All posts by Sylvia Szucs

About Sylvia Szucs

Victorian Eclectic blogs on our changing lives, toward a useful mindset for those who would like to conserve, use less, save. It is a given that we will keep technology. We need to have fun along the way.

Crocheting 85% Cotton Covers Made Dust

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Recently I crocheted these two covers, one for an infant in a seat, and one for a young girl.

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This newborn blanket is 22 inches by 29 inches and weighs a little over 13.5 ounces or about seven, two-ounce skeins of yarn.

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This blanket is  6 feet 5 inches by 4 feet 1 inch, and weighs a 5 pounds 8 ounces, after washing in hot water and drying on hot in the dryer.   The dyes are color fast with washing and drying in hot water, and in a hot dryer.    (This was about forty-four two ounce skeins.)

It was fun to work on this, and combine colors, but I learned that this yarn makes a lot of dust, which got on my clothes, rendering them un-presentable in a few minutes, piling up on the floor in little dust bunnies, and caused one of us to sneeze heavily, and repeatedly.

Then  I finished these projects ,  we vacuumed up the dust,   and then I stopped crocheting with this yarn inside the house.   The heavy sneezing stopped.

This yarn is 85% cotton, 15% polyester.    I believe these are OK to use after washing and drying in the dryer.

I attribute the dust creation to the yarn manufacture with short  lower quality cotton fibers.   I attribute the health effects  to my working rather intensively on these projects, because we did not notice this before, when I did smaller projects with this yarn.  Our home was a little like factory with poor air conditions because of this.

I think using a higher grade cotton yarn will not create so much dust.   And I’ll use up this yarn outside.

 

Colorful Car Seat Blanket

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Above is the front of an infant car seat blanket.

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And here is the back.

This little blanket, measuring twenty-two inches by twenty-nine inches,  is made with 17 colors of Premiere Home Size 4 cotton blend yarn using a Size G aluminum hook.  This piece can be machine washed, gentle cycle, in hot water, and machine dried on low.

The color palette was inspired by that of “Where the Wild Things Are”, by Maurice Sendak and consists of 17 colors from Premiere Home  Size 4 cotton blend solids, ombres, and splash types or dyes.  The stitch was fun to do, but more difficult to track, which is why it is asymmetrical.    It sure did allow mixing of colors, though, as claimed in the pattern  Hooked on Color Afghan  (http://www.allfreecrochetafghanpatterns.com/Geometric),  where I got the stitch basics, though I did not try to repeat the stripe order.  I compensated for the uneven piece edge by adding a framing border in Denim Splash, and a narrow outer rim of navy blue.

 

 

 

 

The Car

Art, Feeling, Memories, Transportation,

This represents the front of a car from a toddler’s eye view.

The Car 16DEC2015

Somehow I had escaped and gotten into the street.   After coming to a screeching halt, a scared-to-death man got out, and my father came running over, and carried me into their upstairs apartment.  I  remember lying on my bed after I had been punished.  My feeling on looking back at this, is just matter-of fact.  I  simply have these visual memories.