Two Crochet Books from 1969

I'm only going to mini-review two books first published in 1969 because they lie just outside the stated scope of the '70's crochet read-along: Crochet: A Modern Guide to An Ancient Craft by Iris Rathbone, and Fashion Crochet by Caroline Horne.

The dustjacket of Ms. Rathbone's book looked very promising to me (a stylish and hip young woman wears a crochet dress in a '60's glam shot) but the excitement fizzled out as I actually read the book. It's not a bad book, it's just basic and boring. Thank goodness for the color plates because the majority of the images is pretty poor.

The author wants to get young stylish people crocheting and the book is small and portable. I pity the person who actually tried to learn how to crochet for the first time from this book, though; most of the illustrations of how to make basic stitches are so unclear that they almost look like woodcuts with yarn plies drawn so boldly that you can't make out the stitches! Photos of stitch patterns are so muddy that I had to try one because the instructions sounded unfamiliar. I got lucky: I discovered a little gem of a stitch pattern this way. If this new stitch pattern is the only thing I gained from reading this book, I'm content. I'll post a photo of it and and instructions later.

Ms. Rathbone shows a designer's flare. Her beret and mitten set is strikingly bordered with shells of contrasting colors, she seems to prefer triangular granny squares, and she fearlessly teaches the presumably new crocheter how to make a cocktail dress, a maxi- and mini-length lady's dress, and a blouse top. I was impressed by the section showing how to remove earlier rows of crochet from a piece. I don't remember seeing this explained elsewhere back when I needed to do it, so I figured it out on my own at the time. I'll see if I can rustle up a photo illustrating this also.

The drawings and photos in Ms. Horne's book are a big improvement over Rathbone's, however there are zero photos of finished garments. Like Rathbone, this author assures the reader that crochet is so easy that after learning a few basic things you can now crochet pants, a pair of stockings(!), a tailored suit with raglan sleeves, a coat and dress ensemble, and a blazer. These are illustrated only with shapely drawings so a beginner following her patterns would probably be in for a rude awakening.

I appreciate the range of stitch textures the author featured in her garments and she offers a hat with unusual construction (you crochet a long mini-ruffled strip first, then sew it into a coil shape over a stiffener). Her love of wearing her own crocheted clothes is obvious and she offers four methods for altering the hemlines of crocheted skirts.

Both authors are acutely aware that in 1969, beginning crocheters will want to be able to crochet fashionable clothing and a bit of bold home decor. Both of these books differ from the '70's books I've reviewed so far because neither complain about old-fashioned crochet but instead give it its due. They both have a sophisticated, cosmopolitan sensibility (esp. the Horne book) whereas often the '70's authors set out to show you how to crochet earthy, casual, more guileless-looking stuff. Fashionable folks who lived through the late '50's and then the '60's must have had vertigo by the time they got to the '70's! I wonder what fashion sensibility we're 'hooking' into for 2007?

Next '70's book to be reviewed: Adventures in Crocheting by Barbara Aytes (1972).

Surprise Felting Result

I live in a beach tourism hub where tourists severely outnumber locals during Spring Break month. Maybe you wonder, what does this have to do with felting? Well, at this time of year, it's pointless to casually go out and do errands because traffic is at a standstill both directions. So this weekend I had my own Felting Festival right here. I had everything I needed: wool, crochet hook, hot water, soap, me, and a possibly bored kid/assistant. I rounded up every yarn I could find with a minimum of 50% wool content, to see which ones felt and how. Of course 75% or 100% wool is ideal, so with only 50% wool all bets are off and I doubted that Classic Elite Miracle (50/50 alpaca/tencel) would felt at all. I googled it and found no mention of felting.

As you can see from the pre-and post-felting photos, it THOROUGHLY felts. See how the picots melted away into zero stitch definition? Not only that, I might like the yarn even better felted! It heightens the sheen (which the photo doesn't convey well), I love touching it, and I love the surface--it's a luxuriant kind of boucle. (I love boucle fabric but hate crocheting most boucle yarns.)

This blog entry is dedicated to my felting mentor, Marty Miller!

'70's Read-Along Book #5: New Ways with Crochet

Crochet has lost its stuffy and time-consuming image and is now bold and exciting. There's no great merit in producing large slabs of it unless at the same time you acquire a foreign language from the radio or something equally useful. But to use the the craft intelligently and discriminately can give attractive results without involving a great deal of toil and time.
Dorothy Standing, 1971

Sometimes I worry that I lack a feel for the times and therefore am not doing full justice to '70's-style originality. I mean, look at the cover--was there really a time when that image was the best possible way to convey NEW WAYS WITH CROCHET? Must have been, so after pondering this, I'm thinking that as a home decor item it must have seemed bold and fresh: one jumbo granny square in the hottest '70's colors, NOT little white or ecru lacy bits, not an antimacassar or doily. Ripple afghans must have been appealing for the same reason: a riveting, in-your-face, do-it-yourself home fashion statement. I wonder if this was electrifying for crochet's image if until then it had been stuffy and time-consuming as this author says.

Here again is an author who starts out complaining about old-fashioned crochet but it would help me to get inside a 1971 mind if she (and other authors like her) got more specific. The kinds of items made and the colors used, rather than the style of them, are big factors for her, so I think part of her goal is to get people to crochet new kinds of things, not just in new ways. She also seems to be down on colorless lacy, dainty, painstaking thread crochet. I kept expecting her to denigrate doilies (which occurs in other '70's books) but antimacassars seem to be more loathesome to this British author--she says "positively no antimacassars" and there's a chapter called "No antimacassars, but some useful household things".

She promotes a "new" way to follow crochet patterns. As a teacher she has seen many crocheters have trouble reading patterns so this book teaches the reader to make paper patterns using "basic dressmaker skills." Not only does she show how to modify a paper sewing pattern for crochet, she uses paper patterns for even the most basic shapes, such as a beret. It's taken to a quirky degree in my opinion but I like how visual and tactile the approach is, so I can imagine it really would appeal to certain learners. Still, the way this template approach is overly relied on in this book, it: a) depends on "basic dressmaker skills" which fewer people have today, b) still leaves the the reader without the understanding of how to read a crochet pattern, and c) I wonder how new it really is; I thought crocheting or knitting clothes the way a dressmaker would go about it is very traditional. Maybe what's new about it is how she empowers you to draft your own paper patterns.

I was pleasantly surprised to find some flexibility in the clothing section. The author questions the need for side seams, and for working rows horizontally when there are benefits to working rows vertically in a garment (side-to-side construction). I thought her hats chapter was strong design-wise. I had to pick up the hook when she discussed cords and braids and before I knew it I had 4 bracelets. (All stitches are in UK terminology.)

I'm not raving about this book, am I? I don't know if I'll keep it. I guess much of this kind of book depends upon the projects being exciting and they aren't, they're too dated. I'm fond of the author's voice throughout the book. The author is described on the bookjacket as a skillful, lively, and amusing writer and I agree. I appreciate how concerned she is about crochet dying out in the future; she ends the book by urging readers to teach not just the girls but also the boys in their families how to crochet.

Yikes! It's Nat'l Crochet Month!

It must have sneaked up on me while I was crocheting. We're already 9 days into it so I have some catching up to do! This is a month-long national holiday, people! As a staunch supporter of the Crochet Guild of America (CGOA), and crochet also being my chosen profession, you can imagine that I want to make the most of this month. Not only that but it's also Women's History Month which I celebrate. I'm still high from Black History Month (Feb).

Below is my list of Crochet-tivities so far:

1. Go to Berroco's poll and be counted! [did it]
2. Crochet in public (CRIP) more than usual [could have in the bookstore yesterday and didn't]
3. Walk into a yarn shop with a big smile and say, "Happy National Crochet Month to you!"
4. Pay a designer for a crochet pattern instead of downloading a freebie
5. Write to a magazine, yarn company, etc. to tell them how much you appreciate their crochet offerings
6. Buy lots of yarn [Dee lists special celebration sales]
7. Try a new-to-me stitch pattern [every day would be cool]
8. Learn a new crochet technique
9. Finish a WIP (work-in-progress) or possibly even a PIG (a stalled project-in-grocery-bag)
10. Try crocheting with a new-to-me fiber [I have yet to try qiviut for example.]
11. Listen to a new crochet podcast
    
12. Crochet something for your child or child's teacher to be used in the classroom so that everybody sees some crochet at school [3/23 update: Done! Photo at my other blog]
13. Join a crochet-along (CAL); besides my own '70's Crochet Read-Along, I know of a new Ripple-Along and an even newer Granny-Along
14. Plan ahead for Nat'l Crochet Month 2008 so it doesn't catch me unprepared!

In an attempt to get up to speed, I'm kicking off the festivities with a maple latte and here is a portrait titled Latte with Trip Around the World Crochet Dishcloth (see #7 above).

Crochet Design: What Got Me Started

Three cosmic forces (to be divulged in three separate blog entries) caused me to stop putting off designing in 2004 and to start really living! I had dreamed of designing professionally ever since I learned to crochet as a child but the dream remained far-off and misty for decades. The first of these forces was the internet: specifically, 3 designers' websites that fascinated me back in 2004 or so. I visited their sites often, hungry to see their next crochet creations. They are:

1. Jennifer Hansen of Stitch Diva. Back then she had a riveting new vision of how tunisian stitches can look; she also had this jacket that intoxicated me with its sexy shaping in a kind of Edwardian style (one of my all-time favorite fashion periods). But even just her swirl pillow thrilled me. When I finally met her at a Stitches conference, I was in awe and babbled incoherently. Luckily Jennifer doesn't remember it.

2. Josi Hannon Madera. Back then her website was called Weirdmirror. She too did stylishly sexy really well. Her crocheted skirts were unlike any I'd seen in the old '60's-'70's needlework magazines I collect, in fact I don't know if I even seriously thought of crochet for skirts until I saw hers. One of them was a swirly skirt that has since gotten raves on various crochet discussion lists such as Crochet Partners. Thanks to Kim Guzman I recently learned that Josi overhauled her website. She has a book, In the Loop, in the works but at one point she said that the new website is taking the place of the printed book plans; all of the patterns that would have been in the book will be available at the site. Later I found this; Amazon says publication date is May 2007.
Here's a photo of her wearing a pretty amazing hat with matching scarf.

3. Teva Durham. I spotted Teva's name in an Interweave Knits magazine back in 2005 I believe. I googled her and found a whole treasure trove of rebelliously superchunky crochet stitches. It had the effect on me of a kind of manifesto! I wanted more! more! but the site languished and then her Loop-d-Loop book of knit designs came out and I feared that she had merely flirted with crochet. That was then; now I'm keeping eyes peeled for her forthcoming Loop-d-Loop Crochet book!

Pringle of Scotland: Not Your Mom's Cashmere

"Knitwear has become the statement piece."
--Clare Waight Keller of Pringle

The Pringle design house first got my attention in Fall'06 when this beauty cropped up in every fashion magazine:

The Autumn Winter 2007 Preview (see links at top of page) is available now. With their new knitwear collection Pringle has managed to rejuvenate the bobble for me, packing them in like peas and keeping them sophisticated in deep somber colors. The Pringle treatment of giant luxurious cables is refreshing too because the colors are so shadowy that the cables emerge from the murk where you don't expect them. This isn't your traditional aran knitting!

Pringle has a new Creative Director, Clare Waight Keller, and it's looking like she's going to take the Pringle look to great new heights.

Even though I see no actual crochet in the Pringle designs, the looks easily translate.

'70's Read-Along Book #4: Adventurous Crocheter

Meet the Adventurous Crocheter--believer in simple means and spectacular ends, advocate of the little-known but highly successful anti-doily approach to crochet.
--Delia Brock and Lorraine Bodger

What a potent mixture of reactions I have to The Adventurous Crocheter by Delia Brock and Lorraine Bodger (1972)! I see it as a prime example of '70's American rugged individualism; even the illustrations and book design were handled by one of the authors (Ms. Bodger, who according to Google, went on to publish many more books and teaches how to write cookbooks at a community college). The authors' spirited voices come through so it makes for engaging reading.

What does the book promise, and does it deliver? It promises quite a lot. The authors "break the rules" and explore "uncharted" territory with an "improvisational and iconoclastic approach". They gave up their "very successful--and exhausting--career crocheting clothes for boutiques and department stores" (such as Bonwit Teller and Henri Bendel), and have distilled their experiences and professional production strategies for this book. I’d say that what the book delivers is detailed information on how to wing it: how to design as you go. I can see how this was truly new and is probably the book's greatest value still today. What it also often delivers, though, is glorified dumbed-down crocheting. Perhaps what also seemed so fresh, new, and adventurous at the time is the authors' rebellious attitude!

Although I think their John Wayne-like approach is unproductive in the long run, the authors succeeded very well at putting together a book that conveys their style and approach to crochet and fashion design. There is a wealth of solidly helpful information for beginners and for crocheting with individualistic style. As a designer I was fascinated to see how the projects were explained, diagrammed, and how the patterns (or unpatterns) were written up; every designer has his/her own ways of problem solving. I do wish they showed how to construct sweaters more ways than just from the bottom up.

Itchy fingers? Nope. Simple stitches and cheap materials are not a turn-on for me. Throughout are comments like, "You can save at least a third on the price of a skein of yarn if you avoid specialty yarn shops and department stores and search out one of the following places: a large five-and-ten; a large discount store..." "...We discovered that [string] comes in many textures, colors and materials--thin cotton twine, twist string, shiny nylon string, ...It is cheaper and more interesting than the five-and-ten cotton string, such as Coats & Clark's Speed-Cro-Sheen..." "The 1st and best stitch pattern of all is row upon row of single crochet. It is solid, pretty, delicious, and you just cannot beat it for elegance." This is probably great for a beginning crocheter but even so is not great for crochet itself (in my opinion as a member of the Crochet Guild of America). I would worry about the future of crochet if this book had a lot of influence!

This gets to my strongest dislike of the book: the way crochet is taught produces low-quality results. For example, on blocking: "We think blocking is a boring, time-consuming chore. We never bother with it and recommend that you don't either." On dye lots: "That threatening note on the yarn label--buy as much yarn as you need now of the same dye lot to assure uniformity of color--is hogwash." On turning chains, they cut corners (literally) by teaching you to start the next row by skipping the first stitch, even if you're doing single crochet, therefore working the last stitch of the row into the turning chain of the previous row. Not so good for sc, especially because of what it does to the bottom corner (nor for hdc in my opinion). They line wallets by coating felt with glue. On buttonholes: "The simplest and fastest way to make a buttonhole, which has always been perfectly adequate for our purposes, is to push the button through the crocheting." I giggled at this explanation of how to change colors at the end of a row: "Do not worry if a bit of the old color mixes with that of the new on your first stitch. No one expects a person to attach color like a machine." (The remedy is simple and standard now: complete the last stitch of the row with the new color by pulling the new color through the last loops on the hook.)

Deja vu? Whew--the anti-doily syndrome! They are not the first crocheters to dis doilies, but maybe the most passionate. To this day there are still people who feel the need to distance crochet from doily making. I can see that it was a new idea in the early '70's to say, "Crochet can be modern! It can do so much more than just old-fashioned stuff like doilies!" But nowadays is this really news? Fifty years from now, are we still going to be reading that crochet is more than just doilies?? Can we move forward on this yet? (This is not a complaint about the book, it’s that I hoped we’ve come farther than this by now.)

New generations of beginning crocheters might enjoy this scrappy-rough-n'-ready book, although the lack of any photos or color illustrations is less enticing nowadays. The drawings are sometimes the best way the authors get an idea across, other times it’s the worst way. New designers of clothing and accessories could learn some tricks or new ways of looking at things. This book is a big slice of '70's style, so it’s just fun. I laughed out loud at times! Listen to this: "The Heart Belt is, without a doubt, a perky belt. To do it justice, you should use the 2 schmaltziest colors of yarn you can find."

Swatch Management

This new Swatch Bank, founded in 2007, yields high interest and I can make speedier withdrawals than with other Swatch Banks I've tried.
I suppose this might look like a heap o' mess but this madness has a careful method. Not only that, despite how it looks the tags do not get tangled. Maybe I should try to take a better photo.
The gist of the system is, I have a huge closed metal ring, and smaller metal rings that click open and closed hang from the big ring. Each small ring holds swatches of a certain type. For example, 1 ring holds all variations of single crochet, another is for all variations for hdc, etc.; more swatch categories that work for me:
- trebles and beyond
- colorwork
- aran
- lace
Most swatches have hang tags (on very short leashes) that tell me the hook size, the stitch pattern or what pg. in which book I found it, maybe the yarn.

What do other people do?
- Some Victorians used to baste swatches to fabric pages bound into a kind of scrapbook. I find I need my swatches to be free agents--I need to compare drape, stretch, loft, etc. I also hate basting.

- Other Victorians made one long continuous strip and rolled it up. I like the look but it's even less usable as a swatch bank than the scrapbook method, and my swatches are not uniform in size or color.

- Some people join them into afghans. If I stop designing someday, I'll probably do that.

- Many probably do what I used to: store some with the design proposals or completed patterns and stash the rest of them into a big box. Sad--the swatches can't show off this way. It's a swatch account that yields zero interest with no easy withdrawals.

- Is there a method I've left out? At one time I toyed with mounting each swatch on a large index card then filing them. One time I experimented with covering big stiff felt pages with elastic bands so that I could slip the swatches under the bands and remove as necessary (like how some people informally display photos on the wall). The hang tags got all tangled in that system and it took up too much room anyway.