Irish Lace revisited

My passion for fiber arts plus my half-Irish heritage equals Irish crocheted lace for me, and I have recently taken up learning and practicing more on the lace.   I have crocheted for many year, though I can't claim any great proficiency, and that makes it easier to make a start.  Irish lace uses packing cord, or padding, and managing that cord as you crochet around it is, I'm finding, not as easy as it might seem.   In addition, the free-form nature of connecting motifs can be a challenge but these two characteristics are what make it Irish lace.

A padded ring, or "buttony" as Maire Treanor calls them, is made by winding thread around a knitting needle, crochet hook, or (as one of Ms. Treanor's students suggested) a drinking straw, and crocheting around the cord.  Easy, you might think, if you crochet.   Not so much, I discovered. (The straw suggestion is brilliant, however; I'm not sure I would have completed one yet without it!)  My second was definitely better than the first.   (Note that, in all the following photos, I am doing my practice crocheting with size 12 thread; in the end I'll be using 20-50, with packing cord in size 10 or 20.  I'm waiting for delivery of smaller crochet hooks.)

 The wild rose is a good motif to start with, as it uses most of the stitches and techniques used throughout Irish lace.  I'm working on my first wild rose here, and getting better with each petal. (I'm sure you're all too kind to count, but the first petal doesn't have enough loops--mistakes are important to learning right?)

The packing cord is used when you crochet around all the petals, giving more body to the edging.
Did I mention that this is going to take some practice?

There are so many beautiful Irish lace antique pieces out there, and new ones being designed now.  Check out the Sheelin Irish Lace Museum for a look at some antique pieces.  And a search on "Irish lace" on Pinterest yields some beautiful examples.

Traditionally Irish lace was used for dresses, and for lace curtains and linens.  Since I'm a quilter, first and foremost, I'm thinking about it for crazy quilting; I have been seeing some motifs that would be beautiful as lace embellishments.  Some of the collars and jackets and tops are tempting though; I wonder how long it would take me to crochet a jacket....?

The finer thread has arrived from Heirloom Crochet, and the finer hooks are on their way from Earth Faire.  Then we'll see how I do with finer work. Stay tuned.

Colorful Crochet--Doing Color Changes

I'll be doing the Patchwork Squares afghan as part of the Crochet Society's Fall CAL (Crochet ALong) and because it has so many wonderful color changing opportunities I thought I'd like to check out some methods to do the color changes easily, and with as little weaving-in of ends as possible.  I hate weaving in ends.

There are really two issues at hand:  changing colors without knotting the ends of the color together, and hiding the tails for the 2 colors at each change of color.

I found a few vids on YouTube:

Crochet Tidy Away Ends and Color Changes, from Megan E. Mills


From All Free Crochet:  How to Change Color Without Knots, right-handed

How to Change Color Without Knots, left-handed

If you're more of a text person, or want something in writing that you can print out, here are a couple of choices.

Here's a short demo/explanation:
http://www.crochetme.com/blogs/crochet_me/archive/2010/03/11/quick-and-easy-color-change.aspx

Crochet Cabana has a thorough explanation, along with photos; it shows how to do it at the beginning of a row, and also in the middle of a row.
http://www.crochetcabana.com/tutorials/join-new-yarn.htm

(And if you are also doing the Folding Fans Scarf in the CAL, the "Crochet Doctor" in that issue of Crochet Today is about color changes and color work in crochet.)

It takes a little bit of practice to work crochet around tails, but it's not difficult and, for me, it's much less discouraging than having to weave in ends.

If you find it to be not your cup of tea, here's a video from Red Heart on weaving in ends. f  It is something that you can do while sitting in front of your favorite televisions show.  For some projects, maybe your favorite show's last season or two.
http://www.redheart.com/learn/videos/weaving-ends-crochet

Enjoy the CAL, and don't forget to post photos of your yarn choices and progress on Ravelry!

Joining up!

Thinking that it's high time I learn to "join as you go" when crocheting motifs, I have taken up "Jubilee" shawl, from Amanda Perkins.  I love the design and, really, how hard could joining as you go be?

I'm sure that it's a piece of cake for many crocheters.  I am not one of them, but I'm determined to power through it!  :-)   It's not that it's that difficult, it's just that I've been resistant to reading crochet charts.  I recently conceded, you may remember, to the value of reading knitting charts, instead of written instructions.  I was going to hold out on the crochet chart thing, though.  I gave it my best shot, I patted my self on the back when I finished the first row of 10 motifs, all joined together.

The problem is, I was looking at the general diagram for how the hexagons were arranged, not the chart, so I joined at only half the points that I should have.  Oops!

Only when I had to join a neckline, sort of half, motif did I realize that I had missed some (ok, a lot of) points on the first row.    And I might have been able to continue to do it without the chart had I not had to work in those doggone neckline motifs, but the stitches on it were different enough from the full motifs that I couldn't quite "read" and match them as the join points aren't written into the instructions.

It took me more than an hour, and a couple of false starts but I figured it--read the chart and worked the joins.  I am going to fake it on the first row (I'm a quilter; I can fake it...)

It pains me to say it, but not as much as it did to try to do it without reading the chart--I really needed to learn to read crochet charts.


Oh, dear; does this mean I am growing up in my knitting and crocheting?  Horrors!  Next they'll make me gauge....

More Lace--with Irish Eyes

Some time ago, while working on a crazy quilted vest I found a strip of thick lace in my stash.  I don't remember buying the lace myself, so it must have come from my Mom's stash of embellishments.  Only later, as I began to look into learning Irish crocheted lace did I realize that it probably was made by someone in Dad's family, who came from Ireland.  It is now a pretty precious piece of lace!

Irish lace, I discovered, is quite different from other lace, as it is usually worked around a foundation cord--hence the thickness of the lace. 

I am beginning again to delve into Irish lace, and ready to learn.  My first foray (aside from a shamrock--what else could I start with?) is actually a rose and leaves motif pattern for a pincushion.  Traditionally, the motifs and the background "lattice" would be worked separately but for this pattern the background is worked out from the rose motif, and the leaves added later.    It is also not worked around a foundation cord, but it is in the style of Irish lace.   The edging IS worked around a foundation, and added later.

Here's the rose motif for the center:

And here it is, with the lattice background. 

I have completed leaves (I like the way they're done, though it took me a couple of tries to get them to look as I wanted), and will attach them when I have blocked the main piece and tacked it to the linen pincushion form.


As I recall, when I first started working on Irish lace, working around a foundation cord is cumbersome, and is going to require some practice.   But while I'm working on it I can think about my trip to Ireland, meeting my third cousin, visiting the family's old homestead property, and seeing my great great grandfather's grave.   It's one more connection to that side of my family.