I finished rewinding all the yarn remnants into cakes. It might not make a long term difference in the neatness of the stash, but it soothes my soul to have them all center-pull. We’re all different.
All wrapped up
Tag: acrylic
Ball to cake
Every knitter or crocheter has their own preference for the form of their yarn. My friend prefers to wind her yarn into balls before she gets started. With purchased yarn, I dig into the middle and pull the yarn from the inside, then wind the remains as cakes on a winder, or nostepinne style balls. I have a whole bag of remnants that are balled and I am rewinding them as cakes.
I tried using my ceramic yarn bowl, but it isn’t up to the speed produced by the winder, so I dropped the ball into a basket so it didn’t roll around on the floor.
Poncho fix
To make the poncho that I made from a free blanket wearable, I used inexpensive acrylic yarn to do a blanket stitch around the neckline, then crocheted into the blanket stitch.
I then alternated rows of shell stitches, 3 on the first row, two on the second, and decreased at the V on each side.
I don’t know why one side has more stitches than the other, but I didn’t count, so that is probably the cause of the error. The crochet did help keep the poncho on, but I still hate wearing it. I even tried wearing it sideways with a “V” on each shoulder. That was better, but the corners on my hands were annoying.
I’m very glad I did this trial with inexpensive materials, and did not put in hours knitting something that I would hate wearing.
1×1 colorwork
I have been fascinated with Wool & Pine’s “Seaglass” series of knitwear patterns and have been collecting patterns, but haven’t tried knitting them, until now. A friend gave me a bag of skein ends, which are all the same yarn size, but a variety of colors, which was perfect for the pattern.
I am currently randomly choosing two colors for each row. The original pattern was in the round, but for the cardigan they have a clever way of knitting and cleaning up the edges. Here is a link to the pattern. My test piece is a good opportunity to test my understanding of their method and play with color to see what I like, and what I don’t. I already know that for me I need to not stack similar color intensity, or have rows with the same hue, even if they have different shades.
Throwback Thursday: crocheted bookmarks
Here is a cute teacher gift: crocheted pencil bookmarks. They make up quickly, use just single crochet, and use up yarn scraps, or those cute tiny skeins. I made these in May of 2015 using this pattern from LittleOwlHut on Ravelry.
Important note, as you crochet these curl. To get them flat, steaming them works well. You can also iron them between two thin layers of cotton. If you choose to do blocking (getting them wet and laying flat to dry), pin them down well.
Critters and Craft 