Motif Loff!

A Catherine Noon

Sorry, couldn’t help the alliteration.  🙂  But I took a basic crochet class and learned how to make Granny Squares and basic motifs.  My motif is sort of the large, Frankenstein type of motif where you use huge yard to crochet something that really should be done on a tiny hook with thread.

But it’s my art, I’ll make it big if I want to!

Came out pretty good, if I do say so myself.

This particular motif has, if I recall correctly, seven levels.  You start at the bottom and rotate back and forth up to the picots at the top.  It was actually much less difficult because I used such large yarn; it would be a lot more fussy with small yarn (though pretty).

Box Loff – The Extended Cut

A Catherine Noon

I found some more pictures.  (Can you tell I’m finally cleaning out my photo folders?)

I finished the stitching on the pieces, and have actually sewn the bottom of the box.  I need to get going on finishing it so I can move on to the next project, but here’s some more pictures of the process:


Here are the four pieces for the sides.

I varied the green, rather than the blue or the brown, in order to get the width I wanted.  I’m using the green to sew up the box, in order to provide contrast and give the design ‘pop.’

Detail of one of the side pieces.  I doubled up on the brown yarn, since it was more of a DK weight than the other two, which were worsted weight (the green, even, seemed a little on the bulky side).

Here are all ten pieces.  The set on the left is for the top, and the right is for the bottom.  The box top will sit down over the entire part of the bottom.

I’m making the box to hold my essential oils from Jeanne Rose, because my cat, Boria, likes to toss them all over the table when I have them all nice and organized.  (Necessity is the mother of invention?  Whoever said that never had a cat!  Defense of one’s things is the mother of invention!)

Here is a close-up of the top of the box:

It’s got quite a bit of loft from the yarn.  Since I’m doing a standard needlepoint stitch, it’s as thick on the bottom as it is on the top.  It gives it a lot of padding.  The plastic mesh, though, isn’t very strong, so it wouldn’t be a good candidate for a box to be carried in a purse.  I’d like to see if there are materials (metal screen, maybe?) that would be good for that.

This is the bottom of the box.  You can clearly see the extra row around the edge where the top of the box, once it’s sewn, will sit down over the bottom.  The outer edge of the bottom will just have a satin stitch around the edge.

Here are both pieces side-by-side; they are 3″ square.

This is the in-process view of the sides for the top of the box.  I did the brown design first because I wanted to see how it would look in the finished product; the reason we used brown was to match the table that it will be sitting on and I wanted to see if that worked.  It does.  I don’t yet have a picture of the box on that table, but will get one once the box is completed.

It’s a little out of focus, but here is a detail of the brown yarn.  It’s held double, whereas the green and blue are just single.

Here is a little better shot of the same detail where you can get a good look at the plastic mesh. 

Here is a detail of all three colors interacting together.  It’s not an arrangement I would have thought of just off the cuff, but I’m glad we decided to put them all together.  I think the finished design is pleasing and it matches the table, so it’s a success all around.

Box Loff Revisited

A Catherine Noon

As you know, last year I experimented with needlepoint boxes.  When Rachel visited in July, I showed her the box in my office. Later on, we got to talking and came up with a design for another one.

I have several images that I’m tardy in posting, but here are a few.

This first one actually has nothing to do with the box itself, exactly; it’s one of two shots from the impromptu artist date I took the morning I had my perio cleaning.  I was very upset about having to do it, scared and sad, and I decided to go to the park to sit and try to relax and ground.  This was one of the views from my chair:

This is part of the Forest Preserve of Cook County, a huge green space that rings the city of Chicago.  It’s quite beautiful.  We’re lucky to be surrounded by such green; and in fact, the motto of the city is Urbs in Horto, or City in a Garden.

The camera on my telephone doesn’t do a very good color balance with the sun, but the view this direction went into a little shaded grotto-like space I could imagine all sorts of little fairy-like creatures inhabiting.

My chair and the calligraphy set that I bought myself as a present.  It’s not actually a very good set of pens, but I did at least support my art.

Inside the famous knitting bag.  It’s getting very ratty now, and is going to need some surgery on the handle, but I still like it.  (My mother, who died in July of 2000, made it.)

This is the top and bottom of the box, and the side I’m holding is the back-side of the bottom to show the stitches.  The brown matches the brown on my table at home, and the blue is a Brede’s Knot, a symbol of the Goddess, Brede.

Here are the two pieces side by side, to get an idea of the pattern.  We drew it out on paper first, coloring in the boxes, and had a couple different drafts before settling on this one.

Mochi Update – Tunisian Redux

A Catherine Noon

I decided to change the project I used the Mochi Mini yarn for.  Originally, I wanted to do a Tunisian scarf, but it kept not working out the way I wanted.  I blogged about it here.

Using a design by Cheryl Oberle as a starting point, I am doing a triangular shawl.  I’m using a stitch from Barbara Walker’s stitch dictionary, the second volume, for the middle panel.  In the original pattern, it’s a 35 row repeat of garter; instead, I’m doing a 36 row repeat of the texture stitch.

The funny part is that when I started it, I thought the top was where the triangle was supposed to form.  There is a four-stitch increase every other row, two of which are in the center; which means it’s a mitered corner.

Uh, duh.

You can see I sort of pulled the center out of shape and will have to block aggressively when I finish it.  I think I’ll also add a picot row along that top since in the center there’s only the two yarn-overs to hold the edge, which will be subjected to quite a bit of stress.

This next image shows the mitering and the center yarn-over increases.  I like the striping effect of this yarn.  One thing I don’t care for, though, is the way it knots with itself.  The filament has quite a bit of fuzz that develops pills, and then the yarn knots on itself.  I’ve already had several severe tangles in just this first yarn ball and, despite the appearance, won’t work with this yarn again because of that.  It’s just not worth the time to untangle everything.

This shot shows the four row texture repeat from Barbara Walker’s guide.  I like this stitch a lot and think I might make a regular scarf in a rectangle to show it off.  It’s got an interesting slip stitch pass over that makes the horizontal bars; it reminds me a little of Tunisian because of the square shape.  In a worsted weight yarn, I think the texture would show up even more.

Thursday 13 – 13 Reasons to Go On Retreat

A Catherine Noon

I haven’t been doing as much promo as usual for my Evanston Writers Workshop Retreat, but not from lack of interest. It’s just been a hellishly crazy couple of weeks! (Which is also why I’ve been so resoundingly silent on my blog duties… o.O…)

So. Other than the urge to HIDE FROM THE WHOLE WORLD… ~blinks~ sorry, was that my outside keyboard? … Here are 13 Reasons to Go On Retreat!

1. TO HIDE FROM THE WORLD! (Duh. I mean, d00d, you didn’t see that one comin’?)

2. Stephen R. Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and other books, suggests that we need to renew ourselves on a regular basis. He calls this process “Sharpen the Saw.” After all, if you continue to saw away with it and never sharpen it, what happens to the blade? People are the same way. Renewal can take many forms – education, recreation, rest… but it must take some form, regularly, in order for us to maintain our effectiveness.

3. The Evanston Writers Workshop First Annual Retreat is this weekend, Saturday and Sunday, August 14 and 15, at the Fox River Bed and Breakfast outside of beautiful Starved Rock State Park, Illinois.

4. Our theme is EWW Unplugged: Rest, Rejuvenate, and Write!

5. When we retreat, not just EWW but in general, it’s useful to step out of our daily round and go somewhere. (I’ll address how to do a staycation retreat below.) Sometimes, the simple act of changing one’s surroundings can help shift personal reality into a new perspective, which makes it easier to feel as though one is actually retreating.

6. Another reason to retreat is that it provides perspective. It’s easy to let the self get swept up in the flurry of day-to-day activities and not take a step back to see the forest. But the forest is an important thing to see. Just because you’re toodling along on the path, efficiently and quickly, doesn’t mean you’re in the right forest! Uhps!

7. If you can’t afford to take a weekend elsewhere, you can do a Staytreat. These are related to Staycations, in that you don’t physically go anywhere. But like the Staycation, the Staytreat must be out of the ordinary flow of events. Plan special meals, baths, relaxing events, writing events, or time with special books and people to make your Staytreat a Retreat and not a Retread of the Same Old Weekend.

8. That’s another reason to retreat, actually: the dreaded malady, The Same Old Same Old. Highly contagious, this malady afflicts four out of five people and leads to boredom, mindless surfing of the addictive interwebs, addiction to television and silly reading material, and carboloaded eating habits.

9. Retreat is an excellent remedy for “I haven’t been writing lately.” Retreat Unplugged is even better, though difficult for modern Interwebwarriors. One of the key tools for this is the Almighty Prompt. There are many, many opportunities for prompts all over the interwebs (caution – may lead to mindless surfing, so maybe give the task of finding the prompts to an enterprising family member – but watch them for signs of this malady!!).

10. Get compatriots! Gather your friends, in the webs and in the flesh, to retreat with you! Communication software (and the old-fashioned telephone) work wonders to connect people across distances. Read to each other, share prompts, share writing time… but share the retreat! It’s a lot easier to retreat when you have help!

11. Unplug. Turn everything off (except maybe the air conditioner…). Turn off the computer, the cell phone, the television, the radio, the iPod, the CD Player, the 8-Track… (sorry, belay that last), you know what I mean – TURN THAT … OFF!!!

12. STAY unplugged for a whole weekend. Light your home with candles, stumble around with a flashlight, write outside by the light of the street lights – use bug spray as needed! – but practice being off the grid.

13. If those STILL don’t help you, then come join us! We’ll help you retreat good and proper! Saturday and Sunday, August 14th and 15th, at the Fox River Bed and Breakfast in Illinois. See you there!

~Happy TT!~

Updates to Photo Series, “A Writer In the City”

A Catherine Noon

As some of you know, I’ve been doing a photo series on my Facebook account called “A Writer in the City.” If you haven’t checked it out, please feel free to stop by. If you’re following, here’s the link to today’s upload.

Enjoy!

New World Order, Chapter 14: No More Games, Mr. Balistreri (Belinda)

A Catherine Noon

Chapter 14 is posted today. I’m about a week late, since we want to post every other Monday and that would have been last Monday. But Rachel and I noticed some continuity problems in the chapter, and things just got busy this week.

It’s interesting working on a serial novel. While this chapter was already done, not all of them are, so it’s still fluid until it posts. It’s been fun to work on. As some of you know, we’ve submitted our novel to a publisher, and it takes place in the same universe as New World Order but with different characters. Continuing to work on New World Order, which to us is now the ‘older’ project, keeps us grounded in world building because we have a much clearer idea of where we’re trying to get with it.

We met while Rachel was here earlier this month and discussed the timeline of the different books in this universe. That’s very helpful as well, because we know where we have to get story-wise in order for all the parts to fit together.

In any event, I hope you enjoy!