Needles & Nilbogs

I’ve been reading a lot about antique/vintage crochet lately, so I’m going to review one of the books I’ve been using as reference. The book is Civil War Ladies: Fashions and Needle-Arts of the Early 1860’s , and it’s a collection of articles from Peterson’s Magazine, coming mostly from 1861 and 1864. I got it from a friend of my grandfather’s, who was also very fond of older patterns and craft history.  Overall, my general impression is definitely good; it’s very clear that the patterns are not reproductions, they’re original. This does mean the patterns are hard to understand sometimes, and they occasionally look odd to my modern eyes, but I can follow most of them.  The subject matter is mixed. Peterson’s published patterns for all sorts of fancy work, alongside poetry, songs, and fiction (mostly cut out from this book). There’s embroidery, patterns for sewing, knitting, crochet, netting, the occasional tatting project, and some that are unclear or useable for multiple craf...

The City Spies series by James Ponti is getting a new book sometime in February! It will be called City of the Dead, and it’ll be the fourth book. I shared these thoughts and predictions for it on my personal instagram on Monday, but this is a slightly more edited essay-format. ( Instagram announcement  for the curious; it has the cover and the name.) Fair warning: spoilers for City Spies, Golden Gate, and Forbidden City ahead. I will try to mark anything really terrible, but just read the books please. I want to talk about them with people, aaaahhh!  My initial hopes on reading the announcement were for a book about Rio or Kat, given the cover. Personally, I’m hoping for Rio because of the fanfic I’m working on that’s currently about him, Brooklyn, and their friendship, but I would also enjoy a book about Kat because she has a really interesting point of view, and I’d love to see more. The way each book has been focused on one kid so far means that there’s probably going to b...

 I’ve been writing a lot of new/adapted lyrics to protest songs straight from the Little Red Songbook (I have the really big anthology edition. It’s awesome), and I’m just fed up enough with America right now that I’m sharing them. Disclaimer: these are probably originally public domain songs? Most of them are old enough, I think. Anyways, I’m not the original composer and half the lyrics are nearly the same, so just take this as my contribution to the time honored musical protest tradition. The Anawim Anthem — Tune: Dump The Bosses Off Your Back (Brill)  We are poor, forlorn and hungry, There are lots of things we lack; And our lives, made up of misery, So dump the gov'ment off our backs. All the agonies we suffer, We can end with some good whacks— This cannot keep on a-happening, So dump the gov'ment off our backs! Teachers’ Strike (Tune: Solidarity Forever) Aguilar took the money that he never toiled to earn, But without their brains and teaching not a single class will run...

Today I’m working on the thing I’ve been mentioning lately — two RPG projects at the same time, and one is almost done. Like working on the layout and trying to find beta testers almost done. Let me know if you want the link for the current draft or if you want to playtest it, I could use the testers and I just want a little feedback.  In the meantime, have some spinning! I went to my guild meeting on Tuesday and someone showed me how to properly use my supported spindle, so I’ve been working through that. She also gave me a lovely cotton roving to use because “the cotton from pill bottles is hardly spinnable.” And I finished a skein of (pill bottle) cotton that measures a whole 18 yards, which is a new record!  I got to try a EEW Nano 1.1 at the meeting too, and it was really cool. I’m trying to figure out whether I could afford one of the new ones, cause that was super easy to use and I liked it. No pictures of that though.  Lastly, I signed up for the tour de fleece, t...

I think I’ve mentioned this almost everywhere I exist on the internet, but forgive me one more bit of crowing. My crochet work made the state fair! I’m entered in the Student Showcase of the California State Fair (July 15–July 31, if you’re in the area and want to see it), with the Forget-Me-Not Table Topper. This project ( Ravelry link ) has actually been a really long time in the making.  Framed and ready for drop-off! A few technical details before I talk about the story: it’s basically a granny square where I replaced some of the sides with filet for a while. If you want to do something similar, you need to leave edge clusters at each side so that the increase pattern can be maintained, and then there’s a setup row of all mesh before you can work the pattern. It’s basically working the opposite of the granny stitches; dc in each ch-space, and chain over each cluster (use the same number of chains as the number of stitches in the cluster, and be aware that this means it will be ...