tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32959794173554253782024-03-05T01:14:28.574-05:00Everyday CrochetMusings from Doris Chan, crochet designer, author, space cadet.Dorishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03694714243641300726noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3295979417355425378.post-58974030373502777472011-03-10T22:41:00.001-05:002011-03-10T22:43:12.670-05:00Everyday Crochet is moving!Speaking as someone who has done her share of moving, this is not going to be fun. Shifting a simple crochet blog from one URL to a <a href="http://dorischancrochet.com/">new domain</a> cannot be compared to the heavy lifting involved with moving house, but for me the technical aspects of figuring out the new stuff is just as much work as physically packing boxes and loading furniture. I have moved house perhaps 16 times in my life. This is my first time moving a stupid blog and it's more aggravating than all those combined.<br />
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My new location is much easier to remember, actually, and it more closely matches the way people search for... and eventually stumble onto... my blog. That's according to the stats. Shoot, I don't know how you guys found me here in the first place since I am so clueless about social media and tags and search engine stuff. I never want to type in new addresses. Honestly, I can't visit anywhere on the net without clicking links or copying and pasting URL addresses into the browser because that string of letters, slashes and numbers is all gobbledygook to me. My eyes sort of glaze over. Bookmarks are my friend. So now I am terrified that nobody will be able to find my new home because I don't know how to tell everyone. All I can do is pray that you guys remember to update your bookmarks. <br />
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Funny how my memory is selective. I can remember and recite without hesitation my address (including the zip code) and phone number from a home 28 years ago. I can remember the first address I ever had to remember, and that was before there were zip codes. I know the license plate from my second car. I'm pretty sure I could dial my locker combination from eighth grade but I can't prove that. On the other hand, don't ask me what my current cell phone number is. Do you have to look at your cell screen to find your own number, too? My partner has his number scrawled on a bit of tape stuck to the back of his cell. We do what we have to do.<br />
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There was a time when all you really had to have firmly in your head was your home address, one home phone number and maybe your Social Security number. And, no I wasn't around before there were Social Security numbers. Today my brain is stretched to the limit with multiple phone numbers, e-mail addresses, usernames, account sign-in names, passwords, PIN numbers. Not one hour of my day goes by when I am not asked for some kind of ID or number. I know you're never supposed to write all this stuff down or keep it stored anywhere but in your head. I'm convinced that's why I can't remember what I had for lunch today. I really believe that there is a finite amount of accessible hard drive memory and that once I reach capacity I can't put anything in there without kicking something out. So in order to remember my new web domain, I have to lose where I put my glasses.<br />
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Therefore, I do not expect any of you to remember where this blog is going, at least not right away. I plan to leave these pages, posts and links here for a while before shutting down, bye-bye. So if you keep coming back here because you forget that I have moved, lucky you. Maybe you're still holding the memory of what you had for lunch!Dorishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03694714243641300726noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3295979417355425378.post-21052881171523637412008-05-17T11:04:00.005-04:002008-05-17T11:43:00.165-04:00Look, Ma... no seams!<em>Welcome to my long over-due blogging debut. I agonized for days about what I should say in my first post. As usual I find myself blathering. See? I'm blathering right now.<br /><br />The following is an essay, an introduction to me, that got kicked from my first book. WOWSERS, my editors were so strict.<br /><br /></em>My search for ways to avoid sewing is a recent development. Sewing was always a part of life. My parents kept a big old Singer treadle machine in the back of the laundry for replacing customers’ buttons that got mangled by the shirt presses and for making alterations. And while I observed my mother sewing for us at home, I didn’t pick up a needle and thread myself until 7th grade Home Ec. My teacher, Mrs. Johnson, made us sew a sampler as part of the course. I sewed a brilliant red blanket stitch edge around my square of school-bus yellow fabric (my favorite colors in 7th grade). Mrs. Johnson was kind, diplomatic and unstinting in her praise of my hand stitching, but I only got a B in her class due to an incident with scrambled eggs totally not my fault.<br /><br />The next class project in sewing was making a simple garment with a set-in zipper. I made the first of many little skirts. I disliked wearing skirts and dresses and wouldn’t have but for the school dress code, which prohibited the wearing of pants by girls. Miraculously, one morning during homeroom it was announced over the PA system that the school board had lifted the ban. If you weren’t there you cannot imagine the din of a thousand girls raising up their voices to cheer as one. But that wouldn’t happen for another two years. Meanwhile, I was dutifully wearing skirts that my mother sewed.<br /><br />My hope is that I was diplomatic in telling my mother that I no longer wanted to wear the knee-length, gathered, bouffant skirts she made for me. Pop-culture insisted that fashionable skirts be tight and scandalously short. I’d like to say that I convinced her how much more economical short skirts would be. A mini-skirt needed yards less fabric. But what probably happened was she got sick of hearing me complain and just gave up.<br /><br />My favorite of all the skirts I made during that two-year period was cotton, navy with white pinstripes, the closest I could get to denim. It was majorly flawed, since I didn’t have enough fabric to properly match the stripes. In future I was to become an obsessive pattern matcher, but then, hey, it was close enough. That skirt was worn until it was rags, worn until the fateful PA announcement that obviated the wearing of it at all.<br /><br />Sewing for me was never about the process. I did it at first in order to have clothes that fit. Then I sewed for my sons lots of adorable little overalls. I made matching Hawaiian print shirts. My dad wore his grudgingly; my sons had no choice. Hey, Magnum P.I. had nothing on MY guys!<br /><br /><br /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5201369249396022898" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXSbEjSDmN5c0776J8VBEaoZTMoYgOXNvvrPp87XxZY7BWHYgPXbFjKMykCZXxXi5DYoeznJckqIN0KdQjRHIiraelOW10H4SoI79GXBkNLhNuavhe-Ddq53mCbsXJX1rhOlelkjsCvg8/s320/Aloha.jpg" border="0" /><br /><br />My greatest accomplishment in those years was getting the flowers on the breast pocket of each shirt to align perfectly with ones on the shirt front. I was well on my way to pattern obsession by then. And I was the only one who thought matching shirts were cute. The guys merely put up with them as another eccentricity of mine. How twisted was that? My sons equated Hawaiian shirts with motherly love.<br /><br />Sewing was never fun. Sewing became for me endless rounds of fussing. You press the tissue paper pattern, press the fabric, pin the pattern matching grain lines, cut the fabric leaving seam allowances, pin the seams, sew the seams, *rip the seams, re-sew the seams*, rep from * to * until your fingers bleed and the crooked seam starts to look not that crooked, clip the seams, press open the seams. If there has to be interfacing, lining, zipper or button holes, make that double and triple the fuss. And to top it all off there’s the finishing, hand sewing buttons, tacking down facings, hemming hems.<br /><br />It’s no surprise that I abandoned sewing once I re-discovered first knitting and then crochet. Gone were the hours of fooling with pre-made cloth and precise, rigid seaming. Crocheted fabric is personal and organic. It can be grown any-which-way through the skill of your hands from balls of yarn, it’s alive. It molds, stretches, breathes and drapes. Eventually I stumbled upon the secrets of out how to coax the fabric to grow, seamlessly, into beautiful garments, the joy of which I share with you in my books and designs.Dorishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03694714243641300726noreply@blogger.com18