Does anybody wonder what’s going on with people these days? A hundred years ago the Spanish influenza spread across the world. It killed millions. There are thousands of forms of corona viruses. The common cold is caused by one. Some are highly dangerous and contagious others just a minor problem.

 I get the impression some people are just contentious, they don’t care about anything but themselves. Sad really. No one seems to care about the servers, the hairdressers, manicurists, the people who provide services to the middle classes. I used to feel a bit for the middle class. Now though, with them behaving more like spoiled brats, I don’t care quite so much.

 Things need to remain closed down, and the government needs to help people, not corporations. That cares bill, we all thought was for us, turns out the bill started out as a welfare bill for Wall Street! Yes for the rich. Apparently they didn’t get enough from the huge tax cut they got. We got a few crumbs, mostly to get the democrats to sign on to it. The original bill was written in February of 2019. We are all suckers. Our great grandchildren will be paying for this and the damage done to the environment by this administration and the tax cuts to wealthy people.

At the moment, I’m doing some crocheting, some sewing, and just posting so the blog stays open. I noticed several are gone now and wondered if it was lack of use. Not much going on with quarantine right now. I don’t think I’ve got it, coved, that is. How would you know unless you can get tested. I’m not sick so hope I’m not.

I don’t do much daily blog reading anymore. No time. I usually do it once or twice a month. There doesn’t seem to be much point to them anymore unless you are trying to make money. Oh well times change.

It has been years since I posted on this blog. With the advent of social media many blogs seem to have died the death as they say. I was on it for some time, left it and went to google+. Now it looks like it’s being killed off so I’ll return to blogging until they kill it off. You may read more politics here than before, but it will still be more cats and crochet than anything.

More Hooks

I am still working on my sewing room, and my afghan, but the afghan only gets worked on when its too hot to do anything else (just the small squares, I won't put them together till this winter). I do the house work in the morning and then crochet in the afternoon, its supposed to be a 94 or so today, I tend to wilt in the heat, but I dread putting the air conditioner in the window this summer. I postpone this until I must, air conditioning aggravates my arthritis something awful. I can't move in the mornings all summer without a pain pill. Sometimes the pain is just too much.

On a brighter note, there are always those brighter notes! I've acquired some more crochet hooks. I hate bidding on ebay, but it seems to be the only way to get things like this. I am not sure what the top ones are, they were labeled crochet or tambour hooks, I am uncertain which they really are. They don't really look like tambour hooks, but they are so tiny that I can only use really fine thread like 60 or 80 with them. There is a tiny handle in the wooden holder that fits over the end of them to make them longer. They came from France.

 The ones on the bottom, I am trying to find out about, right now. They look like the Ross hooks, but they have a patent applied for printed on them instead of an actual patent number. If they are prior to that, they are over a hundred and thirty years old. There are only two or three sizes, but there are two or three of each one. They came in the pretty lacquer box. They came from right here in Missouri.

I love learning about the history of crochet almost as much as doing it, I suppose eventually I will get tired of looking for hooks and settle down to use what I have, I always do, I like to use the old hooks for things, but I'll be honest, some of the older hooks are much harder to work with than our modern hooks, its hard to believe some of the beautiful things women used to make with the older ones, they are hard to hold, but look very pretty and dainty in the hand. It could be that we are just plain spoiled today because what we have to work with is just so easy to use. Here is another photo of some of the newer hooks, these were acquired before this last group was.

I believe the tiny silver one is a tatting hook but can't be sure on that either, it goes through fabric easily so it could be a hook made to crochet an edging directly on fabric. The others are bone and steel and the pretty brass handled hook and one celluloid handled hook. I managed to get one Evelyne hook, they work very well, wish I could find some more of them. I managed to get one of the triplex hooks too. Only three or four of these hooks came from the states, the rest came from England. They seem to have many more of this kind of thing there than we do.

I do think I am about collected out though, I didn't want a lot of each, just one tow representatives of each kind of hook. I did enjoy getting them and cleaning and repairing some of them so they are now usable. The last photo of hooks I'm going to post is some of the ones I've had for a while. If anyone knows anything about some of these hooks leave a comment, information on some of these is very hard to come by, and I've been working on it for weeks. These are the ones for the most part I posted before.

I always hope that someone will know something and leave a hint for me. I use my scanner, to take the pictures because I have a rather crappy older camera, and the scanner gives really good detail.

Other than the hooks, my time has been spent making an Etui for sewing, I looked at all the ones on Ebay and the antique shops and wound up making my own, I wanted a place to store my vintage brass sewing tools and now I have one. It is also large enough and has a compartment for my antique crochet hooks. I still need to tweak it a bit to make it right but that won't take a lot of work. Anyway, maybe if I get a chance I'll post a picture of it later.

Have a nice week.

Still working!!

I'm still working on my crafts room, almost done, bought some shelves and some of the plastic storage drawers, have to buy one more set, then I'll have enough storage for almost everything. I am still stumped about what to do with all that yarn, still, after getting rid of many piles an bags of junk, I still have more yarn than I know what to do with. I finally got my craft paper almost organized, but still have to find a spot for my origami paper. Most of my art supplies are in the shelves, though two very tall shelves are full of fabric. It's mostly for clothes, but some is for quilting, though not much. You might wonder how a person accumulates so much stuff. I think it has to do with working a job for years and buying things you never have time to use, when you do finally have time you don't know where to start.
With three sewing machines and four looms, even after stripping the finish off one loom and getting it ready to set up, there is no room for it, unless I have a specific project in mind. There was room to put out one small 20 inch rigid heddle loom, and I have my tiny looms in a couple of baskets. There was also only room for two of the sewing machines. I couldn't help myself, I bought another sewing machine two weeks ago. It's only an antique reproduction of a singer 15 NL with the Sphinx decals on it, it sews so well. I've been learning to use the attachments, collected for the Singer 99 over the years, they seem to work better with the 15NL, I think its because I can adjust the bobbin tension. I can't figure out how to do this on the 99, of course I haven't really tried that hard. It was just so much easier to do on the 15. It's larger and I set it in a table made for it from an old set of treadle machine irons, they are broken a bit and some parts are missing, but since it's electric it doesn't matter, and it looks nice in there. I recovered and padded my old singer bench, I've had for years,as well as an antique dressing table bench with the same fabric, its only a slipcover though, I wanted it to be removable, so as not to damage the bench. The benches still need sanded and re-finished  but I can remove the covers for that. It's so nice to be able to use this stuff again, am already sorting through patterns to make clothes from. It's been so long since I sewed anything, that choosing the simplest patterns seems the wisest thing to do. I won't get to start anything until I'm completely finished with everything.

Right now, I can't take pictures until it completely finished. It's still a bit messy, what with getting sidetracked with the hunt for more attachments. I tried to get a zig zagger off  Ebay, but lost the bidding, someone slipped in at the very last second and got it, I wanted it so bad that I was down for two days. Its all right now, I learned how to use the Griest decorative Zig Zagger, now it works pretty well and the stitches are quite nice, then I got a singer automatic Zig Zagger on Ebay and eight stitch disks and it works well too. I would never have learned without loosing out on the one I wanted, so something very good came of it after all. With a new mechanical button hole maker and some other attachments I can do anything on the old singer machines I can on my Pfaff, just not so fancy.

There was also room for a small drawing desk, so now I can start drawing again too. It makes me so happy to be able to go back to doing things. I'll try for pictures next post.

I've been busy

I have, I have really been busy. I started getting ready to organize my crafts room, in January, now I am finally doing it. I have three more sets of shelves to assemble and then all that junk has to be organized in drawers and shelves. There is a lot of stuff. Paper, yarn, thread, fabric, and notions along with all the stuff that goes with it. There is also quite a lot of jewelry making stuff, that has to be put away. I've also gotten out three of my rigid heddle looms and have refinished one of them to make it look and work better. I repaired a cheap one I bought at the flea market, it should work pretty well, the third one is a very small loom that I'm going to use to make scarves or narrow bands, for handles, belts and that type of thing. The larger rigid heddle loom has been refinished and I plan on warping it for some light rugs.

I finally found an old treadle machine stand, just the bottom and will put a new top on it to put my old singer 99 on it. I have been buying all the accessories for it I can find. I cleaned and oiled it, and would like to put a hand crank on it, maybe later. I have been getting some good deals on the accessories to go with it or I wouldn't be buying them.

I'll write more later when I've got it nearly finished.

Day Before New Years Eve

It's Sunday Afternoon, we are both a bit bored. The DH is watching a martial Arts movie on youtube and I am just sitting here reading blogs and trying to get some crochet inspiration. I am still working on my afghan, I have estimated that it will take around 400 or more blocks to make it. I am not even worried about colors strictly yet. If it will work in my bedroom, it will be used. I bought some more pretty papers at Joanns fabrics, I love all the pretty papers they have for scrap booking, even though I don't do scrap booking. I use them for quilling and jewelry and other things. I like to make my own calendars and piece them together and am thinking of making a set of tarot cards from my own designs. I hate trying to read tarot from a standard deck, I can never remember the meanings of the cards. I have tried to memorize them, but no matter how I work at it, I still forget, so if I make up own deck, I should be able to remember them a lot better. I plan on collaging the cards together one by one. I may scan the deck then and print them off. We'll see.

I thought I'd show you some more flea market finds just one photo of them this time. I got a book or two the first one is a three volume George Carlin book. I loved Carlin and am sorry he's gone. The second book is the The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady. I'd wanted a copy after seeing the pictures on another blog, her drawings are really lovely, I used to do that sort of things when I was a kid, always drawing, then my first marriage sort of killed any aspirations to do art. (My first marriage was not a good one, art fell by the way side just trying to keep my sanity). The other little thing was a kitty tin. I just love tins with pictures of kitty on them and this one was shaped like a cat so it had to come home with me.

Since we are talking about cats, This is what passes for one of the christmas decorations round here.

 I have to put a light in it, I just love the little cats and their tree and fireplace. It is not quite finished, I need to add some glitter on the roof and put a hole in the back to add a light. I made the little house out of a cereal box. It wasn't to hard to do. I've been saving cereal boxes to make fans out of. I have an old Victorian fan that has a hole in it for a tassel, it doesn't fold but it works quite well and the shape is pretty, that's what I am making with some of the pretty papers. I have scaled down a small version to put on here as a free pattern one day. It is small but still makes a good fan for a hot day outside. I suppose that you could scale it up and make it larger, I wanted it to fit in a purse. I also wanted it small enough to be made out of one piece of card stock. I'll add more on this subject later. Right now the DH is hungry and I am too a bit, and he can't cook, though he is good with instant coffee. I can't make instant coffee properly to save my life, but I make the best mocha cappuccinos we've  had. I also make a mean vanilla latte, needless to say we rarely go out for coffee, though I am looking for a new espresso pot, since I like the manual pot better than a machine. The handle on mine is finally wearing out. I'll go for now and try to post again after new years.

A little note on progress on my afghan, I have said I will need over 400 blocks, I've only completed a little over 60, I've got a long ways to go!