Hooked for Life

by Mary Beth Temple

  Well, more or less. Felting is more of an art than a science—your results may vary. My results vary, too. Every time I felt something, I have all these grandiose ideas that measuring and swatching and testing ahead of time will tell me exactly what I am going to pull out of the washing machine, and yet I am always surprised (sometimes pleasantly, sometimes not) by the results.

  The great news about felted fabric is that whatever you end up with will be acceptable in one form or another. As long as you are a flexible type of person, that is. I designed a felted purse pattern recently that had absolutely no relationship whatsoever after it came out of the washing machine to the sketch I had made. No resemblance whatsoever. It was funny and scary at the same time how wrongly I’d guessed about how the piece would change shape while it was felting. That said, I changed the title, did a little fiddling with the way the closures were set, put the original sketch through the paper shredder so no one would know how very wrong I was, and sold the design anyway. It may not have been what I expected, but it was still a pretty cool purse.

  If your felted piece comes out from the wash and you simply can’t stand it, the very good news is that you can cut it up with a pair of sharp scissors and make it into something else. Unlike woven fabric it won’t fray, so cut away. Stitch the pieces into something else, throw a blanket stitch edging on, and crochet around it. If all else fails, cut it into 4-inch squares and call them coasters and act as if that’s what you meant to do all along. No one will ever know!

  I started on the slippery path to felting addiction with knitted pieces. They worked out fine, and one Christmas everyone in my family (who would appreciate them) got felted slippers. But then I started thinking about felting in crochet. Crochet has a structural quality to begin with so you can easily make all kinds of shapes. Crochet goes really really really fast so you can get to the fun part, the actual felting, quickly. Crochet is a pretty dense fabric from the get-go, so you can get an extremely thick and cushy end result, or crochet with a finer gauge wool and get soft and flexible felted goodness. In other words, crocheted felting ROCKS.

  Scrumble Fever

  Scrumble is a word that I thought was a typo when I first ran into it. In fact, as I am writing this, the computer still thinks it’s a typo. It’s the word for a building block of free-form crochet—you make a bunch of scrumbles containing any stitch or fiber you choose, made in whatever manner suits you, and then you join them together into something larger.

  Start with a hook and some yarn and just work in whatever direction they take you—scrumbling is sort of like doodling, only with yarn instead of with pencil and paper. The glory of free-form crochet is that it can be anything you want it to be, even if you don’t know what you want it to be when you begin. You can combine any sort of stitch and yarn and texture and go to town until you get bored with it, then instantly move onto something else. You’ll know when it’s finished; it will tell you. Then you make another and another, and eventually, out of the pile of disparate bits and bobs rises a finished piece. It could be anything from a wall hanging to a garment, and it will be completely unique—a piece of crochet art that no one in the world besides you could have made.

  Crocheters talk a lot about whether they are process driven (“Just give me a hook and some yarn so I can crochet and I don’t much care what comes out the other side”) or result driven (they have a strong idea what they are going to make in what size with what yarn and they are going to make exactly what they envision). Free-form crochet is for people who really enjoy the process of crochet. Not that you can’t get fantastic results—you really can make some striking pieces that are a delight to wear or display. But relaxing a bit on the planning side of crochet is likely to bring you the most creative results, if that makes any sense. If you let yourself be driven by the yarn and the hook and what they are telling you, you can do a little planning later on when you have a clearer idea of where you are headed. The process crocheter doesn’t mind taking a few detours along the way since it’s the journey that matters, and may even change the destination entirely if there is a pretty pathway leading her away from her original goal.

  Of course, if you are shaking your head and looking askance at the idea of yarn and hooks speaking to you, perhaps free form is not your game. Some crocheters need the reassurance of a pattern—a road map, if you will, to get them where they are going.

  Which isn’t to say there is no planning in free form. If you want to wind up with something wearable in approximately your size, you need to do the math about how you want each garment piece to be shaped and measured, as compared to how large and what shape the pieces coming off of your hook actually are. Some free-formers work with paper or fabric templates—they mark out the shape of the pattern piece they need and arrange and rearrange the scrumbles until they have a layout that is both pleasing to the eye and the correct shape. Some “build” their pieces on a mannequin to get the flow and drape just right. The fantastic news about free form is—it is never ever wrong. It is only what you want, when you want it, if you wind up with a little section that needs to be filled in, all you need to do is whip out your hook and yarn and crochet a piece that fits.

  Free form is like making a jigsaw puzzle at the same time that you are putting it together. At least you don’t need to force any pieces to fit in! And it’s an excellent excuse not just to build up stash (“Hey, I’ll use that skein in something somewhere because it looks so nice next to some of my other skeins”) but to use it up. Because one of the things a yarn can tell you is when it is gone—no pesky leftovers to put back in the box, just set yourself a challenge to use up this sparkly bit until there is no more.

  It also doesn’t matter what type of gauge you like to work in; you can turn your favorite techniques into free form. I have seen some gorgeous free-form garments in thread that look like their cousins in Irish crochet, and some wild and wooly outerwear that will stop traffic (in a good way!), and just about everything in between.

  If you can take the plunge, free form can be the ultimate crochet adventure. And you never have to leave your chair.

  Amigurumi

  Amigurumi means “Beanie Baby” in Japanese. Okay, in fact it doesn’t, although it is a Japanese word. It refers to small stuffed knitted or crocheted (but mostly crocheted, yay!) animals, or anthropomorphized inanimate objects.

  Some cool, trendy crocheter who is way younger than me introduced me to the concept. I thought they were pretty cute, but what would you actually do with one, or a bunch? My daughter already has a population of stuffed animals rivaling that of a small city, does she really need more? How many of these little guys would I really want to make, anyway? And how many designs do there need to be?

  The answers to these questions are apparently collect them, yes, none, and millions—because the ami craze has caught on all over. People collect amis they have made as well as amis others have made. Crocheters buy patterns and materials for them by the ton, and even buy the amis of certain fiber artists to add to their collection.

  Me? I don’t get it. I didn’t get the whole Beanie Baby thing, either. Apparently I am not wired to fall in love with animals that don’t come over and wag their tails when I call them. And since they aren’t fiber bearing, either, I really don’t have a lot of use for them.

  What I do like about amigurumi is that they have turned a lot of people who are not otherwise crochet lovers, into crochet lovers. Some fiber council somewhere decided that statistically, a lot of people turn to crocheting when they or someone they know is expecting a child, because crocheted baby things are so lovely. I think a lot of people who are becoming caught up in the ami craze will learn to crochet just so they can add to their collections.

  Once they have been assimilated, we will turn them into all-around crochet lovers. The amigurumi craze will pass someday—does anyone remember that Beanie Baby prices ran to the thousands of dollars, and now they are in the discount bin at the grocery store? And at least the amigurumi wil
l always be cool because they were not mass-produced—each has a bit of individual character.

  In the meantime, someone hand me a hook and some yarn, please. I see a little lion that I might not be able to resist.

  Part Two

  Links in the Chain Scarf

  Past, present, future—all crocheters are linked together through our love of the craft. Make as many links as you like out of animal fiber yarn and felt away!

  Materials:

  125 yards each in two colors of bulky, feltable yarn (CYCA 5, bulky). Model shown used two skeins Lamb’s Pride Bulky, 85% wool/15% mohair, one in Rosado Rose #M183, and one in Raspberry #M83. You can also go crazy with feltable scraps—this would make a great stashbusting project!

  Crochet hook size N/13/9 mm, or larger. Gauge not important but you want a loosey-goosey fabric so it felts nicely.

  Make one link, then for each one that follows slip the ch through the preceding link before you s1 st it into a ring.

  Make as many or as few as you like—I did eleven, and wound up with a finished size of 2 inches wide by about 75 inches long.

  The tighter your foundation chain, the more ruffly your links will be—if you want flat links, you will have to chain VERY loosely, but I like how they ruffle a bit with a normal tension, so I didn’t get crazy.

  Link Pattern:

  Ch 36 loosely and join with s1 st to form a ring, being careful not to twist the ch.

  Rnd 1: Ch 3, dc in each ch around, join with s1 st to top of beg ch. (36 dc, counting beg-ch).

  Rnds 2 and 3: Ch 3, sk 1st dc, dc in each dc around, join with s1 st to top of beg-ch. End off after row 3.

  To Felt the Scarf:

  Felt the completed scarf by your preferred method. To felt in a top-loading washing machine, put the scarf in a zipped mesh bag and place in the washer with an old pair of jeans or two. Choose a small load size, the hottest water setting, and the highest agitation setting if applicable, and add some detergent. Do not let your washer move on to the spin cycle. Check on the bag after ten minutes and then in five-minute intervals, resetting the machine as needed, continue the felting process until no stitch definition can be seen. Gently squeeze the excess water from the felted scarf, then blot it with a bath towel to remove as much water as possible. Pull the scarf into shape and let air-dry.

  prefelted

  Greetings from Mount Yarn

  There is an area in my living room where I like to sit and crochet, or knit, or spin, or sketch. My daughter calls this area Mount Yarn. If I am looking for something and stomping around the house with my searching face on, she will often call out, “Hey, have you looked in Mount Yarn?” She thinks she is funny … although sometimes she is right.

  Yes, I have an office, but I find I don’t always want to sit in there when I am working out a design. And I certainly don’t want to sit in there when I could be watching bad television programs guilt-free because hey, the TV might be rotting my brain cells, but I am actually accomplishing something by crocheting, so I award myself a free pass to watch whatever goofy stuff I like. I couldn’t watch anything serious or educational anyway—it would distract me from my crochet work. So bring on the sitcoms, I am working here.

  Anyway, I have a light with a natural bulb, a small round end table, and a basket underneath it that is for whatever project I am working on at the moment. A large red leather armchair is my perch of choice, and there is a tapestry-covered ottoman in front of it. That is, I am pretty sure all of those things are there, but I haven’t seen several of them in years. I believe there is an odd sort of magnetic force emanating from that corner of the living room that attracts fiber, paper, colored pencils, and crochet tools. No, not a magnet—a tractor beam. Okay, I don’t exactly know what it is, but I know it’s there because, at any given moment, there are twenty or thirty skeins of yarn, four or five stitch dictionaries, a stack of graph paper, two or three sketchbooks, a bunch of recent magazines, half the world’s supply of Post-It notes (I like to play with Post-It notes!), and so many crochet hooks and knitting needles that the table top often looks like a porcupine.

  Of course, when I am working on something new, or something with a deadline (like an imminent birth or major gift-giving holiday), or just something that excites me, the yarn, hook, needle, stitch marker, sketch pad, or pencil I need at the moment is nowhere to be found. It was in the pile yesterday. It might be in the pile yet, but I have no stinking idea where it is. After a cursory glance through the topmost layers of detritus, I usually give up and run to the store for backup supplies or move on to a different project.

  About twice a year I get a burning desire to have that corner of the house look less like a dump site for homeless crochet projects and more like a place where a normal person would sit for an evening. After all, you can see that area from the entry hall, and I have on more than one occasion prayed that the mother dropping off or picking up a child is too busy to come all the way in the door, because if she turned her head ever so slightly to the right, she would see into the depths of fiber hell.

  So then I clean it all up, relocate the “no chance of being worked on this month in my wildest dreams” projects back to the stash closet, file the magazines on the shelf where they belong, and throw out approximately two thousand yarn ends from finishing projects. Then I put all the hooks and needles back into their respective cases and discover that I have run to the store so many times since the last time I cleaned that I now own eight identical size H hooks. And so many tapestry needles (because I am always losing those) that I am afraid to count them all. But hey, I will never run out again, right? And look how pretty Mount Yarn looks! Hardly a mount at all, it’s more like a gently swelling hillock.

  This lasts for approximately forty-eight hours, by which time the invisible fiber/tool/paper tractor beam has kicked in, and the pile has started to inexorably rise toward the ceiling again. I swear that I am not putting more things over there, yet there they are. Do they breed? I actually think yarn that breeds would be pretty cool, as well as a blessing to the budget, but I digress. Is there a wormhole leading from the stash closet to Mount Yarn? (See, I must have been watching sci-fi during my TV binge.) If you are a scientist who knows about these things, please drop me an e-mail. I am afraid someday I will get sucked in and never find my way out.

  But what a way to go.

  Speaking In Tongues

  If you watch medical shows on TV, or police procedural, which are my weakness, you find out quickly that like-minded people speak in a language all their own. “CBC, chem 7, STAT!” or “Book that perp for felony murder!” I am not always exactly sure what all the words mean, but familiarity and context give me the general gist.

  Crocheters have a language of their own as well. Some of it overlaps with what knitters say, some of it is completely different, and sometimes the words are the same but have different meanings or connotations. I have heard it said that England and the United States are two countries divided by a common language; I think the language of crochet and the language of knitting have the same sort of relationship.

  I don’t want to go on and on about language but since I lapse into crochet-speak so much in the course of this book, I thought a little detailed explanation might be in order. Herewith, a little primer—a translation, if you will, from crochet to English. That’s American English, by the way, I still get confused by UK crochet-ish!

  Voy a la tienda del hilado—wait, that’s Spanish. I may not be multilingual but I have managed to find yarn in every country I have ever visited. By the way, that sentence means, “I am going to the yarn store.” Learn it; you may need it someday.

  “My WIPS are taking over my available stash storage—some of them are going to have to befrogged.” In English, this means “My works-in-progress (meaning, loosely, anything that has a hook glommed onto it) have expanded beyond the capacity of the drawer (storage bin, guest room closet, second home) in which I store the yarn I have yet to use (and may never use because quite frank
ly I bought some of it because it was pretty/on sale/I was bored/all my friends were doing it), some of them are going to have to be ripped out (while I sob bitter tears over all the time I wasted on that ungrateful pile of fiber).”

  See? The language of crochet is a sort of shorthand that expresses more succinctly the thoughts of the crocheter. Let’s try another one.

  “My dealer hooked me up and now I have a raging case of startitis. I am going to have to CIP to get through this pile, and maybe join a CAL or two,” is shorthand for, “My local purveyor of fine fibers, who is so intimately acquainted with my personal tastes that she can make wonderfully appropriate suggestions as to what sorts of yarn I should buy, found me some enticing objects at a fair price (made me an offer I couldn’t refuse/lowered the price on the sale bin detritus she was trying to get rid of to the point that I couldn’t put it back) and I am so excited by my many purchases that I must immediately yet thoughtfully (Hah!) begin a number of new projects. I am going to have to Crochet in Public (on the bus/during lunch hour/waiting in the carpool/at the supermarket/no matter how much my muttering while counting stitches embarrasses my offspring), and maybe join a Crochet-Along (in which many crocheters work on the same project at the same time and comment on it, ostensibly to give each other support but in actuality to make those who finish quickly feel superior and those who never finish at all yet another thing to berate themselves over) or two because the camaraderie (or mockery—much depends on the general tone of the group) makes the project go so much faster (if only to avoid FO envy—remember, FO means Finished Object, and I promise I will stop now).”