I’ve been thinking about upcycling and recycling projects in honor of  Earth Day.

Mother Earth doll designed and woven by Noreen Crone-Findlay (copyright)

Green and eco projects are always a good idea.

I wanted to celebrate Earth day by coming up with some fun ‘eco-upcycling’ projects that would be quick, easy and oh so friendly to the Earth.

I’ve made a few notes about a couple of them, and will be sharing them this week.

Today, a very very easy one  popped into my mind.

I was rummaging through a drawer and

I found a bit of  inkle weaving that had been left over from another project.

I thought… hmmm…. this would make a great bookmark!

Bookmarks are great.

They are a fun way to experiment with needlework techniques and take ideas for trial runs.  You can make a small sample or a swatch and then modify it a little and use it to keep your place when you’re reading…. that’s great… multi-tasking!

Besides… I can never have enough bookmarks. I often mark several places in the same book, so a spare bookmark is always welcome.

And… another thing…. bookmarks make great little gifts. You can pop them in an envelope and mail them of to a friend to make them feel extra appreciated. Yup…. bookmarks are fine things!

Anyhow. Back to this particular bit of upcycling.

I liked the idea of using this scrap of inkle weaving as a bookmark -

But, it needed something….. hmmmm…

Then, I noticed the corner of an out of date business card.

Aha! I could use the pic off the business card to ‘top’ the bookmark!

photo by Noreen Crone-Findlay copyright

I grabbed a pair of scissors and some extra thick glue.

photo by Noreen Crone-Findlay copyright

I snipped the pic off the business card, then cut a back the same size, and glued them to the weaving.

Voila! an instant upcycled bookmark!

photo by Noreen Crone-Findlay copyright

Hmmm… the cut out is kind of wonky…. so

I thought…. let’s try this again!

This time, I used a fragment of tatting that I had tossed in the drawer after ’sampling’ some crochet cotton to see if it would be okay for tatting.

And, I decided to use a punch to cut out the shapes from the business cards to make the cutout top more regular:

photo by Noreen Crone-Findlay copyright

I added a small tassel to the end of the tatting and then glued it all together:

photo by Noreen Crone-Findlay copyright

There… I like that better… using a punch to cut out the pic for the top of the bookmark makes it cleaner. I’m happy with it….

Hurrah for upcycling!

What if you don’t have old business cards? Cut or punch out a front and matching back from a photograph or use a postage stamp or even a bit of a pic from junk mail!

What if you don’t have a scrap of weaving or lace? Use a bit of ribbon, or spool knitting, or part of a broken tape measure….

what  do you have ? Upcycle it!

A member of the Ravelry group: Tatta tat tatters had a lovely idea for a shower gift for her friend.

She decided to make her a hankie with simple tatted edging, and asked for input.

I thought…. ooooooooh how neat…. I have a collection of vintage lace trimmed hankies that I love,

so it seems to me to be the perfect timeless and heartfelt gift.

I looked on the net to see if I could find some entry level tatted edgings,

photo by Noreen Crone-Findlay copyright

but didn’t find any.

But, I did find 2 sources for linen hankies to add the lovely lace to:

mielkes farm

and

lacis

I looked at a heap of sites, and decided that it was easier to just do a quick tute here,

since the request had been for an entry level edging,

and all I saw were somewhat more advanced ones.

I also decided, that since I didn’t have any blank hankies, that I would

make  a bookmark instead.

I decided that I’d show 3 different quick and easy edgings.

I wove 3 little squares with crochet cotton

and my  little old Weave It

photo by Noreen Crone-Findlay copyright

2 inch square loom.

And stitched them together.

For the first short edge, which is the edge at the bottom of the bookmark,

I decided to use a version of the same simple pattern that Itopped my socks with:

Starting at the lower short edge of the bookmark:

Tie the shuttle and ball of thread to a corner stitch,

ch 7 ds;

make a ring of: 3 ds, p, 3 ds, p, 3 ds, p,3 ds, p,3 ds, p,3 ds, close.

Turn, ch 7 ds. Join to next stitch on bookmark or hanky.

Repeat the  green colored pattern along the first short edge.

Working along the long edge: Still working with shuttle and ball:

Ch 3 ds, p, 3ds, join to next space or stitch on bookmark or hanky.

Repeat purple instructions along the long edge.

Second short edge: This is the top of the bookmark: Rings worked with shuttle only:

(I took the ball thread across the end, joining it to each loop of the bookmark,

photo by Noreen Crone-Findlay copyright

but it could have been cut and rejoined for the second long side)

First Ring: 5 ds, p, 5 ds, p, 5 ds, p,5 ds, close.  Leave a space of about 1/8 inch,

join to next space.

Second and remaining rings: 5 ds, join to last  p of previous ring, 5 ds, p, 5 ds, p,5 ds, close.

Leave a space of about 1/8 inch, join to next space.

Repeat orange instructions across second short edge.

Repeat purple instructions along the second long edge.

Weave in any loose ends and trim.

I stitched bits of sample tatting and a tatted butterfly onto the bookmark to finish it.

I used a ball of really old mercerized tatting cotton size 100 for the edging.

I bought it in a second hand store in my youth, long ago and far away….

It is such a pleasure to use old tools and threads, and to give them new life.

Who knows? Maybe someday, someone will open a book and this little bookmark will fall out……

It’s so easy to add a little touch of springtime to your sockies! So…. why have plain jane socks?

photo by Noreen Crone-Findlay copyright

You can add a little embellishment to socks that you have knitted or crocheted,

like these ones that I just finished knitting.

Or, you can dress up purchased socks by stitching on purchased or crocheted or tatted

lace.

photo by Noreen Crone-Findlay copyright

I tatted super simple flowers onto these socks…. it took 4 attempts to get the sock

edging right.  I found that I liked it best when I cut the self striping yarn into colorways

that made sense for the flowers.

The flowers are rings of 3 ds, p, 3 ds, p, 3 ds, p,3 ds, p,3 ds, p,3 ds, p,3 ds, p,3 ds, close.  So, I put the flower colors onto the tatting shuttle, and used the green shades as the ch of 7 ds, to make them read as the stems for the flowers.

By cutting the yarn, and paying attention to where the colors were going to be, it made the flowers read much better than when I  just let the yarn come off the ball willynilly.

Don’t be afraid to cut the yarn! Make those stripey bits work for you.

AND…. have fun tatting with sock yarn. Sock yarn is springy and bouncy and tats up just beautifully.   So….. sock yarn is not just for knitting or crocheting! Get out your tatting shuttles and tatta-tat-tat with it!

One of the members of the Tatta-tat-tatters tatting group on Ravelry mentioned that she tatted edgings onto her daughter’s socks.

I was immediately inspired!

photo by Noreen Crone-Findlay (copyright)

I have sewn lace edging to socks, but never tatted it on.

Last fall, when I was teaching workshops in Portland at the Knit and crochet conference, the goodie bag had sock yarn in it. So, I started these socks, and have picked away at them on and off all winter.

I finally finished them the other day, so now….

I get to have fun with them!

I am doing a super simple tatted flower edging on them, and I am really pleased with it.

I had to start over 3 times, as the first time, I started off with a section of yarn that I really don’t like. It’s got orange and green all smooshed together and looks muddy. So, I frogged that and cut that section of yarn out.

Then, I started again, but realized that I had made the chained sections too long.

Ribbit ribbit ribbit….

Now, I am happy.  7 ds, turn, a ring of 3ds-[p-3ds] 7 times, 7 ds.

It really doesn’t get any easier. But, sometimes, it’s fun to just do ‘easy’.

One of my concerns was that I might make it hard to get my foot into the sock, which is why I have the fairly long chained sections to allow for expansion.

The yarn is Red Heart Heart & Sole with Aloe #3965 Razzle Dazzle.  I love the yarn. It’s a pleasure to work with.

As I worked with the edging, I decided that I still wasn’t happy….

photo by Noreen Crone-Findlay copyright

so I have started over YET AGAIN>>>>>

This time I am pleased.

I have been cutting the yarn and separating the colors, so the flowery bits go on the shuttle to make the blossoms, and the greenie bits go on the ball to make the stems.

I have also put more space between each flower by skipping 2 purl stitches on the cuff and  joining between the 2 knitted stitches of the rib.

And…. Now I am happy with my springtime socks!

The pink in the pic is actually much redder and is more of a rosie color than the bubblegummy version of the photo.

When I posted about exploring carving bone, I had a somewhat uneasy feeling that I might offend some people.

And…. indeed, I did offend someone.

This morning, a reader wrote me a letter, telling me so in no uncertain terms.

She found the comment that I left, talking about carving bone as an ancient technique to be patronizing.

I most certainly DID NOT intend to be patronizing.

I had my doubts about working with bone - my husband and I don’t eat meat (but I do have some leather shoes, and was given some vintage leather coats that I wear).

Bones do have to have the meat stripped and cleaned off them before they can be carved and worked.

BTW, In the first comment that was left on the original entry, the reader went: eeeeeeeeuw… gross about our dogs having chewed the bone first.

I find that puzzling, as I did explain that I washed it thoroughly before working with it, and any part that the dogs’ mouths had touched was certainly sanded, filed, scrubbed and polished off.)

The bones we buy our dogs are smoked, and cleaned, so they don’t
have meat on them when we buy them. I wasn’t sure if it was the thought of the meat on the bones that bothered the commenter (no meat on them when we bought them) or that the dogs had had them in their mouths…. I just don’t know….
I cleaned off  the bones and scrubbed and polished them, so they were spotless
before I began working with them.

I had my doubts about working with bone, but told myself: People
have been using this medium for making tools and creating beauty since
the beginning of time, so why not give it a try…..  when I posted this in the response to the first comment on the previous entry, I should have made myself clear that I had to wrestle with the idea of working with bone, and this is what I was telling myself as I did it.

Also, should the bone just be thrown in the trash when the dogs are no longer interested in carrying it around the house?

Why not create something beautiful with it.

AND, as I was working with the bones, I said prayers for the cows that died and thanked them for their sacrifice.

Bone definitely carries the energy of life, so I was very cautious about carving it. I wanted to be respectful in working with it.

I am very happy with  the shuttles. They  do feel exquisite to work with, but,  I don’t know if I would make bone shuttles to sell.

The letter writer informed me that she would never buy them from me.  I am not sure if it is the dog’s mouths having touched the bones, or her being offended because she thought that my comment was snotty.

(Totally NOT my intention, that’s for sure. I am a lot of things, and sometimes, one of the things I am is rude, but never on purpose)

This has been an intense exploration….

I apologized to the lady who wrote me the letter, and if other people have been offended, well…. I apologize to them, too.

Recently, I signed up for a very neat online class about tatting and design. I’ve been really remiss and haven’t done a single snippet of homework for the class.

photo by Noreen Crone-Findlay (copyright)

I’ve been focused on finishing up the designs and projects for a new book, and have been totally immersed in it.  Oops…. the homework  for the tatting class got  pushed to the back burner.

I decided today that I would play catchup, and get going on the homework.

I filled a tatting shuttle with rainbow colored hemp cord and tatted up the first exercise.

I decided that it would make a great bookmark….

photo by Noreen Crone-Findlay (copyright)

so…… I tatted up the side of the first section, and added a dragonfly at the top of the bookmark.

I quite like tatting with unusual yarns  like hemp cord, but, you have to make allowances for it’s idiosincratic nature.

The thickness of the cord tends to change, and sometimes you get little tussocky bits.

It makes it somewhat challenging to tat, but it’s still fun, and I do recommend it.

I then switched to silk thread that I had left over from tatting butterflies for my daughter’s wedding dress a couple of years ago.

The silk thread is very fine and soft, and when I was making the butterflies I found that a single strand made incredibly tiny butterflies.

photo by Noreen Crone-Findlay (copyright)

Because of this, I doubled it up and worked with 2 strands.  It’s lovely thread and tats up beautifully.

And so, then,  I finished up the homework for the second lesson  of the course.

I had intended to move straight on to the homework for the third lesson,  but I got distracted.

I was giving our dog a bone to chew on, when I noticed that one of the bones that the dogs had already chewed clean was really straight and hollow.

I had an ‘upcycling’ moment, and  thought…

photo by Noreen Crone-Findlay (copyright)

I could make tatting shuttles from this!

Earlier in the weekend, I had joined the Trashion upcycling/recycling team on etsy, so I was definitely ‘pre-programmed’ to be thinking about alternative uses of materials!

(I took a pic of the bone, but when I was photoshopping it, the program hung royally. Arghhh.

Anyhow, trust me…. it was a big old, cleaned bare bone that the dogs had had a lovely time with.)

I scrubbed it off, and traced my templates onto it.

My husband called out to me to wear the heavy duty dust mask as I was trotting out to the workshop.  You bet… I didn’t fancy inhaling the sand off the bone!

I was a little concerned about what it would be like to saw and file and sand.

all photos by Noreen Crone-Findlay (copyright)

It definitely has grain…. and it does splinter if you catch it the wrong way with the files.

But…. I really like the way the bone polishes up.

I decided to take a chance and see if I could use my wood burner on the bone. Yes! and it didn’t even smell! I thought that it might…..

The finished tatting shuttles feel really nice. They are light and smooth and pleasing to the touch.

So, it was really worthwhile to take a chance and follow my inclination about experimenting with the dog’s old chewie bones.

Although they keep coming up to me and looking very, very sad about their Mum snitching their treat……

And, oh yes…. I really ought to get back to that homework.  If this class was in the ‘real’ world, I’d probably be relegated to the back of the class!  Ahem.

This week’s listing of artsy bloggers links has, as usual, some fun stuff for you to check out!

Cyndi always has great tutorials to inspire you. Check out this week’s: She shows how to make absolutely gorgeous monoprint papers.

I just loved Chloe’s tutorial on making woven heart bags, so I couldn’t resist including it in today’s roundup:

A New Creative Journal
Heather Goldsmith is starting a new blog about journal writing.

How to Make Window Envelope Cards
Which do you prefer - the stamped or digital version?

Recycling and upcycling for threadies
My  husband bought me a bag of mystery threads which I recycled and upcycled in a neat way.

Some spool knitters with special connections
A jewlery maker contacted me with a special request. This lead to a whole lot of fun….

Trails End Quilters’ Quilts
Mary Emma, at the Trails End Quilters, ponders over the origin of a wedding quilt and urges you to write down the history of your quilts.

Image by Noreen Crone-Findlay (copyright)

Of course, I couldn’t stop at just one bracelet…

so I made a second one:

Because I had a plan…. bangle bracelets look better when there are more than one….

(BTW, the flash does nasty things to the bracelets…. in real life, they look smooth and kind of irridescent. The flash seems to expose their undies. How rude!)

AND, because I love Furoshiki.

What’s  Furoshiki?

It’s an ancient and elegant Japanese solution to carrying things in the greenest possible way.

Here’s a link: FUROSHIKI

I’ve impressed the heck out of all kinds of people by whipping a headscarf out of my purse and tying a couple of knots in it to make a market bag.

I have also been using bracelets  as handles for my version of furoshiki.

Here’s how:

Tie 2 adjacent corners to one bracelet, and the other 2 corners to the second bracelet….

and VOILA!

You have an instant, earth friendly, eco happy market bag, GREEN tote bag, carry sack, re-usable, upcycled, recycled tote!

HURRAH!

(image source: photo by Noreen Crone-Findlay. Copyright, not to be used without permission)

My husband started it all. He bought me a bag of mystery synthetic cheap and cheerful thread at our favourite second hand store, and then magically made it appear in my studio.  (He’s such a romantic! He knows that I am addicted to thread in all it’s manifestations - even cheap and cheerful mystery thread! LOL)

Part 1- upcycling a bag of funky mystery thread

So, I got out some of the tatting shuttles that I love to carve and filled them up with multiple strands of the threads:

Part 2 - Choosing colors and loading tatting shuttles

Now, some folks might say that this is NOT really tatting… but it is!

Really!

Part 3- The Josephine Knot worked over the bracelet

Changing colors might seem tricky, but it’s not….

Part 4 - Color changes

And, one bracelet was good, so 2 were even better! Besides, now, I can multitask with them!

Wear them as bracelets, then whip them off and make a magic market bag- INSTANTLY!

Part 5- How to turn bangle bracelets into an oh so Green, eco friendly market bag

No animals were harmed in the making of these bracelets.

She did, however, supervise the whole process VERY closely.

(image source: photo by Noreen Crone-Findlay. Copyright, not to be used without permission)

In Part 3, the tatting finally began!

This is a rather unique approach to tatting…. there are no lacy bits, no loops, picots, chains, just plain Josephine Knots over a simple flat wooden bracelet with upcycled funky thread.

(Feel free to do this with gorgeous thread! It will be - well….. gorgeous!)

Now…..

What if you want to change colors?

Easy peasy….

1 choice is to cut the first color, leaving a few inches to spare.

Just pick up the next color, and hold the thread end from it together with the last  thread end, and carry on as if you were in your right mind.

When you make the first pass with the second color, make an ‘e’ with the thread to encourage the thread to tighten up.

Squish the threads really close together.

Sometimes, let the threads at the inside of the bracelet lay on top of the previous one to make them fan out a little and get maximum coverage.

Continue to add more colors, working with just one tatting shuttle at a time

OR

With all your shuttles all at once.  Don’t cut the threads, just carry them along the outside edge, and tat over the non - working threads.

As you decide that you’ve done with one color, snip it and work over the ends to hide them. When the bracelet is done,  snip the last colors, thread the ends into a sewing needle and take the ends inside all the wraps.

Voila! an upcycled thread tatted bracelet!

Ahem. I know I shouldn’t…. but I just couldn’t resist:

Always, Mum, you take the silly pictures of me…..

this will cost you in tuna.

(image source: photo by Noreen Crone-Findlay. Copyright, not to be used without permission)