As The Yarn Turns

Done!

How's that for a title? All of my long standing, unfinished projects are completed. The last of them, the May Socks were completed yesterday. Okay, I still have the Ramblin' Rows afghan to complete, but I'm not in a big hurry with it. It's more of a "knit once and a while" project. I'm rather pleased with the way they turned out, although the ribbed pattern is all that visible with the variegated yarn. I liked knitting with the Cherry Tree Hill yarn. It's not like knitting with Koigu but it is still a nice yarn to knit. The yarn is fairly soft but firm and I had no problems with splitting. It will be interesting to see how they wear.

So in honor of finishing all of these projects that were beginning to be tiresome, I bought more yarn. The local yarn store just happened to have a conveniently timed yarn sale. It's hard to ignore homeless yarn forced to be put on sale. So I ended up with some Tahki Cotton Classic for a summer top. (No, I don't know what pattern I'll use yet. I also thought I would try some cotton socks since I found some soft cotton yarn in springy colors (Filatura di Crosa, Dolce Amore). We'll see how they turn out.

I also noticed that Hobby Lobby is now carrying packets of cloth strips for fabric knitting. I haven't tried fabric knitting but I have heard about it. I just didn't realize there were enough people doing it to be carrying precut strips of fabric. Maybe I'll try it one of these days.

Here's hoping for a drier day tomorrow.

by Sydney  |

Beading

Since I seem to be in a beading mood lately, I thought I would show you how I put the beads on. I am not an expert at beading by any means. Mostly I just dabble when the mood strikes, and the mood doesn't strike that often. I'm sure many of you out there are much more experienced at this than me. (It's okay if you want to skip on over this entry.) Eventually I get annoyed at the beads when they get spilled everywhere and I put them away for a while. During this last series of messing around with beads, I decided to use a crochet hook. I'm pretty sure I have beading needles but darned if I can find them. I found darning needles and embroidery needles in with the beading supplies, but no beading needles. Anyway, if you have never used a crochet hook to put beads on, it's actually pretty easy. You need one of those teeny tiny metal crochet hooks used for making lace doilies and such. I used a size 0.9 mm for the beads on my mohair scarf/wrap and the 0.9 and another one slightly larger for the wrist distaff. For obvious reasons, the beads will have to be a least large enough for the crochet hook to go through the hole.

To put a bead on your knitting while you are knitting, stick a bead on your crochet hook. If I'm doing a lot of them, I will just stick the crochet hook in a small dish of beads and grab one with the hook.

Once you have your bead on the crochet hook, put your next stitch from your left needle on the crochet hook in front of the bead.

You may want to do this over a table where you can lay down your knitting if needed. Next pull the bead over the stitch on the crochet hook and push it down to the bottom of the stitch.

Place the stitch back on the left needle and knit like you normally would.

You can also use this technique if you are stringing beads on yarn rather than inserting them into your knitting. That's what I did for the wrist distaff. If you're going to do lots of beads though, a beading needle would probably be more efficient. With my smallest crochet hook, There was a tendency to split the yarn. It helps to give the yarn an extra twist before you snag it through the bead. I like this techniques when I'm basically winging it and I'm not sure if I want to use 10 beads or 200 beads.

by Sydney  |

When Good Drugs Go Bad

This weekend I learned why there are so many drugs. Because often different people react differently to any particular drug. My doctor gave me a new drug this week. All was going well until last night. It went something like this.

Me: I'm going to go lay down. I'm feeling kind of dizzy.

Rick: Okay.

Me: I'm going to go lay down.

Rick: Uh, you just said that.

(After a while Rick comes in to check on me.)

Rick: Why are you watching a show on motorcycle maintenance?

Me (with remote at my side): I don't know. It too much trouble to change the channel.

(Later)

Me (still with remote at my side): Can you turn the TV off?

Rick: Uh, you know you can do that with the remote?

Me: Oh!

Rick: I think I'll send a message to the doctor. Lets prop your feet up and try to get some more blood to your brain.

Now there's absolutely nothing wrong with TV shows about motorcycles or motorcycle maintenance, but that's got to be the only time I've ever shown any interest in motorcycles - if you can call that interest. All of my mental and physical functions are back to normal state today and I don't think I'll be taking that particular drug again anytime soon.

Before I went off to lala land, I did actually do some fibery things. I'll save you from still more progress pictures. The really fun thing I did, though, was to make a wrist distaff for spindle spinning. It seemed like a good idea after getting tangled up in my roving several times this week. So I dug out some of my first hand-dyed, hand-spun yarn and a few beads and made myself a wrist distaff.

You can find the instructions on Elaine Benfatto's Urbanspinner web site. (There is a lot of other good information on the site, so browse around while you're there.) All it takes is about 12 yards of your main yarn, about 12 inches of a contrasting yarn, and enough beads for about 32 ends. To use it, just slip it on your wrist and wrap your fiber around the section where the wrist part and dangling ends come together.

When you are ready to stop, just slip it off your wrist, fiber and all, and put it away. There are also some instructions for making a ply split wrist distaff in the new summer issue of Spin-Off. I'll save that for some other day.

by Sydney  |