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Crochetscene 2015: Crossed Arrow Vest

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Photo Credit: Interweave/Harper Point Photography

This week I’m focusing on my three patterns released in Crochetscene 2015!  I had the honor of getting all three of my design submissions accepted – and it was so exciting to work on these three designs.  Today I’m focusing on Crossed Arrow, a Hunger-Games inspired vest that’s accessible to beginning crocheters.  With minimal seams and simple shaping, the most challenging part is the edging – and broomstick is an easy skill to learn!

My Sketch for Crossed Arrow

I had the concept of how the vest was put together from the start; although my drawn picture here only gives you a little bit of an idea.  I had been immersed in the future/punk look of a few different shows, and I had just come off of a bunch of fine work in both knitting and crochet – I was ready for a bulky vest that worked up quickly and looked a lot more complicated than it was.  Crossed Arrow was the result.

I’d also been wanting to create a couple of pieces featuring things like broomstick – things that would introduce crocheters to the skill without making the whole project about the skill.

I love that Crossed Arrow is simple – the vast majority of the project is single crochets through the back loop.  Occasionally you crochet to create an armhole, and in the beginning and the end you work increases or decreases for the neckline.  But mostly?  It’s just using one of the foundation stitches of crochet to a really great effect.

Hairpin lace edging on Crossed Arrow

Hairpin lace edging on Crossed Arrow

For me, it’s the details of the piece that make it – specifically, the broomstick lace edging.  Look at the picots!  Look how the rest over the edges!

Crossed Arrow is currently available in print or online in Crochetscene 2015.  You can also read my more personal notes about the pattern on Ravelry.

Hairpin Crochet Brainstorming, Fiber Festival Recap, News

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I’ve got a cat on my lap and cannot move.  He is warm and purring up a storm.  This is one of the reasons I love the Fall –  my not-so-cuddly-cat (Peake) turns into a snugglebug come cold weather.  And unlike Watson, who will sit on your lap but demand you pet him the whole time until it gets REALLY annoying, Peake will just fall asleep on your lap, purr, and share his warmth.

I made a mistake on my last post – which wasn’t supposed to go live until later this month.  Three Square won’t be available until October 15th.  Sorry.  I’m going to leave the post up (because I imagine it’d be more confusing if I withdrew it and then put it back up), but if you’d like to be notified when it will be available, you can signup for the email newsletter here, and I’ll send out an email when the Knitting Boutique has it ready.

This last weekend I was all over teaching.  On Saturday I was teaching at Woolwinders and then speaking at the Kensington Creative Knitter’s Guild.  On Sunday I was at the Montpelier Sheepdog Trials and Fiber Festival, where I was teaching my wonderful Hairpin Lace Class.  To my shame, I got no pictures of the entire weekend.

I love teaching, and I love how I can teach the same class and have it be entirely different each time.  Sometimes I’ll have a class where everyone is REALLY motivated to learn the skill.  The energy is electric as people are concentrating and thinking. Sometimes I’ll have a class where the students will just click.  Life stories will be shared. By the end of the class everyone is good friends, trading contact information, and resolving to see each other again.  Sometimes I’ll have a class that’s really struggling with a concept, and then suddenly the lightbulb goes off for one person, and that person’s understanding will spread, until there’s a turn in the class and everyone suddenly “gets” it.

My last two Hairpin Lace classes have been amazing.  I make no bones about the fact that one of the reasons I teach hairpin lace is because I want to design more lace, and the only way I can do that is if I have a market for it.  In my last two classes I’ve had students walk away really motivated to do more hairpin, which I love.  Two weekends ago at SVFF, I had a student who came back the day after the class to show me the scarf nearly half done she was so excited.

This week at Montpelier, the last half hour of the class turned into a brainstorming session, with students imagining different uses for hairpin lace.  They were brainstorming ways to integrate it with knitting, talking about ways to shape it or connect it, and generally getting fired up about the technique.  It was wonderful.  It was amazing.  And I came home completely motivated and wanting to play with the hairpin lace more.

The center of the scrumble, an 8 pointed star.

Let me show you.

The last few evenings last week, instead of knitting or crocheting for work, I was fooling around with a cone of cotton & rayon thread I’d gotten several years ago.  It’s basically my version of scumbling/sketching, and I was crocheting just for the fun of the action, not to make anything in particular.  Oftentimes when I do this, my brain will disgorge something I didn’t even realize I was thinking about, and it will eventually become some sort of design idea.  But for now, I was just playing.  I decided I was going to try and add a little bit if everything I knew how to do, kinda like a sampler.

So last night I added a “row” of broomstick crochet.  And then I decided I was going to play around with a way of connecting hairpin lace strips to work that I hadn’t seen before.  I did the math, and I need to make a strip of 264 loops (that is, 264 loops on each side), and it’s in thread weight
cotton.  I don’t know what I was thinking (as in, it’s going to take a couple of nights).  BUT!  It’s going to be interesting.  I’ll keep you posted on my progress.

The 8-pointed star, with a round of broomstick crochet worked.  the hairpin lace loom, with the loops.  Each of the bunches is 50 loops on each side.  Still got another evening’s worth of work before it’s done.

Inspirations and Influences: Sunburst Shawl

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You ever have a situation where you can trace exactly when a thought entered your head?  I can remember the exact moment that the idea for the Sunburst Shawl entered my head.  It was over a discussion of Fibonacci numbers and crochet, and I misspoke.  I meant to ask if it was possible to do a crochet technique in the round, and instead I said broomstick.

My friend replied she had never seen it done before, and I realized and corrected my mispeak, but the idea was then in my head.  WAS it possible?

But really, in some ways, I think the inspiration for the Sunburst Shawl goes back even further.

The Sunburst Shawl owes much of its inspiration to knitting.  Gasp!  It’s shocking, I know.

One of my favorite things to do is knit socks with the magic loop.  I’ve never been a big fan of knitting on straights, and while I like working on two circulars and did that for about a year, I started wanting my needles to have more than just one purpose.  I got into the magic loop because with a longer needle you can do big projects, but you can also use the magic loop to do small projects in knitting.

At the same time I’d also gotten interested in historical patterns, and both broomstick and hairpin lace.  Both techniques seemed like a great way to make quick crochet patterns with stunning results.  The only problem was that most people who were using these techniques were doing things similar to Doris Chan’s exploded lace.  They were working the techniques in worsted weight yarn.

I was interested in doing the work in something closer to lace-weight.  While lace is still far off from some of the weight yarn historical patterns were made in (especially with crochet) I thought it would highlight the open-ness of the broomstick stitches in a way that a thicker yarn would not.

This, combined with  the conversation I mentioned earlier in The Yarn Spot cemented the idea in my head.  It took a few months more of peculating, and a design call that spoke to me, to have everything align correctly.

I’d like to do more with the broomstick crochet in the round, both because I happen to like round things, and also because I think it’s wonderful to be able to take advantage of technologies that weren’t available before.

Besides, I like to do things that nobody else has thought to do yet.

Stories from Sunburst

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Most of the work I did on making the Sunburst sample was while I was on a cruise with my grandmother back in October.  My paternal Grandmother loves traveling on cruises, but isn’t quite able to do it on her own.  So she gets her grandchildren to come with her, and we have a grand old time.  Grandma and I had decided on a cruise through the Panama Canal, from Florida to California.

Sunburst was the perfect project to do on a cruise.  Easily memorize-able, and with simple motifs, it was light enough to be on my lap as we sat outside and watched the water go by.

On one of the first nights we went to see a comedy show after dinner, and because we were nearly late getting there, the only seats were in the front.  Naturally we got singled out by the comedian, who saw that I was crocheting while he was performing.  After asking after us and what I was doing, he ragged on us a little before moving on.  From then on everyone one board the cruise knew me as “the young girl that knits/crochets.”  (It doesn’t help that I was dressed in vacation clothes, which make me look like I’m a teenager.)

It was a wonderful thing, actually, to be singled out, because it brought crafters out of the woodwork on the cruise.  So many knitters and crocheters made an effort to find me during the cruise, and we’d talk shop, knit or crochet, and admire each other’s projects.

Since Sunburst requires a set of circular knitting needles in addition to my hook, I took to sticking the circular knitting needle into my ponytail when I wasn’t using it.  It was the perfect place for it, because I wouldn’t forget to pick it up when I went to go somewhere else with my grandmother.  However, it did have the habit of making me look quite strange, with two pieces of wood connected by a plastic strand making a halo over my head.  Grandma liked to give me a hard time, teasing me about my “halo” or laughing when I got the needles caught on something because I forgot they were up there.

By the end of the cruise many of the people had watched the shawl form over the two weeks while I was there.  Many couldn’t quite imagine what it would look like when all the ends were woven in and it was blocked.

So, for any of you Holland America Cruisers out there who were aboard the Statendam with me, here’s the finished product.  I told you it would look better when it was done.

Sunburst Shawl on Tangled Magazine

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I am proud to announce the publication of Sunburst Shawl on Tangled online Magazine.  I was so excited I just couldn’t wait until tomorrow to let everyone know.

Sunburst Shawl
by Jennifer Crowley

Price:

$5.00
Materials:
Yarn: Western Sky Knits Aspen Sock (100% Superwash Merino; 400 yards [365 m] /3.5oz [100 gm]; CYCA 2): Misty Moor, 2 (3, 4) skeins.
Hook: C/2 (2.75mm)
Adjust hook size to obtain correct gauge.
Needles: US size 17 (12 mm) 40 or 47” circular knitting needle.

Notions: Tapestry needle; seed beads that fit your chosen yarn doubled through it (98 beads for small, 110 beads for medium, 130 beads for large); dental floss threader or small crochet hook that fits through beads.

Craft:
Crochet
Difficulty: expertGauge: One motif = 3.25” diameter blocked.
Available Sizes:
small, medium, large
Measurements:
small = 45” x 18”
medium = 52” x 21”
large = 58” x 24”
Photos by Brittany Tyler

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