Issue 10, keeping it playful

combining knitting, crochet, and Tunisian crochet

hey everybody,

It’s starting to feel like these super hot summer days will never end, and I’m so thankful that I can spend them comfortably in the air conditioning most of the time. This summer has been fairly busy with one thing or another, including some easygoing projects to wear this autumn.

what’s been going on

Over the past few months, thoughts about remembering to love the process and keep things playful have been on my mind. Approaching freeform and improvisatory fiber work as if it’s a game is a great way to keep the ideas flowing. Keeping this in mind has allowed me to get creative with the original Vacation Favorite pattern, going beyond just rearranging the order of the stitch patterns to actually incorporating different fiber techniques like crochet, modular knitting, Tunisian crochet, and maybe eventually some freeform crochet. I really enjoy extending the freeform mindset into more traditional looking projects like these.

My Valentina Poncho (shown from both sides in the first two photos above) may have to wait until winter proper to be worn because of its heavier gauge yarns; I suspect it’s just too cozy for the Fall. It’s made with inspiration from knitter and crocheter Valentina Devine, who died at age 89 earlier this summer, leaving a meaningful legacy of teaching and creative work.

XP roundup

Here are a couple of really cool stitch ideas I’d like to incorporate into freeform projects. The first is from a photo on Juli’s Handmade Stuff’s Instagram (the first photo shown below) and it inspired me to experiment with surface effects (second photo).

The second is a new-to-me textural knitted fabric called the Canvas Stitch that Beatrice Mase, the wonderful French knitwear designer, uses in her Noshi Shawl. Both Ms. Mase and her shawl are shown in the first photo below. When I started knitting my Noshi, I fell in love with the canvas stitch and was immediately inspired to use it in my newest Vacation Favorite variation, still a WIP, second photo.

artists for inspiration

Past issues of this newsletter have featured information about artists of many kinds that inspire me to try new things in my freeform practice. But what about my actual freeform crochet teachers?

I’ve learned from lots of freeform crochet artists through their in person classes, from online courses they’ve taught, from books they’ve published, and from studying photos of their freeform work on line. Prudence Mapstone has been my first and foremost influence ever since I first accidentally found her work online in the early 2000’s. Her in-person classes, books, and other publications continue to be invaluable to me. Classes with Myra Wood at Stitches South, free range knitting recipes from Jane Thornley, The Crochet Workbook from freeform pioneers James Walters and Sylvia Cosh, and photos seen on social media from Mitsuko Tonouchi as well as others have also taught me so much about freeform crochet.

You’ll want to click on the links here to find out more about these artists and their work. It’s an honor to use what I’ve learned from them to follow my own curiosity about combining freeform crochet with other fibercrafts to make wearable accessories and art pieces.

something to try

If you’re a knitter who likes to follow patterns but would also like to put your personal stamp on your projects, you might enjoy keeping it playful as you make your own Vacation Favorite variation. Here’s how I added some Tunisian crochet to my current version, still on the needles and hooks.

The trick is to do just a little experimenting to determine hook size on a swatch before trying it out into the actual project. Tunisian crochet fabric is more dense than traditional crochet, so it’s usually worked with a larger hook than you might expect to produce a wearable fabric. Similarly, a larger knitting needle is used when making shawls to produce a comfortable fabric that’s a bit looser than you might want for a sweater. Knowing this, I tried using the same size hook as the needle I was already using to make the shawl, and it worked out beautifully. I don’t know if it will work every time, but if you’re experimenting, I recommend matching hook and needle sizes as your starting point, simply adjusting the hook size if the knitted and crocheted fabrics don’t seem to match each other’s gauge as well as they do in my swatch in the photo below. Keep reading for more information about switching from knitting to Tunisian crochet.

When it was time to switch over to Tunisian crochet in my project, I chose to do the Tunisian Simple Stitch, TSS. It’s the most basic of the Tunisian stitches, as the name suggests, and I love the way it resembles weaving.

1st Note: in the description below, I mention using the hook as if to knit. This means that I’m inserting the hook into the stitches on the knitting needle in a knitwise fashion, a.k.a. as if to knit.

2nd Note: It’s important to remember at this point that knitting and crochet require us to wrap the yarn when making our stitches in different directions from each other. In knitting, we wrap the yarn by taking the yarn over the needle going away from us. In crochet, we wrap the yarn by bringing the yarn over the hook coming towards us. So, even though I’m inserting the hook as if to knit, I’m wrapping the yarn around the hook as is typical in crochet, that is, the yarn is coming over the hook towards me.

I transitioned from one to the other by using the Tunisian hook to crochet the forward pass, inserting the hook into the stitches on the knitting needle as if to knit (see 1st and 2nd Notes above), working until all of the stitches were on the hook. I set the knitting needles aside and worked the return pass in the typical fashion to complete the first row of TSS. After working 2 additional rows of TSS, I transitioned back to knitting by working one more forward pass with the Tunisian hook, then transferred the stitches to my knitting needle. This was easy to do because I used a Denise hook with a cord, and could just switch out the hook for a needle. If you don’t have Denise interchangeable hooks and needles, just move the stitches one at a time back to your knitting needle.

This all sounds a little fussy, but it’s not too difficult to do once you try it, provided that you already know how to do the Tunisian Simple Stitch. If you don’t, Google the stitch name to find a wealth of online resources. I hope you’ll enjoy adding a little crochet, Tunisian or traditional, into your knitting. Let me know how it goes!

a few more things you might like

I love this photo from textile artist Dale Rollerson’s Instagram showing such beautiful texture created with weaving and embroidery.

This article on how to keep your stack of books to be read under control is interesting; could this idea be applied to fiber-y works in progress? Do I really want it to?

Sometime during the pandemic, my husband and I started doing Duolingo lessons in Scottish Gaelic (for him) and Italian (for me). Before long we were using the app pretty regularly, and now we have 600+ day streaks going. Who else is learning a foreign language on their phone? Che bello!

That’s it for today, thanks for reading!

Lisa

PS: Be sure to leave a comment if you’re trying out some creative additions to your Vacation Favorite, I’d love to hear about it.