A clock-string purse

I would like to share a little bit of inspiration on re-using or incorporating old handmade items in new projects. I wouldn't really call it upcycling, as many of these things are pretty amazing in and of themselves, but often, they don't quite fit into our aesthetics or ideas of functionality.

Of all the things I have made with my own two hands, this purse is definitely the one that I have used the most. Every time I go out my door, I have to remember my wallet, keys and phone, so I really wanted a purse for all of it that I could just throw into my bag. I wasn't having any luck finding one to my taste in the shops, and started thinking about making something myself.

Then one day, my grandmother asked if I could find use for some unfinished embroidery pieces she had lying in a closet. They had been made by my great-grandmother, so she didn't have the heart to throw them out, but they were really just collecting dust. My favorite piece was a clock-string, as we call them, like this one that my grandparents have had hanging in the hallway for as long as I can remember, and which was also made by my great-grandmother. She embroidered it using woollen thread on a coarse kind of aida canvas and had it mounted professionally, but she never got around to doing the finishes on this one. My grandmother thinks it may actually have been the last project she worked on before she died.

Luckily, my grandmother had some bright green fabric with white polkadots in her stash, plus an olive green zipper in just the right length, so I set to work immediately, making a simple rectangular purse with a polkadot lining. I only used half the length of the clock-string, but I think I'll just save the rest, in case anything ever happens to my great-granny purse. I love the coral-colored flower motif with the mint-green details in the corners and the special texture this kind of embroidery creates. In fact, I'm becoming more and more interested in texture as well as color.

My great-grandmother was a pretty cool woman, so I'm proud to carry her handiwork around with me everywhere. She had a tough life as a fisherman's wife, but had a great sense of humor, something which she passed on to her three children, of whom my grandfather was the second, and the only boy. She was a small woman, and she is smiling in all of the old pictures of her, unlike many other people at that time. When I was a child, I used to tell people that I was named after my grandfather's little fishing boat, but really, we were both named after his sweet mother Marie.

The universal appeal of the handmade

Yesterday, I met up with most of my old classmates from uni. We talked about many things, but particularly about life AFTER uni and how, for some of us, it has taken a while to 're-surface' and take back our lives. One of my friends remarked that she had only recently started knitting again, and I can relate to that feeling completely. Sometimes I don't notice it, but when I feel stressed or under pressure in some way, I quietly, without noticing, stop doing the things that actually energize me and make me happy. It becomes a circle that is difficult to break out of, because when I do realize that I've stopped, it can seem almost impossible to start again. Sometimes, it is simply because I lack the time and energy, but sometimes, I just can't find inspiration and even begin to doubt my own creative talent.

But as I've written in my 'The point of all this'-section, that is precisely what this blog can help prevent. It almost forces me to think, read and write about creating, and that is just what I need. It is something that makes me happy and inspires me to start up new knitting, crocheting and whatever else.

The blog was also a fun thing to talk about yesterday. Of course, it was nice to hear that some of my friends have been reading along and find my stories interesting, but some also had their own stories to tell. One of the guys, for example, has a woollen sweater that he always wears when he goes fishing, and which was knitted by his grandmother. Apparently, it is quite a big sweater, with a slightly large neck opening, but there is a sort of cowl that he wears and which makes up for that. He was a bit worried that the sweater might start to wear out, so we talked a bit about how the knitting could be reinforced invisibly in the most vulnerable places.

So it seems that these handmade things and their stories don't only appeal to people who actually make this sort of thing themselves. We all love a good story, and we like to have things in our lives that are worth more to us than the sum of their components.

Oh, and to my friend Lilo who has re-discovered the joy of knitting AND taken up the challenge of crochet, you may find some inspiration in Prudence Mapstone's freeform knitting, or scrumbles, as she calls them!

Sock-proud

So yeah, socks! Most of my woollen socks have been knitted for me by my grandmother, and I'm starting to wear them again, after a little summer break. I wear them with pants, skirts, ankle boots, ballerinas, nothing else, and occasionally high heels, which I actually prefer to wear with stripey socks. I feel like it makes them seem less pretentious.

I know you think I despise acrylic or polyamide yarn, but in socks, I have to admit it makes sense. Wonderful as it is, wool wears out fairly quickly when rubbed against a warm foot and the inside of a shoe. So my grandmother always buys special 'sock-yarn' with 20% polyamide to go along with the wool. I had a pair of 100% wool socks which were worn out after one winter, so I'm grateful for the synthetic element - otherwise, I would have to do a whole lot more darning than I'd like!

My grandmother used to take us shopping for yarn in the colors that we would like, but one day, I thought, 'Wait a minute, what does she do with all the leftover yarn?' It turned out that she used it for darning socks and didn't think any of us would want a pair of socks made from yarn scraps. But I really wanted a pair like that, and so she made them for me. The funny thing is, I had expected a pair of socks with completely random colors, but being the neat and orderly woman that she is, of course she had coordinated the scraps so that the two socks had precisely the same types of stripes in exactly the same pattern! I loved them, but I did mention to her that she needn't bother with being systematic the next time - she could just use up the scraps that she had. So now we have sort of a deal that when she has enough scraps for a pair of socks, she makes some for me.

Anyway, my sister and I dug out some socks to show off how we wear them. Don't be afraid to show your pride in a pair of home-knitted socks, wear them for the world to see! - And please share some pictures with the rest of us!

Darning socks

We've just had the pleasure of a visit from my grandmother for a few days. She took the 6-hour train ride without my grandfather for the first time and handled it very well. She's not one to be knocked down by hardship, although she can be a bit careful about new things.

This evening, we sat together, my sister doing a cross-word puzzle, my mother playing the piano, my grandmother darning some of my socks and me working on my tunesian knitting skills. I'm really grateful that she can be bothered to darn my socks. I do it myself sometimes, but it's generally not something I get very excited about, kind of like weaving in ends. So I was very happy when she also volunteered to help weave in the ends of the granny square blanket in progress!!

You might wonder why we even bother to darn our socks instead of just throwing them out. The thing is, it feels terribly wasteful to throw something as great as a woollen sock out simply because it has a small piece missing! I have a great love for all of my woollen socks, but especially the ones made for me by my grandmother; they will be darned until there is nothing left!

My grandmother used to knit because she had to; the only way for her three girls to have knitted sweaters was for her to knit them. In the 1950s and 60s you could buy ready-made clothes, but they were extremely expensive. Coats weren't so easy to make at home, so my grandparents bought them, but even a child's jacket cost a month's wages. So now, my grandmother only ever knits for fun and to relax, and therefore prefers to knit woollen socks for the family. We absolutely love them - I even have a cousin who, when she was younger, used to wear them during the summer! I'll be showing off some of my fantastic stripey socks very soon, so look forward to it!

A few other interesting things in my world of handmade: I have just learned to do Tunesian crochet and I just love the structure that it creates! It has a very carpet-like feel to it, and the result is quite a stiff piece of fabric. Tunesian crochet is a funny hybrid of knitting and crochet, you might say; you work it on a crochet hook, but go back and forth without turning your work, casting on new stitches when going from right to left, and crocheting them when going left to right.

The other new texture in my life is waffle-crochet, as my mother calls it. She made a hat and scarf for her baby sister when she herself was quite young, using this particular pattern of crochet. She tried to recreate it so I could see the technique - she doesn't remember it precisely, but it was something like this:

I think this pattern might have great potential, so we'll keep working on it until we get it right.

Coming up soon will be some more family blankets, fantastic socks and then I think it might be time to show you some of the projects I've been working on.

The wonder of wool

Around the time that my mother made her first bedspread, something new and very exciting was on the market: machine yarn! It was thin, could be bought in large quantities and came in all colors. But best of all, it was 100% acrylic, which meant that it could be machine-washed!

The funny thing is, for as long as I can remember, my mother and grandmother have been ardent fans of pure wool and have always wrinkled their noses at acrylic clothing. I've inherited this view of things, and for years, I've been checking the labels inside clothes in shops before even considering trying them on. As a baby, my mother put me in cotton cloth-diapers and knitted little woollen pants washed in lanolin to wear over them. In short: we don't wear 'unnatural' fabrics in this family! ...mostly.

So I was very disappointed when my mother told me that they had all completely sold out in the 1960s! Of course, it made my grandmother's life quite a bit easier, being able to machine-wash the sweaters of her three girls. After a while, though, she went back to using wool because it was warmer and regulated temperature better.

I love wool, not only because it's so comfortable, but also because to me, it represents something natural and good. It would seem strange to simply ignore the fantastic materials that nature provides. I haven't gone so far as to only wear earth colors, but I love the not-quite-smooth-and-streamlined yarn types. I've been made aware of an exciting "new" form of knitting, dogma knitting, where the wool isn't spun, but you knit directly from a complete sheared 'fur' of a sheep. This gives a really interesting structure and I would love to try it out sometime. Have alook at the technique here, or if any of you have any experience with dogma knitting, I would love to hear about it!

Update on the great-granny squares

I take this little bag with me to work every day and have now crocheted black edges on 36 of the squares in my care, leaving only 15! But I'm afraid that we counted just under a hundred, so there's still a few left and I don't think my mother has had much time to work on the ones she's got.

Many of the squares have some great color combinations, really fresh and sometimes a bit daring for an old lady, I think. So I guess conservative isn't an adjective that would suit my great-granny - luckily!

The other day, I figured out a nice little trick to keep track of all the squares - I just strung them all on a piece of yarn and tied the ends together. Very simple, yet very effective. And maybe it's a widely used trick and you're all thinking 'I always do that!' - yeah, well, now I'm in on it, too ;)

I'm sorry that some of my pictures come out a bit blurry or too bright sometimes - I'm still fine-tuning my photography skills with the help of a lovely little book called 'The Busy Girl's Guide to Digital Photography', which I bought here. There are many things that I've been doing wrong for years, I'm afraid, but I'm working on them now!

A teenage blanket

Now this blanket was made by my mother when she was a bit older - about 14 or 15 years old. By this time, she had realized that it is so much easier to make one big square, rather than first crocheting lots of little ones, crocheting edges on them and finally assembling the whole thing. Her first blanket was 8 x 15 squares, so that makes four yarn-ends per square (if we count the black edge), a total of 480 ends to weave in!! And after that, she had to sew them all together, which must also have made a few more ends. By my count, this new blanket would have produced about 60 yarn ends...

So yes, as a teenager, she chose the easier method of one big square, elongated with extra bands of color at either end to make it rectangular. Unfortunately, this large piece of knitting was rather more difficult to carry around than the small squares had been, so she did most of the work on this blanket at home. So if you decide to start making a blanket, it might be worth considering that if you are a sociable knitter, you might have to choose the more cumbersome (but certainly no less charming) method of the small granny squares!

As for colors, this time, she had some larger batches of left-over yarn from a blanket which my grandmother had made some time previously. This blanket (which I will be showing you soon) was made as a black background with small yellow and orange squares dotted around. This meant that there was quite a lot of yellow and orange for my mother's blanket, which she used for the outer, and thus longer rounds. In the center, she used small scraps of yarn, which were more suitable for the short rounds. As you can see, though, she always used the scraps up completely so that some rounds changed color halfway.

Another world

The first blanket I've found is one that my mother made when she was quite young, around 10 years old. It is made as a bedspread, with a tasselled edge on one long side only. The principle is the same as for the blanket we are now making for my aunt: squares of different colors edged with black and sewn together. The squares are really made in much the same way as a granny square, except that the pattern is made crocheting back and forth instead of in the round.

My mother sometimes babysat two small children in the evening - that was no problem in a little fishing village in northern Denmark in the late 1960s. She had already started running errands when she was three, going to her uncle's shop for groceries and even taking some rather large sums of money to deposit in the bank. My grandmother often says that it was a completely different, safe world back then - but even so, she feels that life is much less harsh today.

In any case, my 10-year-old mother had plenty of hours to crochet every time she babysat and had put the children to bed, so it only took her a few months to finish her bedspread. She could crochet about seven squares in an evening and used leftover yarn from home and some from old, worn-out sweaters which had served their purpose. Some of the squares are slightly stiffer than the rest because they are made from wool for carpet-weaving, which she had been given by my grandmother's friend.

I asked her about the choice of color, and she chuckled and said that there wasn't really all that much choice - she just used what she had. Upcycling and recycling was very much a part of everyday life - not because it was hip, or a matter of principle, but out of necessity. My grandfather was a fisherman, but fish can be fickle, so it is best not to rely too heavily on them. My grandmother has lots of great tips on living in an economical and certainly eco-friendly way - I'll be sharing some of them as we go along.

Need help?

If you're feeling inspired, but don't know how to make a granny square, check out this beautiful blog: littletinbird.co.uk under free crochet tutorials!

Differentiated granny squares

Oh, but before I get carried too far away into something else, here are a couple of pics of a little project I've been working on (or simply thinking about) for a couple of years now. I haven't got the patience to make the same kind of granny square over and over again, and this slightly wilder version of the classic blanket will allow me to try out some new techniques. I mentioned it to my mom, and she suggested that she and my sister could help me make it, a fun thing to do together during the winter months. So hopefully, now that I'm not the only one invested in the project, things might actually start happening!

Where it all started

I was sitting in the train on my way to work last Wednesday morning, way too early. This could have been a very boring trip, except for the fact that I was having a great time with a crochet hook and some yarn. My mom and I have undertaken to crochet black edges on some granny squares and eventually assemble them to make a blanket for my aunt. It just so happens that a trainride to work is just the amount of time it takes me to crochet an edge on one of these squares.

But these squares aren't just any granny squares. They were made by my great-grandmother long before she died 15 years ago, and have just been lying in an attic, waiting for my aunt to come along, pick them up and decide that they should be brought out into the light again. At first, I must admit I was a bit jealous that I hadn't found them first - I love anything old and handmade, and after all, I was named after my great-grandmother! After a little bit of thought, though, I realized that I really do want my aunt to have the finished blanket. She and my great-grandmother were very close, and this blanket will hold so many more memories for her than it ever could for me. So all is as it should be.

It makes me happy that we have a tradition for cherishing handmade things in my family. We admire the handiwork and the many hours that have gone into making a crocheted blanket or a beautiful tablecloth, and we fondly remember the person who made it, whether or not they are still with us. Call me sentimental, but it always makes me sad to find carefully handmade blankets and sweaters abandoned in a thrift shop, with no one to remember the person who made them.

So I think that the first task I will set myself is to sniff out all the handmade blankets in the family and tell their stories. I will keep you up to date on the great-granny squares, as well, and tell you more about my great-grandmother's creations.