Be Busy, Be Productive, Be Creative - Project 2

Lena Wurtz's Baby Octopus

Octopus

Late last fall, a friend posted a cute crocheted octopus with spirally tentacles on her Facebook page.  As soon as I saw it, I fell in love with it and also wanted to crochet one.  

When COVID-19 started creeping around Canada in early spring and I was searching for a project to keep myself busy, productive and creative, I remembered the baby octopus project.  After doing a bit of research and web-browsing, I was able to find a pattern!

I crocheted one for my niece, Abigail.  As I was working on it I was reminded of a project from many years ago.  My aunt Susie who is an avid handy-craft person, used to crochet bookworm bookmarks that were similar to this octopus' tentacles!  When I called her to ask for the pattern, she unfortunately didn't know what I was talking about!  However, that phone call set us off on another creative journey.  

Bookworms, Butterflies, Hearts and Flowers

A Bookmark for every Songbook!

I cruised the web searching for more crochet bookmark ideas and soon found more than I knew what to do with!  I began with flowers, then moved on to hearts.  My all time favourite turned out to be multi-coloured butterflies.  After a conference call with Aunt Susie, she climbed aboard the floral bandwagon and soon churned out dozens of them! 

As I was working on my butterflies, I started planning what I would do with them all: back-to-school trinkets for my students, small gifts to include in a greeting card...

My sister Joanne too came on board, taking over the squiggly bookworm production. A phone call and visit from aunt Susie found me with dozens more colourful flower bookmarks.  Thus I decided that I could also give away some at a book launch once my Colony Alphabet Book would be published.  Although my publish informed me, "Not sure what the future holds for launches."   Not to be discouraged, I promised him we'd think of something and my illustrator quickly agreed.

Flower Bookmarks from Aunt Susie

My Butterfly Bookmarks

A Mixture - ready for back-to-school!

Butterfly and Hearts

 The Brennan School staff and students are already marking pages with some of these projects, a few have found their way into the hands of family members and friends.  Now for that book launch! 

 

Ah, COVID-19, you sure can get us to be busy, productive and creative!

 

 

Be Busy, Be Productive, Be Creative - Project 1

When this whole Covid-19 stay at home, self-isolate, quarantine business started, I felt it would be therapeutic for me to: be busy, be productive and be creative.   Those three Bs took various forms for me.  In this post I'll discuss one of them.

In July I fell heir to a box of fabric scraps from my friend Nadine.  That box held a few other treasures as well.  One of them was the edging of what I believe was a pillow sham.  As I inspected it, I was met with fond memories from my childhood.  I spent as much time at my Ankela's house growing up as I did in our own home. I noticed that whenever her sewing machine was not used, it was decoratively decked with a crochet table cloth that was created my my Sanna Basl.  Dozens of squares were joined together, each with a bright pink rosette in the centre.  

The pillow sham I found in the box of fabric scraps was made with the same pattern, but with yellow rosettes.  When my sister Joanne saw it she suggested, "Elma you could make a card or something out of this."  It sat on my desk for several weeks before I decided to make "something" out of it.  In this respect, I'm my mother's daughter.  If there's anything my mom loves more than knitting slippers, it's unraveling an old worn-out item such as a sweater or afghan and re-purposing the yarn to create a new pair of slippers.

As I carefully undid the threads that had fastened the squares to the fabric, I started planning how I would re-purpose the crocheted squares.  The more I worked, the more I realized that they must have been crafted decades ago as the crochet cotton was very delicate already.  Upon closer inspection, I discovered that several stitches had already become undone.  To date,  I haven't discovered whose hand created this fine work.

Once I had four separate squares, I hand-washed them gently and soaked them in salt water (as  a stiffening agent).  Next, I smoothed them out and pinned them to a sheet of Styrofoam to make them as square as possible.  Since the crocheted pieces had evoked such warm memories, I decided to look for a fitting quote to include with my new projects... I stitched the squares and quotes to poster board and ta-da!  Now that they're framed, each time I gaze upon them, I'm brought back to my childhood and my Ankela's house where I've collected such a wealth of memories!