Rag Weaving

I have been struggling to decide what to do with the leftovers from a couple of crafty endeavors that I completed sometime ago. Even though Rag Baskets and Patriotic Patchwork re-used some fabrics, the problem was that they hadn't used it all up, and there were these scraps, you see, that might still be just the thing for something else.

I came up with an idea for using fabric strips to weave into a  crocheted mesh to make a mat or a rug and  to use string or twine of some sort to make the mesh as it might be firmer than using yarn. When I found a pack of parcel string in  the stationery section of a pound shop, I felt it had to be worth a try. Just where the idea came from I haven't a clue. After years of reading craft magazines, watching craft on television, internet browsing and lately, Pinterest, I can concede that it is highly unlikely to be utterly original. I'm with Mark Twain when he talks about all ideas being substantially secondhand. All I can say is that so far as I know, I can't cite a specific source - that's why I had to make copious notes as I worked so that I was able to record something like a pattern for my own future reference.

The string I had bought gave four wraps per centimeter. I chose a size 3 crochet hook.

As I wanted to make a sample before embarking on something huge, I made up a small square of mesh as follows. Please note that I work in UK crochet terms. A neat little conversion chart is here if you want to work in US terms.

To Make a Square (approximately 16cm x 16cm ) Foundation Mesh.

Using a Size 3 crochet hook make a foundation row of 30 chain. Turn.
Row 1: Chain 2, work 1 double crochet into the 2nd chain from the hook. Work 1 dc in each remaining foundation chain. Turn. Chain 4.
Row 2:  Skip 1 dc in previous row and work 1 treble into the next dc. 1 chain. Repeat across the row. This should create a row of 15 holes by the time you work the last treble into the last dc of the previous row. Turn. Chain 4.
Row 3:  Work 1 treble into the second treble of the previous row, chain 1. Repeat to end of row. Turn. Chain 4.
Repeat Row 3 ten times ( or until the length required), at the end of the final repeat Chain 2 instead of 4.
Last Row: Work 1 dc in first chain of previous row and then work 1 dc in each remaining treble and chain.
Fasten off.
This should give a grid of 15 holes by 12 holes.

About halfway through this, I began to wonder if the mesh I was making was too dense, whether the holes should be bigger to allow the rag strips to be more visibly dominant after the weaving. It's an experiment, a trial, right? Just carry on and see how it works out.  Starting with a row of double crochet to helped it keep shape and  provided an easy edge to secure the rag strips.

To Weave in the fabric strips.

I cut strips on the bias, 2.5 cm wide and 20 cm long. At first I thought these might need to be folded but I found that it worked just fine without that. The strips just folded or bunched up as they were threaded through.

TIPS:

• Start weaving each strip from the centre and work out to one side and then the other. This means there is less pulling through to do than if you work across from one side to the other. Not so important for a little project like this but time-saving for much longer rows.
• Allow for slack as you pull the fabric through the mesh. Keep checking to see that the work will lay flat and not pull up at the edges.

Work weaving the strips with a simple over, under on one row and an under, over on the next. I worked with the strips running from top to bottom so that the loose ends lay across the double crochet rows.

To Finish:
Weave in the string ends at the start and ending of the crochet.
Carefully straighten  and flatten out the loose ends of fabric on both sides of the mat.
Using a zigzag stitch, machine along the edges to secure the fabric strips in place.

Then cut the excess ends to make a little ruffle along each side.
That's it - you're done.

In the end I think the visible balance between the fabric and the string mesh is fine. It works well with the colours and the size of mat. The overall texture is good too. For a bigger item like a floor rug, I would use wider strips and use double trebles for the crochet and make 2 chain spaces - it all seems worth further exploring as a technique. It could be good for place-mats, table runners, floor rugs. There may well be a reprise post on this - but may be not really soon. I have some worn bed linen and old curtains to make a floor mat. A much bigger project.

Advice: I doubt that wash-ability is a feature of string design and construction, so be warned that if you want to create something that will need to be laundered often you might like to crochet up a small sample of the string or twine you intend to use and see if it bleeds dye, shrinks, stretches or just plain disintegrates when exposed to warm soapy water and a little agitation. I have yet to explore this property of my pound shop parcel string!

Ever find that when you solve one problem you find that you may have created another? So now I have used up some of my scrap stash but I am so pleased with the result that I want to use it for something and not merely file it as a sample. Even though it has been decades since I made one for her, I am fairly sure my mother doesn't need another pot-holder. Actually in those colours,  I think it would be good as an outside patch pocket on a denim or calico bag.

Jam Jar Posies

In another career, in what seems like another life, I often received end of year thank you bouquets.Very welcome but no big surprise for a primary school teacher.

There could be several kinds of bouquets ranging from forecourt carnations in cellophane to elaborate florist's arrangements but the ones I found most beguiling were the bunches presented with shy pride, a home-made card and the comment "Nanna said I could pick some flowers for you from her garden."

Typically the flowers would be wrapped in newspaper or cooking foil and would be a brightly coloured miscellany of whatever  is in bloom at the end of July. At the centre would be a rose or a small sunflower surrounded by a spike or two of lavender, a head of geranium or hydrangea, a cluster of daisies or marigolds and a branch of a flowering shrub all gracefully presided over by a nodding raceme of buddleia. A little of everything that had caught the child's eye. I was always so touched by these gifts.

There is such an appealing immediacy, isn't there, in the idea of making something of whatever is close to hand; neither depending on someone else going to the shops nor  restrained by sophisticated notions of style or "what goes together". There was always the confidence that whatever was gathered together would be wonderful and gratefully received. These bunches inevitably stirred happy memories of being allowed to pick flowers as a child.

This idea of  cutting flowers for the house using whatever is in season and informally arranging them in everyday containers, jars and bottles crops up in lifestyle magazines like Country Living and blogs like The Quince Tree. I've always been drawn to these bunches of seasonal garden and hedgerow flowers combined with flowering herbs and grasses.
There'll be other times to bring out the vases I have collected over the years. For now I want to follow the irresistible urge to wander around the garden and gather whatever takes my fancy and display them indoors in simple glass jars. Oh yes, nostalgia is at play here; forget words like "vintage" or "retro", at heart I'm simply an old-fashioned girl.

Some jewel-bright colours for my kitchen windowsill.

Easy Jam

It looks like being a funny old summer for fruit. We could blame the weird weather, I guess or we can be thankful for what little there is and make jam.

Yesterday, while hacking back the shrubbery, I noticed that the blueberry did have some fruit that the birds hadn't noticed so after all the shredding and sweeping up was finished, I fetched a bowl from the kitchen to see what berries I could harvest.

I came back to the kitchen with around 300g of blackcurrants, blueberries, raspberries, and a couple of alpine strawberries. (Had it all been raspberries, I admit they probably wouldn't have made it as far as the back porch.)

Time to make some jam.  This method is so quick that taking step by step photos would have more than doubled the effort. What follows is not so much a recipe but more like guidelines for quick, simple and delicious jam - ideal if:

• you have never made jam before
• you only have a small quantity of fruit or it doesn't match up with any recipe you have
• you haven't got a lot of jars
• you don't have a preserving pan - or can't be bothered hauling it out of the back of the cupboard
• you don't eat a lot of jam 
• you want some special jam for a special afternoon tea.

You will need some berry fruit and some sugar. I used jam sugar because I had some lurking in the larder and with the extra pectin in it, I could expect it to set firmly, but you could use ordinary granulated sugar.

 What you need to do 

1. Pop 2 or 3 teaspoons in the freezer. These come in handy to test to see if the jam will set later on.
2. Wash the fruit in a colander or sieve and gently shake the excess water away. Pick it over to remove anything you wouldn't want to eat - stalks, stems, leaves, damaged fruit.
3. Weigh the fruit at this stage.
4. Place the fruit in a saucepan over a gentle heat and let it simmer, stirring occasionally until it is soft. This will take five to ten minutes depending on how much fruit you have.
5. Weigh off the sugar - an amount equal to the weight of the fruit.
6. Take the pan off the heat and stir in the sugar until it is all dissloved.
7. Put the pan back on the heat and turn it up higher to bring the jam to the boil. Keep stirring it - unless, of course, you want it to boil over and make a sticky mess!
8. After a couple of minutes of boiling, start testing it to see if it will set. Take one of the teaspoons from the freezer and dip it into the jam to coat the spoon. Push your finger through the jam, along the bowl of the spoon. If the mixture wrinkles up in front of your finger and you find it leaves a clear trail behind it, then your jam is ready. If it is still too runny to do this then boil it a minute or two longer and try the cold spoon test again. (It is a good idea to take the pan off the heat while you do this, partly to stop it overcooking but mainly because your attention will be elsewhere for a few seconds and boiling jam has a habit of doing undesirable things if it is not watched.)
9. If you have jars and a lot of jam then bottle it up making sure the jars have been sterilized and heated before ladling in the jam - but this method is about small quantities so most of the time I just spoon it into a pretty jar or bowl to put on the tea table. Give it time to cool and set and then tuck in. It tastes so much better than all but the most expensive shop bought jam that I have never had to worry about its keeping qualities.

Should you find that it hasn't set particularly well, use it as a topping for icecream or pancakes; it will still taste delicious. Small quantities like this are also a good way to experiment with added flavours. Adding shreds of dark red rose petals (minus the little bitter white bit at the base) to raspberry jam and star anise or a piece of cinnamon stick to blackcurrant jam (remove these spices after the simmer stage just before the sugar goes in) have been very worthwhile. Have fun and make some wonderful 'artisan' jam.

Meanwhile I am off to make scones to go with my jam - before it all disappears. After all, it looks like summer is here.

A Movable Feast - the arrival of spring

'Freckle Face' violets

So much talk this year of how early spring has arrived. Is climate change responsible for the emergence of some spring flowers earlier and earlier each year? I decided it might be a good idea to keep my own record, to set aside a particular day of the year on which take photographs of various plants in the garden to keep track of where they were in their journey from bursting into leaf and bud to 'going over'. After being annoyed with myself for having this interesting idea well after the spring equinox, I decided that I would settle for April 22nd, the anniversary of my grandmother's birth (130 years. this year). A great way to celebrate the memory of a remarkable gardener who most certainly contributed to my fascination with growing plants.On opening Google I was amused to see that it is also the day designated by the United Nations as International Mother Earth Day. Entirely fitting.

It proved to be an interesting challenge. I usually take a camera stroll round the garden looking for what would make interesting/attractive shots. This time, as well as capturing plants at the height of their petal power, I wanted to also record those which had gone past that point or were yet to get there even though these may be far from eye-catching. My hope is that they may prove more interesting when compared year by year with their future selves. Never-the less there were some wonderful flowers and emerging plants.

Lots of buds on this vibrantly mauve auricula. The chewed leaf is testimony that with lots of new tender foliage about, the creatures that like to feast on it are emerging also.

The plum blossom is past its frothy white best,

but the apple blossom is just beginning to hit its glorious, delicately scented peak.

It's not all about flowers. Planted in 2010, this rhubarb will yield a few stems for the kitchen this year.

Silky tassels of seed heads have replaced the creamy green flowers of the clematis 'Wisley Cream'.

Only one rosebud about to break into colour.
But surely April is about violets, both the cultivated ones (see above) and the wild ones. I can't decide which I am happiest to see.

Now for those of you who may like their internet browsing to be a little more interactive, you could try to see how many of the weeds that flourish on Hampshire clay soil you can spot in the background. (Had I posted my unedited shots, I would say that unless you had spotted 80% of them you weren't even trying!) I am trying to be particularly vigilant about bindweed this year - as I have been for each of the thirty or so years we have lived here.

So to you Grandma, a toast. May your resilience, resourcefulness and quiet determination to make the best of things be part of what you have passed on to me.

Hapa- zome Part 2 - another bash

There's  possibly only one thing better than pottering about on a warm spring day doing something creative in the garden and that would be sharing it with a like-minded friend.When I showed Sue the initial hapa-zome prints I made for my first post on this craft, she had said she would love to have a go at it. I had been waiting for the garden to produce some suitable flowers to start hammering again.  A couple of days ago with the gorgeous weather,  a growing abundance of blossom and blooms and Sue dropping around for coffee,  it was the perfect opportunity. Different season, different flowers and leaves to try. Here's a sampler of the things we tried.

My hammering technique is a little rusty and not as thorough as it could have been but this is what we found.
Clockwise from top left.
Muscari (grape hyacinth) - very sappy and it is best to strip the little bells from one side of the stem first and lay it with the stripped side uppermost before hammering. Although it doesn't produce a sharply defined outline the blue pigment transfers well and the little bells can be used individually to punctuate or infill other designs.
Forsythia - the colour was a surprise being very more mustard than the bright yellow of the flowers. The four petals made quite a stark cross but I felt they would be worth trying in a formal pattern with other smaller flowers in between.
Perennial wall flower - the flowers are a deep rusty red and produce a dark brown imprint with well defined edges.
Pineapple sage flowers - I love the bright lipstick red of these flowers and they printed as reddish-pink.
Scented Pelargonium flowers - A little bit disappointing but probably worth a more determined try.
Viola - this print shows how lack-lustre my hammering technique has become and somehow the fresh flower excused itself and disappearedfrom the edge of the board in the time between arranging this shot and picking up the camera - something I only noticed after I began reviewing my shots. Check below in this post to see how effective these flowers could be.
Chaenomeles (flowering quince) - very effective prints with good colours and definite edges.
Lesser Celandine -  The colour transfer was good but I was surprised at how blurry the edges were. We tried it again throughout the afternoon with similar results.
Kerria - This is such a messy tousled flower that I would have given it a miss for this technique but Sue tried it and found that it did imprint quite well, including the stem, buds and leaves.
Oxalis leaf - very effective imprints when thorough hammering applied.
Herb Robert leaf - good results, the leaves are such delicate pretty shapes. I think discarding the larger stems is a good idea as it tends to produce a coarser line which detracts from the delicacy of the leaf imprint.

Sue's first try

My first attempts had been made using a length of unbleached calico and I wanted to see how other fabrics would work. A quick trawl through my fabric stash and I found some scraps of poplin and corduroy both of which had been bought so long ago that I could only hazard a guess at their fibre content. I felt they would probably have a high percentage of cotton and so would take the flower pigments reasonably well. The sampler at the top of this post and Sue's first try show how well the poplin worked. Being a finer weave it showed the shapes clearly and being a brighter white the colours were clearer.
As for corduroy - with a viola and methodical hammering, what an effective result!

Viola on corduroy

And Sue showed me with her second try that instead of haphazardly hammering any flower anywhere on the cloth, it might be better to think about an overall arrangement.

Splashes of gold

We seem to be in the  days of the year when the colour for unfurling petals to be is yellow. The colour seems to dominate every where from the ground up.

The lacquered gold of celandines, creeping in to any corner they haven't been chased out of. I know there are gardeners who deem them to be weeds but they pop up, have their cheery say for a few weeks of otherwise fairly quiet time and  then disappear. I can live with that.

The primroses appear in the garden with more intention on my part. I love this variety Emily, with the pastel yellow of the wild primroses and a splash of deeper gold in the centre. The wild ones are beautiful and quite a common sight on the roadsides and under the hedgerows around here. As yet though, they haven't tried to call our garden home. They would be very welcome.

At the moment, you can't drive very far along the roads without encountering roadside daffodils either in solitary ones or in mass plantings.

 

And of course, no spring roll call of yellow flowers would be complete without  forsythia.  In some circles it is considered a vulgar shrub and there are gardeners who wouldn't give it ground space.  I can see that clipped into hedges the flowers are dense and intense, brash and brazen. Left to its own natural tendencies it is a much prettier thing; delicate sprinkles of yellow set off well against either a  blue or a grey sky.

Lent

Lenten Rose - Helleborus Orientalis

Are you one of those who feel that the word Lent means giving something up? Conveniently it rolls around several weeks after the New Year's resolutions have been made, broken and forgotten. Whether or not you have religious beliefs attached to the season, I think it has a lot going for it as a time to break an old bad habit or establish a new good one. For instance it involves forty days - infinitely more achievable than the indefinite new year. ( Is a new year's resolution for that year only or that rather vague notion of forever or until I can't stand sticking to it any more?)  Lent has a finish date that you can work towards by ticking days off on your calendar. It also comes at a time of the year when the world outside is gearing up for a new season and renewal so why not hope for a new me or at least some new attributes?


Is it really long enough to make or break an ingrained habit? I think it is. One year I gave up tea and coffee. Cue two weeks of drowsiness, grumpiness and vague headaches to make me realise the impact my intake of caffeine was having on mind and body. After two weeks the  bad effects of caffeine deprivation wore off  and the benefits like better sleep became more noticeable. I can't claim that this instance of giving up for Lent was life changing and that I never let tea or coffee pass my lips again but it took me some time to go back to those drinks and I have never gone back to my previous level of consumption. Another year I gave up bread and cakes and in the process lost over 20 pounds in weight. It was an education in my snacking habits - those slices of bread slathered with butter and Vegemite 'to keep me going' while I cooked dinner and  tidying up the fruit cake by trimming off the corner seemed to have crept in and made themselves permanent fixtures in my routine.  Again, although I didn't give them up for good, it has made me aware of my eating habits.

So what will I do this year? It won't be dietary changes. I am still on a low fibre diet which is restricting enough and with my oncologist and dietician warning me not to loose any more weight, that would seem impractical. (See Comments below for an update on Something Completely Different)
Besides, I have long had a nagging feeling that whatever I decided to do should have benefit for others, not just me. For sometime now, we have been attempting a whole house de-clutter, room by room, cupboard by cupboard and shelf by shelf. The tricky bit we find - apart from maintaining momentum - is having decided that we no longer need an item in our lives, what to do with it. The stuff that we agree that nobody else would need in their lives either is pretty straight forward. Recycle or bin. It is the other stuff that presents the problem. If it is conceivably of use to others, what is the best way to make sure it gets to them. HeWhoLooksForSolutionsOnTheInternet has free-cycled some stuff but we have decided against Ebay. All that packaging and posting! That leaves charity shops as an option. Judging by the cool reception I got taking a bulging carrier bag into one of our locals, they were rather overwhelmed  with donations immediately after Christmas. Yesterday we hauled a huge bag of books into the nearest Oxfam bookshop. Not only were received warmly but we were also offered the opportunity to GiftAid the donation. I didn't know you could do that with donated goods though I have done that with cash donations to charities. A filled form later and we left the shop with a page of stickers to tag any further bags of books we might have for them. It all helped me to clarify in my mind that this Lent I would give up hanging onto stuff we no longer need.There will also be the added benefit of not having one of the worktops in the kitchen acting as an assembly point for items of undecided destiny - they will all have to go. Ah,  nothing proclaims the potential of each brand new day like a clear workspace!

I have been seeking decluttering motivation in some of the minimalist blogs and websites. You might enjoy Joshua Becker's thoughts on Lent.