Wednesday, November 13

dabbling with skeins...

on sunday i took my 4 lovely Erika Knight vintage wool skeins to the yarn store to dabble with a bit of yarn skein winding. thinking it muchly a cunning plan to practice the fine art of skein winding upon my own little yarny skeins before i am let loose on customers of the utmost kind and their yarny skeins.

i must confess, in days gone past when skeins were more common place in mossy shed i would find a small being to help but small beings are rare these days, almost as rare as skeins of yarn. thus it is quite the thrill to dabble with a skein or two again. 


the yarn which is having all my attention lavished upon it this week is vintage wool by Erika Knight. upon perusal of her most loveliest of books Simple Crocheting, my crafty heart and my crafty head settled upon the Edging Stitch Scarf which is a garland of jolly popcorn crocheted flowers, looking mighty peachy in the picture and i thought to myself... well that would look mighty peachy wrapped around the outside collar of my granny peachy pink coat found a few weeks back on a thrift store pottle. i say the outside because i am fearful if it were on the inside and being wool it may be a tad itchy. 

i am muchly enjoying making the little crocheted popcorn flowers and doing a jolly good job of not getting all itchy and bothered by the yarn so far. 


a quarter of the way through i cannot help but admire how well my little balls of wound skeins are doing at staying all wound up, just as they should be and not collapsing from the middle out. this gives me high hopes, the same will be said for the skeins i wind for customers in the store :)


Friday, November 8

knitty news flash...

knitty news flash number one:

two sundays ago, riding high from knitting a little heart specimen i announced to myself and all critters and my lads of three. "i am going to knit a flower" and so i did...

i took one thrift store frock and plotted its cross stitched beauty on 4 pieces of taped together graph paper i found lurking in the drawer. i then rummaged around forever and a day to find colouring pencils that a) had any lead in them and b) were of close enough colour to my yarns not to get me all in a muddle


after my plotting i rested for it took way more out of me then i thought it would to plot and plan a little knitty flower on graph paper

on monday, i bravely went where my knitty soul has never gone before


on tuesday, i noted several things, thing one: i could read a graph pattern and translate it into knitting. thing two: i could do this if a) no one, not even a critter spoke to me and b) if i kept my tongue slightly poked out to aid maximum concentration

a few days later, it required my knitty specimen to be handled with great care. pacing myself and the tangled threads i left behind required deep breathing and many many breaks


one week later i saw improvement in my stitching, picking the knit, throwing the purl. i no longer got my yarns in a twist and when changing colours i carried and looped so no gaps appeared. i grew impatient, i wished for my yarny flower to be complete, already other yarny makes were whispering in my ear


one and a half weeks later, staying strong, ignoring those whisperings i came out victorious. my six coloured knitty flower was complete. was it perfectly perfect? not a chance. was it squiffy and wonky? by the bucket load. would it win a rosette if a rosette were up for grabs? i very muchly doubt it.




but that does not matter in the itty bitty least. 

for what it did do, is precisely what i so hoped it would do, what so often when you try something new with your crafty soul appears to happen. you step back and you cannot help but marvel at how much sense of inner pride and satisfaction comes with pushing your crafty cogs beyond their comfort zone 

did i think less than 2 months back i would even be picking up the old rusty dusty knitting needles again, no sirree! and even more so, did i ever think i would dabble with more than one colour thread on my needles, not a chance, i would have said you were barking mad to think ever a day would come. but come it did and with it whole new little section in my crafty soul has opened up and embraced a love of knitting again which i thought was lost forever

knitty new flash number two:

hurrah hooray! tomorrow is the grand old big old day! as a reminder Tolt Yarn and Wool is opening its doors and welcomes one and all to come on by and say hello and see what is what and who is who. i will be there with my shop assistant cap on and my very own name badge! from 2 till 6, and if you do happen to come for a visit, be sure to say hello




Thursday, November 7