On Sunday morning, January 22, at 4:30 AM the new hand crocheted curtain was hanging!
Mega Task Crocheting DONE
Photos taken later on Sunday, after I'd slept a couple of hours...
They also are perfectly in length, not touching our Delftware houses that we earned by flying KLM Royal Dutch Airlines (we got often an upgrade with our Royal Wing cards!).
On January 11, on my sister's 67th Birthday in heaven, I started...
'ONLY' 12 segments with Fleur de Lys to go and crocheting at a rapid, robotic pace without errors would yield one Fleur de Lys every 6.5 hours...
BUT how can a human being work without any errors?!
Impossible and I had to undo many times 2 rows.
You only 'spot' the error on the returning row... Arg.
It teaches patience and concentration!
Since it was such a Mega Task, I was determined though to have it hanging by Sunday!
It became heavy and harder to handle.
See the cone to the left, on the floor?!
Days were dark and the artificial light had to be used.
After breakfast, getting dressed and barely time for doing anything with my hair, I sat there.
Husband Pieter was the Chef for that time... He did well!
Using 2 sticky notes taped together I moved up, row by row.
On the left I wrote: 8 l (lossen in Dutch) for the 8 Chain Stitches it would take to add on.
I must say that the directions were POOR!
Lots of errors in this drawing too. Where I marked with the pen, bottom right, those should be openings for creating that wide V-shaped stitch.
3 Chain Stitches and 1 Single Crochet done inside the 5 Chain Stitches of alternative rows!
So not 'around' but I did make those Single Crochets inside the Center Chain Stitches!
Harder to do but looking a lot neater.
One X stands for 4 Double Crochet and two XX = 7 Double Crochet etc.
For those that love this pattern:
Starting out on 156+3 (for Double Crochet at the beginning!) Chain Stitches and make your 1st Double Crochet inside the 4th Chain Stitch = 157 Double Crochet total.
At the end for adding XX you make 8 Chain Stitches and insert into the 4th for making Double Crochet = 7 added total.
12 Fleur de Lys done!
I had to sew on the 11 brass rings, that I have from my dear Mom, old ones for curtains that hung from a thinner rod.
Then I proceeded to launder them in short cycle and pressing the pointed area.
Should have pressed the entire Fleur de Lys however...
Had to use the hammer for first putting the 2 lower brass nails on the sides.
So they got hung wet and stretched up into perfect shape.
Love the quality of this 100% Egyptian Cotton by Lizbeth in a 6-cord Cordonnet!
Next day my left index finger and middle finger were still red and very tender from working with that steel crochet hook over 100+ hours!
My tip of the thumb is still kind of numb and index and thumb feel like a mix between callous and blister...
Before I fell onto the mattress, I wrote this for Pieter:
Bid maar voor mij.. In English: Pray also for me... meaning that I would not join him to Church!).
Pieter wrote in Dutch: Jij bent een verbazend iemand!
Pracht resultaat!
English: You are an amazing person!
Splendid result!
It will take a while before I will create the smaller, half sized one and even that will take 50+ hours.
So happy that I had enough thread and that my design worked out perfect for these windows at this scale.
Hope you like them too.
Catching up on lots of things...
Related link:
{After 40 years Something's Gotta GIVE...} | previous post by me about the reason and the start...
