Category Archives: Works in Progress

In Brief Praise of Ugliness

With my clothing, I rarely venture outside dark colors and neutrals. The most thrilling sweater I own is in a shade of cranberry. However, that doesn’t prevent me from using color in the projects I crochet; lots of color and all of it at once. The lion's share of my handiwork is cheerfully ugly, the natural conclusion of higher gauges, a bird-like level concentration and all that aforementioned use of color. If a project goes as planned, it's so delightfully unattractive that I'm pleased and repulsed in equal measure!

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Help! What should I do?

In the beginning of October, I told you in a post about the hat I made for my granddaughter - as a reminder, here’s a picture of Kalyn and her big brother Cole. So after this little photo shoot, Cole asks me if I could make him a hat and of course I told him I would love to!  "What would you like your hat to be?" I asked "Skulls!" He said - yes, he's 8 years old!

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Project ideas?

I recently finished spinning a bunch of the roving that I had dyed with Greener Shades dyes back in February.  I was trying to work my way through a bin of older fiber before I allowed myself to play with my new goodies - thinking about it, it's kind of weird that I create so many rules for myself while working on tasks that are supposed to be purely recreational.   Anyway, I ended up pulling out several braids of dyed Merino that seemed the most fun, then spun them each into a lofty 2-ply bulky weight yarn.  I had split each braid in half and then predrafted the fiber without splitting it further, resulting in long color repeats for each single ply.  When I plied them together, I got a nice barberpole effect that should work up as subtly shifting stripes.

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Under the influence of yarn

There are so many reasons to love yarn, and those reasons are as different as the crafters who use it. But, what we can agree on is that using yarn confers a benefit to us. (Otherwise, why would we keep on using it?) One of the greatest benefits for me, is that yarn and knitting give me a way to pass time that otherwise would be wasted, or spent doing something much less pleasant. It allows me to take those little chunks of time standing in line at the grocery store, in the waiting room at the dentist, riding the train, etc., and turn them into productive moments. When you're an on-the-go type of knitter, it's kind of amazing how much time you never knew you had! But, sometimes, life throws you a situation in which waiting is all you can do, and unless you have something to keep your brain busy, it drags on forever. Like the hospital! We checked in at 7am. I pulled out the little sleeves as the nurses went through the pre-op procedure.

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Cute as a button!

I don't know if this has ever happened to you, but I was browsing through the kazillion of fun buttons at Joann's a while back and found this button "Cute as a button".  Which describes my granddaughter. (I think that's what any nana would say! right?)  (here's a picture of Kalyn -not big on smiling- with big brother, Cole)

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Vacation Projects

So what kind of crafting projects do you choose for your vacations?  Do you choose something simple & mindless (why stress about something while on vacation?) or do you go all out for something complicated? For myself, I pretty much choose mindless projects for when I'm traveling for vacation - that way I don't have to carry charts or anything around.  But I'm going to do something different when I'm on vacation next week. I'm not going to be doing any traveling beyond a trip to Seattle on the weekend to see my two favorite baseball teams play and I'll be driving so no time to knit then!  So it'll be a "staycation" and I decided to challenge myself. (both of these photos courtsey of Erica Jackofsky)  

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Weekend baby blanket

Yes, yes – I know these are washclothes but the pattern is also known as a wonderfully simple design for baby blankets.  The key is that you start at one corner. You can choose how many rows you knit to make the size anything from a washcloth to a full-sized afghan. Perfect for my weekend knitting. Here’s the story. A friend sent me an e-mail this morning. A friend of hers was just blessed with her first grandchild. Her friend is the knitter of the family but she is having a few health issues that make it impossible for her to knit anything. My friend was wondering if I would mind knitting up something for the new baby as a representative of his grandmother’s best wishes. Hah! Bob and I are visiting his son in Seattle this weekend. Lots of knitting time! I can’t think of a ...

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