Wooly Wonderfuls

For free entertainment Saturday nights, we sometimes go to the bookstore and get a big pile of books to page through or read (yes, we're those people, who read and do not, usually, buy). DH and I split up, collect some books we want to look at, and meet at the cafe. I have to say, I don't expect much from the craft selection, as I've pretty much exhausted it at most stores. But Saturday, I found this little jewel of a book, Wooly Embroidery; it is worth all of $14.95. There are great instructions for all kinds of embroidery, including crewel, using wool thread, and some sweet little projects. These buttons are from the book, done on scrap linen, and the larger embroidery is destined to be a needle case. I'm proud of myself, I've actually used a craft book that I bought, instead of just look and drool!

Fini!

I decided to add some flowers to the ends of the green tendrils, and I'm pleased with how it turned out. Overall, a very enjoyable first crewel experience; I was anxious to do more.

So I did. Just a little sweet bud on some fingerless gloves destined to be a Christmas present.


Now, I must make other things worthy of embellishment.

Beginnings...

The Not-so-Plain Jane sweater; now I'm pondering how to proceed from here. Maybe some geometric flowers extending from the vines?

Thinking and planning

My beautiful crewel wool came today from Renaissance Dyeing in France, so I've begun planning my design. In some respects, I want to get the design drawn perfectly on my paper first, but in another way, I kind of want to just start the design and work spontaneously. You can see my doodles so far. I'll probably make a compromise between the two and just start with my design in mind and see where it goes. The "starting" always seems to be the hardest part of a project for me, at least in my art work. In my knitting, I have a tendency to start rashly, and never finish. What helps motivate you to finish pieces you've started?

Plain Jane...8 years later

This sweater has been 8 years in the making. In high school I worked at a patisserie and had a wonderful Russian lady as a co-worker. She introduced me to top-down sweater construction. I went to her house a couple of afternoons, and she taught me how to do the math to design a top-down raglan sweater, with any yarn and any gauge. Unfortunately, the math and percentages have been long forgotten, and my notes are nowhere to be found. Cleaning out my stash the other day, I found the sweater, body finished, languishing at the botton of the box. I finished it, and now am awaiting my order from Renaissance Dyeing so I can start the embellishments, because, as is, this is a plain jane sweater.


I'm going to try crewel work, and I aspire to a finished product something like this or this. Pretty ambtious, huh? Here is my practice work, with regular worsted yarn.


The crewel wool I ordered comes in all kinds of luscious shades and is dyed using all-natural dyes in the Pyrenees mountains. Wish me luck!