cestinhos de sacos plásticos, originally uploaded by Catrela.

I stumbled upon these great crocheted bowls made from plastic bags when I was searching crochet on technorati. I’ve been wondering myself what else you could make with plastic bag crochet. How about a bath mat?

Pins and Needles, the local yarn shop in Princeton, NJ where I teach crochet, has asked me to create a shrug pattern. I worked up a sample for my daughter Selma with yarn from my stash before starting on the “real thing” using their Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk. Here’s the result:

The Alpaca version will be 3/4 length sleeves. I think shrugs are so fun! They look awesome on, and they’re almost as easy to make as a scarf. It can be a great beginner project, or you could spice it up using an intricate stitch pattern. Selma is excited about it because she’s not allowed to wear sleeveless tops to school, but with the shrug, now she can.

My brother is a programmer in silicon valley. He keeps me up-to-date on all things digital. The latest great thing come my way is a site called del.icio.us Registering is free–there are no ads it’s completely non-commercial.

It’s just a really amazing way to catalog and keep track of your links. You can bookmark pages you like, as with any link list, but then you categorize your links using “tags” instead of hierarchical photos. Here’s where the magic starts: I tag something crochet. Someone else comes along and browses in del.icio.us on “crochet” they can see my links and anyone elses links with the same tag! When you bookmark a page, you can also see how many people have already bookmarked that page–it’s an instant popularity index.

Another great feature is, del.icio.us uses RSS just like blogs to. So you can subscribe to your del.icio.us feed or someone elses, and using a complementary site site called RSS Digest you can post a dymamic list of links on your blog or any other web page, pulled from your del.icio.us tags of choice and updated automatically as often as you specify.

Well–I know this all sounds very technical–but it was easy and fun to set up, and now you can instantly see where I’ve surfed on the crochet superhighway just by looking at my always up-to-date link list.

Don’t worry… I have a great shrug to show off later!

Look what’s new on the bookshelf this month– Melissa Leapman’s Cool Crochet: 30 Hot, Fun Designs To Crochet And Wear: another of the “new generation” of crochet books diffusing the myth that crochet is old, stogey, or lace-ridden. The greatest thing about these designs is that they fit–no shapeless or boxy sweaters. These are all women’s garments and accessories, and there’s a nice variety. She’s got a great hoodie, a georgeous top with bell cuffs in a shell design, halter tops, and even a string bikini.

I appreciate that she uses yarns in a variety of price ranges, from Classic Elite to Lion Brand to TLC’s Amore. The patterns are written in sizes from small to XXX Large. The projects vary in scope–there’s a crocheted necklace made with sterling silver wire and beads and there are a couple of nice bags and hats. It looks like a large portion of the yarns run on the lightweight side, i.e. DK and sportweight yarns and smaller D or E hooks.

Many of the designs are in the intermediate to advanced level, in fact none of the designs are at the true beginner level. (There’s a beautiful intarsia sweater which I may just have to make even though I hate to weave in ends!) The instructions are well laid out with helpful tips scattered throughout the book (including a technique for minimizing the holes between turning chains and the first stitch of a double crochet row). The large format of the book allows for big type and lots of helpful, colorful pictures, including, in most cases pictures of stitch detail.

I saw Melissa on The Knitty Gritty this week demonstrating cool knitted edges. She’s got a great eye for design and she’s good at teaching concepts and techniques.

I’ve been trying to find cool patterns for about 6 balls of bulky yarn I have lying around my stash. And it’s frustrating trying to search when the term “bulky” can describe such a wide range of gauges.

Wouldn’t it be cool if gauge descriptions were standardized–i.e. always stated in 10 cm. square with a specific syntax, so when you were surfing the web for patterns for a certain yarn, you could just google a gauge and bring up a list of patterns? Conceivably, with XML, there could be metadata tags specific to knitting and crochet that would allow for even more robust searching…

Here’s my latest finished project. Riffing on my bib pattern, I made this little newborn vest for my soon-to-be born nephew. It’s meant to be reversible (i.e. either the red or yellow side can be in front).

I’ve been musing a bit again about how useful my kitchen scale is for knitting and crochet. For instance, the other day, after I made the halter top for Selma, I wanted to know how much yarn it took, so before I sewed on the buttons, I weighed it, did a little math, and I knew exactly how many yards I had used. It’s great for reverse-engineering patterns from finished objects.

Wouldn’t it be nice, if along with a gauge measurement on a ball of yarn, the label would say how much yarn it took to create that gauge swatch? Then you’d be able to get an idea of how much fabric you could create with one ball, while you were still in the store. But since they don’t you can take it home, work up your swatch, weigh it, and then you’ll know.

My new guilty pleasure happens to be The Knitty Gritty on the DIY network. Thanks to TiVo and late night nursing my son Jay, I get to sit, bleary-eyed and learn how to use doublepointed needles, make i-cord, and best of all catch a glimpse of real-life designers. I know Erika Knight and Candi Jensen through their patterns, but it’s great to see what they look like, watch them knit, and find out about their creative process and how they work.

Of course, it’s also good inspiration–just like I find inspiration in non-vegetarian recipes for food I’d like to make, I can get ideas for crochet projects from others’ knitted items.

I do knit from time to time, it’s a nice break for my wrists from crochet–and the change in tactile experience is good–I like the sound of the needles brushing together and they different way that the fabric grows. I’m sort of stuck on stockinette stitch–I just love the way it looks.

My daughter Selma wanted a pair of legwarmers, so I bought two skeins of Bernat Solo, and the legwarmers took less than one. Since I didn’t want the rest to sit around in my stash, I made a halter top to match. The top edging and straps are crocheted on. It’s my first try at a cable (also something I learned from the Knitty Gritty), and I like the result. I hope this all still fits her in the fall!

Here are the instructions for the mini-blanket I spoke of on April 29th.

Mini-Carriage Blanket
Copyright 2005, Amy O’Neill Houck

This petite blanket is the perfect size to cover your little one in the infant seat. Two strands of TLC Amoré give the blanket a heathered look and make it work up very fast.

Materials:
2 skeins TLC Amoré (6 oz (170 g) – Approx. 290 yd (265 m) ) Yarns pictured here are “Celery” and “Wheat”
Size P crochet hook
Tapestry Needle

Instructions:

Holding one strand of each color together, Chain 32.

Half-double-crochet (hdc) in 3rd chain from the hook, and all the way across. Chain 2, turn. Continue to work in hdc until piece measures 24 inches in length.

Drop celery yarn and sincle crochet (sc) around the entire blanket. On the long sides, sc into the edge of each stitch. Complete round, join first sc with a slip stitch, chain 2, turn.

SC around blanket once more. Join last sc to first sc with a slip stitch. Fasten off.
Weave in ends.

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This pattern may be printed for your own use, but it may not be distributed in any way without my permission. Feel free to link to the pattern or e-mail the URL.

I was watching Knitty Gritty on DIY tonight, and Erika Knight was on with some really cool ideas which could translate easily to crochet. She’s creative about using materials other than yarn to make knitted objects. Her first project was a “woven” rug. She knitted strips and then wove them together to create a rug. Of course it would look *great* in crochet too–and since you’re making small stitches, it’s an excellent way to use up your STASH!

She also translated into knitting a project that I’ve seen in crochet before–using plastic bags to make a beach or tote bag. Marlo’s Crochet Corner has a great one that you’d never guess was made from plastic bags. Erika Knight leaves little ends sticking out of her plastic “yarn” when she knots it together and this looks cool too. Here’s her pattern.

I love crocheting with unconventional materials–string, jute, sisal, wire, rags. And since reusing is a huge step up on the environmental scale from recycling we should turn all our grocery plastic into permanent totes and stop taking bags from the store.