2 through 8: Repeat Row 1.

Middle:

Row 9: With larger hook, ch 2, hdc in each sc across, join with sl st in top of ch-2, ch 2, turn.

Repeat Row 9 to length desired.

Upper cuff:

With smaller hook, repeat row 2 eight times. After last sl st, fasten off.

The flower was made using a beautifully illustrated tutorial here, with the only difference that I’ve made three layers of petals only. The brown yarn was leftovers bought from a charity shop, feels like pure wool. As it was rather thin, I used hook size 2.5.

Dear readers, could anyone recommend software for Mac, preferably free, to draw crochet patterns?

Crochet flower poncho

Hurray, it's done! The longest ever project is finally finished – I cannot believe it. The story behind this poncho is in the last post. As my older daughter grew from 4 to 10 years old in this time, her taste changed, and flowery romantic stuff is not suitable any more... So the poncho belongs now to my 6 year old daughter (I promised the older one to crochet leg warmers instead, to keep peace in the family):

The schemes and diagrams are here:

Cat notebook and finishing an old project

In spring I've made a couple of felt notebook covers with a picture of a calm black cat sitting next to a houseplant. These turned out to be a success, so this week I've made some more:

It was a pleasant experience to take them to our new local arts and crafts shop SewArty.

Thanks to «Coffee and crafts» mornings at Sew Arty I've also been able to get on with my other project, which has been neglected for years. It started as a crocheted flowery poncho for my daughter, who was, I think, 4 at that time. I modified the design for a shawl found on one of the Russian blogs; unfortunately, I cannot remember which one (it was 6 years ago), but recently I found the description on several other blogs. 

So I began to crochet the motifs. After about 20 I got really bored and stuffed the bag with the motifs and yarn somewhere out of sight, not to give me bad conscience. Then, two years ago, when we went on a driving holiday around Scotland, I took the bag with me and crocheted another 20 or so motifs. I can now recognize the motifs made there – soft, stretchy and relaxed in every aspect. 

Two months ago, the wait for the car to be serviced resulted in 5 more motifs. Finally this week I took what I had to «Coffee and crafts». Showing the pile of crocheted flowers to other people and talking about how it is going to look like when it's finished really got me inspired again (and added that healthy bit of pressure to be able to show the finished poncho in a week's time). 

2 1/2 still missing - that was yesterday!

I am now half way through joining the finished motifs together!  The ambitious goal is to finish the poncho this weekend. Pictures to follow!