My steampunk hat and mitts

Saint's Alp 014
Originally uploaded by mariacallas

I'll be putting up the rest of the bento pattern this weekend, but I just had to show you this. You see the bright blue edging? That's the first yarn I spun!

I designed this pattern myself- it's way simple. It's really just double crochets around front and back posts, over and over again- very hypnotic. I'm not working on a matching scarf.

Why 'steampunk'? I can imagine holding a mug of coffee while on deck of an airship, or underwater in a somewhat chilly submersible craft, and wearing these mitts. My fingers would still be able to twiddle dials. The hat, while plain, is a bit whimsical, as there are two soft points on top. I made a crab stitch edging; for some reason I'm really in love right now with the crab stitch and the cable effect one gets from crocheting around posts.

I bought the ready-made wool yarn at the Greenmarket from my lovely friends at Catskill Merino. That's real indigo. The wool is just so soft and squooshy that I just want to pet it. The roving was from Downtown Yarns and spun on a not very fancy Louet top whorl spindle. The spindle is ok, but I'm really liking the cd spindle I finally got around to making the other day, especially since I can reverse it and make it a bottom whorl- I have to experiment.

Bento box lunch set- the pattern

Please keep checking in as I refine this pattern.

Bottle Carrier - DK weight yarn, size H hook.

Ch 4 sts, and join with sl st in first ch.

Round 1- Ch 3 (counts as first dc); 11 dcs into ring. Join with sl st in top of ch 3. (12 dcs)
Round 2- Ch 3 (counts as first dc) and dc into top of ch 3. 2 dcs in each st around; sl st in top of ch 3. (24 dcs)
Round 3- Ch 3 (counts as first dc) and dc in top of ch 3. Dc in top of next st. *Make 2 dcs in next st, dc in following st**, repeat from * to ** 11 times and join with sl st at top of ch 3. (36 dcs)
Round 4- Ch 3 (counts as first dc), and dc in top of ch 3. *Dc in each of next two sts. Two dcs in next st, dc in each of next two sts**; repeat from * to ** 11 times and join with sl st at top of ch 3. ( 48 dcs)

Round 5- Ch 3. In back loop only, dc in each dc around; join with sl st in top of ch 3. (48 sts)
Round 6- Ch 3. *Dc in each of next two sts. In third st make popcorn st. ** Repeat from * to ** to ch3 and join with sl st.
Round 7- Ch 3. DC in each dc until end; join in top of ch 3.
Round 8- Ch 4. *Skip next st, dc in following st. ** Repeat around, and join in top of ch 3. This will give you the net stitch which is wonderful for making carryalls and bags. Repeat round 8 unti you have reached the height desired for our bottle or other liquid container.

Round 'A'- Ch 3. Dc in every st around. Join at top of ch 3.
Round 'B' - ch 3. *Skip next st. 3 dcs in following st. ** Repeat until end and join in top of ch 3. This will give you some nice shells.
Round 'C'- Repeat Round 'B'. join with st st in top of ch 3 and fasten off.

Chain 60. turn, sl st back along ch. Fasten off. This is your drawstring. Thread throughevery other four dcs in Round A. Join the ends. Make another, and do the same thing. you'll now ahve a carrier for your soda, water bottle or tall coffee thermos.

Tomorrow or later this week, i'll add the bento box cover pattern, and then the embellishments.

Bento box lunch set- finished!

Bento box lunch set- finished!
Originally uploaded by mariacallas

I don't even want to tell you how long it took to finish this project. It started as a simple bento box cover for my night job, when I was temping from place to place. Then I decided I needed a carrier for my water bottle.

I am usually not very girly with flowers and all, but I love Victoriana. At the time I started this project I was making flowers a lot and selling them to a local hatmaker to pay the bills. I was constantly doing piece work in between working two regular jobs, and I did it two holiday seasons in a row. However, doing this massively improved my crochet skill. Since I was sick of the flowers I was making, I went online and found some other patterns for myself- I'll try to find the link to give credit. And somehow, those flowers and leaves (a combination of large and small roses, violets, and matching leaves) ended up on my project.

As I worked on this, I was reminded of how many people see black hair as somehow inferior because it doesn't hang loose on it's own- it's wooly and relatively stiff. Yet African hair has a sculptural quality that lends itself to braiding, fading and geometric cutting. I realized that crochet is the same way. It's in many ways stiffer than knitting. It can drape, but not with the same ease. A lot of people see this as a flaw. But in truth, crochet has a sculptural quality that lends itself really well to the floral motifs on this lunch set. The design is both sturdy and delicate, rugged and feminine. Essentially, this set is my masterwork. It brings together my vision of myself as a worker, a steampunk, a neo-Victorian, a crocheter, a woman, a feminist, and a person of African descent. If for some reason I could never crochet again, I could still be happy- because I came up with these designs on my own and put them together in a new way.

Egg Cozies!

Egg Cozies!
Originally uploaded by mariacallas

My sweetie is a Shriner. I happen to love France. therefore, when I found an egg cozy pattern from the 1950s that included a rooster with a fez and a hen with a French sailor hat, I couldn't resist. I used scrap embroidery floss for the bills and the sailor hat- the pompom on the hat is made of dental floss. You can't see the tassel hanging off the fez, unfortunately. And yes- my boyfriend has a big head, and he's barrel-chested. That wasn't a mistake.

Crochet Love: Catskill Merino

Sometimes you really need yarn. No, I mean it. Like today- I have to make a square for a project on Ravelry, and I needed blue yarn. Now, I thought of going to my local yarn shop, but quite frankly, I find them a bit annoying. It was rainy, so I didn't want to run all over town. Thank goodness it was Saturday, because I was able to combine my food and yarn shopping at the Saturday Greenmarket.

My local Greenmarket has wonderful raw and cooked ingredients. I bought bacon today from the incomparable Violet Hill Farm- I think they have some of the best bacon in North America. I also bought some apples from Terhune Orchards, and some potatoes from yet another stand. Tonight's dinner is bacon cooked with potatoes, onions, and apples. In winter I like making as many one-dish meals as possible. It seems more homey that way, and I can do it fairly on the cheap.

Still, I needed yarn, and for this project it had to be blue. Therefore, there was only one business with whom I could shop: Catskill Merino, a farm located in Swan Lake, New York which is owned by the Wyatt family.

Catskill Merino makes yarn the old-fashioned way- they grow it on their sheep. Then they send it out to be spun, and do the dying themselves. Their yarn isn't cheap- it's $13-$16 a 125 yard skein. However, is soft, pliable, and dyed with natural dyes such as fustic, cochineal, madder, and indigo and set so they won't run. If you are looking for yarn to go into your historical project and you actually want to feel the yarn you buy, this is the way to go, since these are the very types of dyes that were used from ancient times through the early nineteenth century. The yarn takes J, K, and L size hooks, as it's thick like some of the well-known Noro yarns (needle sizes are 10, 11, or 12).

How do I know which hook sizes? Because the information sheet given to you when you buy a skein says so. Which means Catskill Merino is crochet-friendly and therefore (say it with me) deserves your business.

Crochet Love: 3-Corner Field Farm

I love 3-Corner Field Farm. It appeals to the completist in me. I discovered the farm's meat long before I even learned crochet; it happens that Karen Weinberg and her husband Paul Borghard, of Shushan, New York raise some mighty delicious organic grass-fed lamb on their sustainable family-run farm. Many of the great chefs in New York City agree; their farm sells its meat to some of the finest restaurants in town, as well as to ordinary folk like me. Then one day I saw a guy at the Greenmarket with a beautiful staff topped with a ram's horn; he said he'd gotten the horn from Karen & Co., who often sell the horns to local synagogues.

It's Karen's friendly face you see when you go to the Union Square Greenmarket on Wednesdays to buy lamb, cheese, milk soap, hats and sweaters, and full sheepskins. And wool. I love her wool. It takes Kool-aid dye wonderfully and hooks up prettily. It looks like it would be perfect for socks, although Karen says it's worsted weight; I find it's perfect for projects like laprobes for the car. I often leave in in its natural buttery-yellow state. Karen will also sell you raw fleece once shearing time is done- I can hardly wait.

While most of Karen's yarn business is with knitters and she doesn't crochet, she is extremely crochet-friendly and deserves your business. Besides, how many other yarn stores can you go to where you can pick up a skein for $10 and get a lamb shank for dinner, too?

The Wonderful World of Work, or, I Feel like Ripley, Except for the Aliens and the Screaming.

Working from midnight until 8am is very surreal. My day starts at 10pm, when my alarm goes off. The phone usually rings shortly after- it's my boyfriend, calling to wish me a good night as he goes to sleep. I yawn, shuffle past the yarn all over the bed, and go downstairs (I have a loft bed). My alarm is a local radio station that plays really peppy music at this time of night. otherwise, I would never make it to work on time.

I take a shower, figure out what to wear, and have some breakfast if possible. I make a quick lunch or grab a premade one from the fridge. I check Ravelry, write a note or two, and wait for my cell phone to ring. The call comes from the livery service that sends a car to my house every work night. Pretty snazzy, huh?

At 11:30 at night there is relatively little traffic, even in midtown. It usually takes 15 minutes for the driver to get me to work, and as he drives I fill out the voucher from work that pays the far. I'm outside the building at 11:45. I take out my work pass, say 'good morning' to the security guards and walk through a mostly empty lobby.

The floor on which I work is devoid of people except in my work area; four people are usually going off shift when I come in. The second shift people are made up of two proofreaders and two 'operators', or word processors, and a traffic coordinator. There's usually no immediate jobs when I come in. At night I'm the only proofreader on shift in the US. The others who work for the company are in India. I've never even spoken to them.

We have one operator who works swing and leaves at 3am. Three others come in on the same shift as I do, and and so does a fresh traffic coordinator. Except for the cleaning people, we are almost the only ones on the floor of the building until around 5:30am, when a few lawyers with overseas clients trickle in. I have never seen my floor when it's in full swing, except about once a month or so when we have proofreader meetings in the middle of the night (4 in the afternoon ET to you). A few lawyers come into our office from other parts of the building for the first three hours of my shift, bringing documents that need to be ready by morning. In most cases the operators handle them and they are passed to me for proofing; over in India, the same thing is happening, but at a busier pace because the work there is being sent from our law offices in Europe and Asia. when they have too much it spills over to us. Occasionally I get in-house documents- menus for seminar dinners, employee health info- and I get a lot of confidential documents having to do with finances, since we service major corporations whose corporate offices are in New York. What this means is that very often I have a pretty good idea of what companies are merging, which ones are breaking up, and which are about to undergo some major shift- and I can't tell a single soul. I don't even discuss the work with the operators, most of whom aren't interested in the economy anyway. Nor am I allowed to invest based on the documents I see, since I could get in trouble for insider trading.

My office has tons of windows looking out onto Times Square. I see the lights at a distance, but there's no sound. I'm too high up to hear cars, or the tourists who are straggling back to their hotels. The only thing I hear is the ticking clock in my office, the music I sometimes put on, and the conversations of the operators in the next room. The coordinator or an operator will drop in as often as needed to bring me work to proofread, and it's all very slow-paced and sleepy- which is dangerous because that makes it easier to make mistakes. I constantly guard against falling asleep. I only drink coffee during my first work hour, so that the caffeine will be out of my system before I go home to bed. Lunch is around 3am, when I open my lunch container and eat at my desk. Most night workers gain weight on shift, because the only food available is junk, an there are no stores open to tempt one outside for a walk. Bringing lunch keeps me reasonably healthy- I've also lost weight. but it's lonely work, and trying to keep from falling asleep can be difficult. Add to that the fact that the building's thermostat gets turned down; I'm perpetually cold and am usually swathed in scarves and shawls to keep from freezing to death.

When I get off from work I usually can't shop for another two hours- everything is only starting to wake up. socializing is almost impossible, since most people are going to work. My DVR records my favorite shows, and I plan ahead. I have to wait until the weekend to eat out unless I want breakfast. When I go home I force myself to stay awake for a few hours by reading, catching up on my favorite shows, going online, taking a bath. Then I roll into bed at 2pm for a nice night's sleep, and hope a telemarketer doesn't call me. I have velvet curtains at the windows to keep out sunlight.

Why would anyone want to live this way? Well, the money is pretty good. I get to crochet on the job when work is slow and I don't have other talks. I get to avoid sunlight- I've always had very light-sensitive eyes, and this way I'm not in perpetual pain anymore. I get to see museum exhibits in the morning, before they get crowded. plus, I get to pretend that I live in a spaceship. I intend to do this while I pay off some bills, or until I find something that pays more. It would be nice to see movies when they come on tv, or to watch the sun go down. But I get glorious sunrises, fresh bagels, and a chance to live like a vampire. In my book that's not too bad.

It's Green Acres at My House

The wonderful thing about this century is that if you live in the Western world, you can pretty much create your own reality and find other people who are willing to share it with you (or enable your insanity, depending on how you look at it). For instance, by boyfriend seems to be oblivious to the fact that he's in love with a rural housewife from 1870. He doesn't seem to find it odd that I took up canning two summers ago, and now turn out preserves that could win a prize at a county fair. My crocheting mufflers and starting on socks doesn't faze him. I told him that I started spinning- he thinks it's cute. I'm the only woman he knows outside of a religious congregation who wears skirts down to her ankles, often with granny boots. He admires the cross-stitch sampler I made for my grandmother, which now hangs on the bathroom door, and he believes my interests in corsetry, steampunk, and recreating 19th century textiles to be benign.

Maybe it's because he used to be an historical reenactor. Maybe it's because he plays bagpipes. Or maybe he so busy enjoying the woolens and food that come out of my apartment that he hasn't noticed my desire to miniaturize sheep and goats so that I can milk them and keep them for their hair while sequestering them in a desktop pen. Considering that I've never lived on a farm, have no desire to move out of the city, and dress pretty much like a Corp Goth, there is something distinctly weird about this- both his lack of concern and my growing obsession with all things pre-20th century. I suppose he'll stop me if I join a quilting bee and try to move a cow into the apartment so we can have raw milk, but maybe not. I wonder- are there others who are suffering through an extended phase of Greenacres-itis?

What the heck is a 'widdershins?'

'Widdershins' means counter-clockwise or moving towards the left in a circle, with attendant meanings of 'unlucky.' It's a movement in the opposite direction of the sun. When I finally put items on my Etsy shop, they will be listed under 'Widdershins Crochet'.

Some of you might be familiar with the term through neo-paganism and wicca, but I'm a follower of neither. I am, however, left-handed, or sinister. In Latin, the word for left is 'sinister', which is where we get the term '(meaning left, unlucky or evil). I thought 'Sinister Crochet' had implications I didn't want to give, as did 'Ham-handed Crochet' (another term sometimes used to mean left, or clumsy). However, as a queer liberal left-handed person of color who crochets and who likes Middle English, I thought 'Widdershins Crochet' was the perfect name for my blog.

Working and Dreaming

I just got in from my second job today. We'll call it The School. It's a university teaching job somewhere in New Jersey, where I sling cultural anthropology the way short order cooks sling hash. Today was a good day- I slept in the School library's faculty study room for a few hours before class, and looked at a couple of books on American textiles. Now I'll sleep for four hours and go into the Job, which is a major law firm where I do proofreading on the night shift. This is my life every Tuesday and Thursday until May.

I'm hoping I'll have time to crochet tonight while at work because I'm trying to finish up a large doily that will act as a placemat on my desk. The pattern is this one. I'm making with with a green bamboo yarn, which is very soft and nice. Thinking about crochet is one of the few things that keeps me sane. My dreams seem to be filled with wool.