Mum's dream

About 20 years ago, Mum published her first craft book which is now out of print. Her dream was to do another book, but she lost her sight six months ago. I set up this blog for her and she is amazed at the reception of it and thanks you all for having come by and for your good words in response to the blog and her pix at Flickr. But she still regrets not being able to do a book, something she can hold in her hands and give to her Pink Ladies.

So I contacted a couple of publishers in Australia, and although they said that her work was unique and that the concept was interesting, they were unable to follow up. One problem, I think, is the pic intensivity of her book, and the other is probably that she is unknown.

So I've been thinking about collating these blog entries and adding more material, including material from her first book, and exploring the self-publishing area to showcase a wonderful life of craft, and to make Mum's dream come true.

So this is the long term project we have in mind. If anyone has any tips and advice, or any comments at all on this, we'd appreciate it. It will show us how to go forward.
Onwards!

Pouf in progress

Here's something else Mum is working on. She's using strips of plastic bags and yarn. It will be a pouf, open at one end and then tied with a cord so I can store the duvet in summer. I'll just have to turn it over and sit on the flat bit which is starting to grow.

New squares on the old

Before Mum lost her sight she was working on a lovely crochet rug, but it wasn't quite finished and needed more squares.

She's been crocheting a fair bit over the last months and has made a lot of new squares which will be added to the rug so that it looks like this and more.

Pastel crochet blanket

But that's not all. She was doing this on the side and is finalising it today.

A cardboard box full

I'm just back in Sydney with Mum and asked her what she'd been doing. "Look," she said and emptied a cardboard box onto the table. "Now you have to help me sew it all together, Babette-ish."

A shoebox full of squares and the bottle bag subverted

Mum tells me she already has a shoebox full of squares of all sizes and it's overflowing. Onwards! We'll be putting them together to make a blanket in December.

And the bottle bag has found a home in Vienna and now holds the knives and spatulas of an artist friend, Sharon Ratheiser.

Babette blanket project

Mum has started work on the Babette blanket project. (I have yet to find out who Babette is/was.) She's sorted her yarn into acrylics and wool. Most of the acrylics were in pastels so that's what she's trying first as it's easier for her to crochet. She's also using a sort of granny square stitch because it's easier for her to feel her way around the holes. As she can't see the colours, I'll help her assemble the blanket when she has enough squares. She's really grateful to the people in the Babette blanket group at Flickr for their inspiration and advice.

Indoor roofing or it's all in the genes

Last night Mum was telling me about how her mother used to make cord working trousers for the men in the family. She had the first pair made by a tailor and then copied the pattern to make the rest. When the trousers began to wear out after all the work in the fields she'd cut them up into tile-shaped pieces and sew them together. Mum's brother used to say she was making the indoor roofing again as the pattern looked like the tiles on the roof of the house. She used her "indoor roofing" as a protection for the top and the back of the couch and sofa. Just another "waste not, want not" story, Mum calls it.

Knitting muscles

Things have been going a bit slowly for Mum lately, but she has been trying out new things. One is a knitting machine that makes tubes and flat pieces. We're only at the tube stage at the moment. It's a bit tricky casting on, but once that's done you just have to turn the handle. So Mum's collected all her bits of wool that have the same thickness and off she's gone. She can't do it too long, though, as the constant turning of the handle makes your arm tired and the biceps hurt a bit. It's a sort of knitting "body building" machine even though it is all in plastic. The idea she's got is to make long sausages that can be stuffed with leftovers and used as cushions to put in the small of your back. You can also make scarves. Sometimes the machine drops stitches, but you can usually catch them. Here's a pic of the magic machine and some work in progress. Reviews of the knitting machine are mixed, but it's fun and makes for a bit of a change.

Mum's magic teas

When friends come by to spin with Mum or just to see how she's doing, she often pops off into the back garden and comes back with a handful of different leaves and sprigs: rosemary, bay leaf, mint and sage. She'll chop everything up into small pieces, put it into a teapot and pour on boiling water. The she'll leave it to draw for several minutes and then serve au natural. Sometimes she'll grate some fresh ginger into her magic brew.

Another tea she serves is a mixture of lemon balm and freshly grated ginger.

Spinning again!

Mum's spinning again and it's going fine. She's using the handmade Swiss spinning wheel that she's had for ages. The jacket she's wearing is made from her own hand-spun wool which she hand-dyed using local plants.

She's also been asked to share some pix of her work using recycled plastic bags in the Trashion Nation group at Flickr. She's on a roll.

Tunisian crochet

Here's a mosaic of Mum's Tunisian crochet work made with the Mosaic Maker in FD's Flickr Toys. It shows a rug made of squares that are crocheted on a long crochet needle which holds all the stitches a bit like a knitting needle. But the work is done by crocheting back and forth into the stitches held on the needle. Here's a neat "how to".

Shoulder warmers

Here's a bedjacket Mum made.

She also made it in other colours to be worn as a shoulder warmer accessory.

Onwards!

After practising a bit crocheting blind, Mum has started a new item. It's based on the bottle bag but is intended as an artist's bag for my friend Sharon in Vienna to hang by her easel and stash her paintbrushes. Here's a pic of those golden fingers at work using strips of plastic bags and yarn.

Mum's fans

I've put Mum's work up at Flickr and she's getting some wonderful feedback from the creative people showcasing their work there. She's crocheting something new now.

Why plastic bags, Mum?

"My pet hate is seeing all those plastic bags flying around the countryside. The government and the public are always saying they want to do something about it, but I think plastic bags are here to stay because it's easy to take one and we're always being asked if we want a bag and we don't always have another bag with us when we go shopping. People forget, you know. Even if you just go to the baker for some sour dough rye you end up with a plastic bag.

"So I ask all my friends to give me their plastic bags and I get them in all colours and sizes. I cut them into 2cm strips and crochet colourful baskets. I also sorted some of the plastic bags by colour and cut them into 1cm strips and crocheted them together with colour coordinated yarn and wool for a more noble effect when I make handbags. Then I put in a lining that fits and the effect is quite remarkable."

I've put some of Mum's work up on Flickr and she's had some good feedback on her work. Here is a lovely handbag.

Going by feel

Here are two works in progress that Mum is continuing. One is a crocheted rug that will then have wool woven through the grid and the other is a hold all for her knitting materials that she made out of plastic bags. The only wool is in the last rows round the top which she finished last week. From here on in her work is going by feel which she is learning to trust more and more.

Recycling plastic bags - the loo roll

Here's another way to use the plastic bags from Baker's Delight. The writing disappears into little flecks. Mum made loo roll covers.

Back in Gorenzen, Mum told me that a farmer's almanac always hung in the dunny. It was called Scholle und Kraft and we found a copy at Thomas Scharnowski's site on Fellbach.

Poetry in motion

Mum went up to sit with the Pink Ladies today.
There were about six of them all knitting and crocheting for the hospital shop. She sat and chatted and when she came out she uttered a verse in German from Schiller's poem Das Lied von der Glocke (Song of the Bell).

Tausend fleißige Hände regen,
Helfen sich in muntrem Bund.

(Thousands of busy hands stir,
Help each other in happy union.)

Here's a rug that Mum made from wool remnants as part of the efforts of the Pink Ladies for the hospital shop.

Spinning - then and now

When did you start spinning, Mum?

"I must have been about 8 or 9. I was at school. Back then in the twenties skirts were getting shorter and I wanted really long stockings. The ones my mother made only went over the knees. They were knitted from handspun wool. She said if I wanted them longer I'd just have to spin my own wool and knit them myself. She let me use one of her spinning wheels. I finished the stockings but they almost stood up all by themselves. I'd spun the wool much too thickly.

"I started again in the early eighties. It was becoming a bit of a fashion in Sydney. But that wasn't why I took it up. I was starting to get a bit of arthritis and keeping my hands and feet moving helped a lot to keep the joints supple."

Here's a pic of Mum's first spinning wheel which was hand made by Albert Gerber in Berne, Switzerland. It still works. (Albert Gerber made his last spinning wheel in 2005.)

Recycling plastic bags - the tissue box cover

Here's another one of Mum's creations. This time it's a cover for those cardboard boxes of tissues. It's made of plastic bags cut into strips and then crotched with wool strands.

Recycling plastic bags - the bottle bag

Mum's asked me to take over the blog as she wants to concentrate on her crocheting. I talked it over with her, but she said she needs to feel her way with her craft. But all the entries are approved by her, so it's still her blog. She also wanted to change the title - so that will be new, too. So we're starting with what the craft book started out with - recycling plastic bags. Here are some pix of a bottle bag she made out of plastic bags and wool thread.

Vats of fleece

My daughter was asking me about how things were when I was young. We had to make do with what we had back then. My father had a farm in Gorenzen with a few cows, pigs, a couple of work horses and 34 sheep. The sheep were kept in sheds all winter and by the time spring came, their fleeces were filthy. Ammonia was too expensive to use as a cleaning agent, so the whole of the family was encouraged to go on the potty. All the urine was collected and boiled in a big vat and that's where the fleeces were cleaned. Then they were rinsed in water and set out in the sun to dry. Then the wool was carded and spun.

In the 80s in Sydney when I started wool dying, I used ammonia as a fixative for the colours. Here's a photo of a vat of fleece from then. The lovely colour though came from using leaves from the silver-dollar gum, and I didn't need to use ammonia since eucalypts have tannin which fixes the colours naturally.

Here's a picture of what some of the dyed wool looked like once spun and knitted.

Bits and pieces

I seem to have baskets of bits and pieces of wool around the house and I had set about working through them. I'm making a rug out of this lot of wool remnants. It's just crocheted squares of leftovers that you then arrange nicely.

You can also use bits of leftover wool to make booties. These have fleece soles, and I'll tell you about fleeces next time.

Knitting by moonlight

I'm feeling my way with the knitting at the moment, but that reminded me of how we used to do it when I was a child in Gorenzen in the German Harz area. Electricity then was too new and expensive to waste on something like knitting, so my mother and sisters would knit by moonlight.

Oh, and my daughter says I should have a photo on this blog, but I haven't got any recent ones. So here's one from last March that she had on her hard disk. Charlie and Chaptiquack come every day for a nibble.

Hallo, I'm Frieda

and I live in Sydney. I'm 90 years old and I do a lot of craft work - spinning, knitting, crocheting. Last year I started work on a craft book called Waste Not, Want Not. It has to do with how you can use all the bits and pieces and make something pretty and practical out of them.

I made my first book with my friend, Mollie, back in 1989. It's out of print now, but you can get it in the library. My daughter, who's helping me with this blog, found a copy on EBay.

Last month I lost my sight and was at the end of my wits. Today, I was listening to Radio National and heard all about Olive.

Why don't you blog your book? my daughter said. How am I going to do that? I asked.

Well, this is the story of how. It's my story, but my daughter will do all the technical work and I'll be the creative one. I've got lots of ideas and stories I'd like to share.