Friday, March 14, 2014

Stitch Markers


I went shopping! I got a few small charms and some lobster claw clasps and made my own stitch markers last night. I didn't want them to be too heavy with beads or charms, because I figured that might tug on the yarn too much. Just something simple and cute and easy to use. I've put them on a chain and I'm wearing the chain today as a charm necklace. LOL!

Green Shawl


Well, I just completed this double-thickness shawl, crocheted with Lion Brand Homespun yarn in Duck Dynasty...I mean Mediterranean. LOL

It's thick, soft, and heavy. It will keep someone very warm indeed.

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Beaded Stitch Markers

OK seeing as how I have a crap ton of beads around the house, I have to make these (these photos were just random ones I found online; I did not make these):
Crochet stitch markers:

These have the lobster claw clasp on them to make them easy to move around on the work as you go.

Knitting stitch markers:



I don't knit with needles, but my guess is, these are placed on the needles to indicate where to knit and where to purl. Or to indicate where the beginning is when knitting in the round.

I could SO make some of these!

Milk Fiber Yarn?

Took myself up to St. Richard's Episcopal for Holy Eucharist on Sunday. Got to conversing with one woman about prayer shawls. She has lent me a book about prayer shawls, and in this book I noticed a reference to milk fiber yarn. I got curious about this so decided to look it up.

Milk Yarn? How Does That Work part 1

Milk Yarn part 2

Well well well. Learn something new every day. Who'd have thought of spinning thread and making yarn from milk proteins? Well, if someone can spin yarn from cat hair I suppose milk yarn isn't that odd.

We'll see how things go with the prayer shawl thing. I was told there's no wrong way to do it, yet at the same time the shawls have to be up to certain standards (of softness and sturdiness). Red Heart Super Saver yarn just isn't soft enough to use for these prayer shawls; Lion Brand Homespun or Caron Simply Soft or Red Heart Soft are better yarns to use. Hmmm.

Friday, March 7, 2014

Camo Shawl?


OK well, my hand seems to have recovered fairly well from the radial cardiac cath I had on 4 March, so I think I can crochet now. I'm doing something fairly easy - a box stitch shawl with double strands of Lion Brand Homespun yarn in "Mediterranean." Eh. I don't know about Mediterranean - more like Duck Dynasty/1980s US Army camo to me. I'm kinda sorry I chose this color, quite frankly. I should have gone with the "Tudor" color, which looks like this:


Maybe I'll just get 10 skeins of this next time I shop for yarn. I think I like these colors better than the "Mediterranean." 

Saturday, March 1, 2014

Scrap Yarn Ball


All of this yarn is some of my extra yarn that I had left over from other projects. I took each color and cut it into pieces about twice as long as my armspan, then used the magic knot to connect them pretty much randomly.

This to me looks almost like the earth as seen from the Apollo spacecrafts, when they orbited the moon and came around the other side and snapped that famous "Earthrise" picture...


So if I ever get crazy and combine those colors again, I'll call it my Earthrise color combination. :)

This Is Why...


...I MUST move to Toronto.

You just never see yarn sales like THIS in Florida!

Loom Knitting

I LOVE loom knitting! I'm just getting started with it, and I do one basic stitch for the time being with it, but I have noticed, by way of viewing YouTube videos and checking various websites, that one can knit and purl and do cables and all kinds of things with loom knitting. So I'll get to that eventually!

I like loom knitting because, quite frankly, I'm too clumsy to manage knitting with needles. So this is a good substitution for me.

I'm working on this scarf:


I loves me the cool, elegant colors of that yarn, which is Lion Brand Wool-Ease Thick n Quick yarn, in....I think they call that color "marble." 

I've actually got much further on this scarf than the photo indicates. I have almost used up the first skein of yarn, and I'm ready to add the second skein. I'm not sure if I should "magic knot" it on or figure out something else; this is the first time I'm adding more yarn to a project like this, and it's not quite like crochet! 

But I got a good close up photo of the stitches:


So yeah. Hopefully as I keep going I'll figure out how to do cables and whatnot.