A Happy Ending to the Year :)

As per usual, I have let my blogging lay aside too long. I could get all remorseful about it, but quite truthfully, I just didn't have the desire to put in the time to keep up with it. That's where I love Twitter - I can just fill in those 140 characters & be done with it when I have the time to put into it - blogs are just so much more daunting to me.

However, I still hope to make a post here at least twice a week (at least that's my New Year's goal), but I won't beat myself up over it if I don't. I'm thinking that if I give an update at least once a month it'll still be a vast improvement over what I've been doing (or not doing) so far.

So a recap:
Tote Bag - still haven't had time to put towards it, but we've just entered into winter break for our home school, so expect to get it done during this time.

Larry's wool socks - finished last month. Wish I had taken a picture of them, they were enormous & weighed in at 1lb each! His toes will be nice & toasty when he walks out to the barn. My DH liked them too & so now I have to make him a pair. I've also finished off a pair of crochet mitts for Larry to wear & have yet to make a pair for his partner, Betty.

Socks for Jen - unfortunately, Jen's health deteriorated & her Mom Christina decided they needed to move back to Ontario, so they never got started. I do have plans to crochet a shall or lapghan for Jen to send for her birthday.

New stuff:
I've been experimenting with making different wristlet & fingerless glove patterns, which I was hoping to put into my Etsy store before the holiday season, but after 10 attempts they still aren't turning out the way I envisioned them. Probably best to lay them aside for a week before I start to stress out over them!

We've been doing some major cleaning & de-cluttering around the house as we've moved the girls into their own separate bedrooms and put all the boys into the biggest room. Spent a lot of time sewing new curtains for all of the rooms (& I'll state it again, I'm terrible at sewing), but these have turned out half decent. DH made the boys a very cool bunk bed - it is 3 bunks high and has another bunk coming out at right angles from the second one (like an L).

The great thing about the room change is that is has opened up another room for us which we will be using as an office, craft & guest room. I'm so happy to regain some of my sanity - I needed a place to work on projects without the little guys trying to get into things all the time. And then, as if I wasn't in my glory as it was, I stumbled across some of my own patterns that I thought I'd lost during our de-cluttering, so I'll be checking them for errors & digitizing them into pdfs. What a wonderful way to end the year :)

Many blessings to you & yours and have a Happy New Year! :)

Will Work For Eggs

I'm not getting anywhere with my tote bag - other people's priorities have put mine on the back burner for now. Things like getting my DH's passport arranged for when he makes his trip to Interbike later this month, sleep-overs & pool parties for the kids, unexpected company, getting ready for the new school year & the like. This is not a complaint, just a fact of life with me - my plans often get changed & I just learn to go with the flow, knowing that I do eventually get to finish off most of my projects in winter, when everything slows down.

I am still doing needlework on the side - just not stuff for my own personal pleasure at the moment. Now that I've test driven my circular bamboo knitting needles, I've got two orders from my shepherd friend Larry - a pair of socks for him & another pair for his partner, Betty. I'm using super chunky sized black wool, spun from his own herd. They are going to be very toasty when worn, but that is exactly what is needed for our winters here, where it's typically sitting at -20º Celsius throughout most of January & February, sometimes even dropping to -40º! I don't have any sock patterns that call for this weight of wool, & Larry has a stocky build, so I couldn't just adapt from another pattern - this will all be "make it up as I go" from his measurements. In exchange, I've been getting farm fresh eggs delivered to my door every couple of weeks. If ever I should become homeless, I can just see me sitting on the curb with a sign like "Will Knit for Eggs" or "Will Crochet for Milk".

I need Larry to come over & do fittings for his socks ever week, which has brought about another turn of events. I was coming home from the end of the season party at the local pool with my toddler when I saw his jeep parked outside the cafe across the street from my house. I figure I'd go in & let him know that when he was done eating that he could come over for a fitting, as the timing would be good for me then. The owner of the cafe, Christina, overheard this & asked "You knit socks? Jennifer (her youngest daughter) really needs some hand knit socks!" I replied that I would be happy to as long as she provided the wool. She agreed to this & still wants to pay me something on top for my labour - I'm kind of hoping it will mean a couple of free salmon burgers down the road :)

Updates on the Tote & Other Things

Now I know why I'm a fan of needlework, & not a sewing - I totally cut out the pieces for my tote bag wrong. You would think that with the paper pattern being just squares, that there wouldn't be too much that could go wrong.

Unless you're me.

Somehow I missed the part on the instructions that says that you are to lay the pattern on the fold of the fabric. Turns out that if you fail to do that, you end up with two squares instead of one long rectangle, which apparently you need for the bottom of the tote to be strong. I'm thinking I just may work with it though, by cutting another square the same size in a contrasting fabric, then sewing all three together into an even longer rectangle than what is in the original pattern & having the seam end up in the middle of the tote instead of the bottom. Hopefully this will give a pleasing wide stripe. If not, well, at least it was made from discarded jeans, & not new fabric.

Just read with amusement a post about the K-Tel Knitter (I remember it being called the Looper when I had it), from Noreen Crone-Findlay here. I was quite amazed at how she figured out how to make the loops when she didn't have the instructions included with it. I remember when I played around with the knitter about 10 years ago, how complicated it was to make the stitches, & thinking "Why would anybody want to spend 2 minutes making one lousy looking stitch? Arghhhh!" It stayed within my mind as the bane of the needlework world ever since. Yes, Noreen, it is a pig's ear - & a dirty one at that!

We still have to get things sorted out with Sasktel at Dan's business, but on my end of things, I'll be going back to using Skype. Dan also brought me home a cell phone for my own use, so that I have something for emergencies & when the power goes out. I've never been a big fan of cells, mainly because I have partial hearing damage (unsolicited advice to teens - this is a direct result of me blasting music in my ears constantly with my walkman for 5 years straight - mp3 players & ipods will do the same thing too) which has prevented me from being able to hear the person on the other end of most models, which kind of defeats the purpose of having a phone. Anyway, the cell DH got for me has a decent volume control & the sound is very clear - I could actually hear him when I tested it - Yippee! I only have a calling plan for now, but think I'll be upgrading to the data plan in the near future, so that I can post pics & check prices on Ebay when I'm at the thrift stores.

In the mean time, I've started crocheting a pair of ornamental baby booties in thread. I'm really liking the pattern so far - it's from a booklet from Annie's Crochet Newsletter called Sweet Sentiments. If I'm happy with the finished results, I'll probably put a few on consignment in the local gift shop here - they are always looking for new things, and they've been sadly lacking in baby shower items for some time now - hopefully I can fill in that need. I've also rediesgned the graphics for some of the crafting CDs that I sell through my Ebay & Etsy store - I think they look a lot more professional now & hope that will spark some more sales for me. I really must get some more vintage patterns scanned into ebooks & deal with all that raw wool sitting in barrels in my house too.

And if I'm not busy enough, I'm going to become a Usborne Books direct seller. I had been buying the books for awhile for my children to supplement their home school curriculum. It just made sense that now that I have 4 children being home schooled this year, & with the volume of books I purchase (the kids & I are all major bibliophiles), that I should at the very least get a consistant discount on my purchases. I just have to wait for them to approve my application - it's only been since Friday that I faxed the forms, but I'm already feeling impatient - I wanna buy some books right now :)

The Sasktel Saga

Didn't get to the denim tote like I had hoped - Ben's friends came earlier than I expected, & he had two instead of one - making a total of 6 rowdy boys in our little house on the prairies! Couldn't get much done, much less get any quiet around here, but that's ok - a good time was had by all :)

Just before they left, I found out that my VOIP service was cancelled, leaving me wiht no phone. Apparently the major phone company, Sasktel, has eliminated all competition in the province in the land line biz by making it mandatory that all phone lines are routed through them & anybody leasing their phone numbers for resale (as a VOIP company would have to do), now has to use Sasktel's infrastructure too. This jacked up the prices for the VOIP & other companies like it, effectively making it impossible for them to compete, and Sasktel has completely monopolized this service. I'm pretty sure that this is illegal on Sasktel's part, but it's likely they'll get away with it - they have the money & power to win any lawsuits against them - not to mention that they are a Crown Corporation (owned by the government, but still run like a private business), which in Canada means that they are virtually above the law. Shame on you Sasktel - shame! :(

So I need to go pester my neighbours to borrow their phone & call my DH at work to see if he wants to go with Skype & have the hassle of our phone number being long distance to all our friends. Or break down & be owned by Goliath. Anyone know a David? Think I'll be getting a lot of stress relief crocheting done this week .

Tatting, Tatting, Tatting....

Finished my cro-tat edging last night - er, I guess at 3 am it is technically early in the morning...

Today I'm going to piece together the recycled denim tote (or at least try) from a Quick Sew pattern that I picked up at the local thrift store for $0.25 last week. I already have 5 canvas totes around the house that I use for holding various needlework projects & 2 that I use for groceries, but the canvas is just not holding up well on any of them anymore. Figured rather than buy some more generic bags (that "have no soul", as my friend Roy would say), that I would give it a go & make some of my own. Having a monstrous pile of knee-blown jeans taking up space in the house is a pretty good motivator too!

I'm thinking that I might also make some flower or heart motifs to applique onto the totes too, or maybe even try my hand at a quilt patch - not really sure. Sometimes it's best to let the project "speak to you" as you go along making it. I've found that some of my best creations have come about that way.

After I finished up the cro-tatted piece, I stayed up even later to give a try at shuttle tatting again. I had done it for a little while years ago, when Deb was just a baby, but didn't have access to hardly any patterns then, so I didn't keep with it for very long. I still don't have a proper shuttle around the house (yet), but I'm pretty good at improvising - I found that all my sons have lots of great shuttle repacements in the form of Knex building pieces :)

Being overly abitious, I started with a size 30 tatting thread. It was a bad idea, as I was too tired to see the stitches properly & couldn 't figure out why I couldn't pull on the shuttle thread to close the loop - wasting a lot of good thread in the process of knotting everything up. Decided to go to good ol' size 10 & see if I could make a better go of it. Same problem - I couldn't close the loop. Picked up the instructions again, looking for a clue - ohhh, I was making the stitches with the shuttle thread rather than on the shuttle thread! This happens when you pull the shuttle thread taute, but failt to relax the loop wrapped around your other hand. Trying again, I finally could close my loop - yay! Now that I've got shuttle tatting figured out again, I'll have another hobby to take up space, Bwahahah!

So Much for Rain & Finishing Projects

I had almost completely forgotten that today the town was having all the pipes flushed - so no water would be available here - a real pain when you have a family of 8 and a mountain of laundry to do! So instead of finishing my cro-tatted edging yesterday after Brianna left, I spent rest of the day doing 6 loads of laundry.

Normally I do one load a day & that keeps me on top of things, but I had been busy getting my paperwork in order for the coming home school year & fighting several computer related problems in the midst of it all, so I had let it slide. At least for my reward I had a nice & toasty comforter to snuggle under when I went to bed - I love that straight from the dryer warmth - especially when the temp took a dive to 5º Celsius last night.

Then I woke up today to find that my youngest son had gotten into my cro-tat project - Wahhhhhh!!! Thankfully it wasn't tangled beyond repair, but he had it frogged back to nearly the beginning :( Guess I know what I'll be working on tonight when all the children are in bed. At least I found a great item today at the local thrift shop to help me keep my thread organized while I'm working on my project - a metal paper towel holder. It can hold two of the large balls of thread on it or up to 8 of the really small balls - very handy.

My day got even better when Rachel came home from checking the mail - with a package for me.

"It's from China?" she sounded a little confused, as usually anything from China is computer equipment that goes to Dad. But I already knew what was in it - the set of 20 circular bamboo knitting needles that I bought on Ebay. Oh happy day!!!!! A few months ago I learned how to knit in the round on two circular needles from Cat Bordhi's great youtube tutorials (see the first one below), and have learned to love making socks again. Now that I have my bamboo set, I'm going to be working like a maniac to get at least two pairs done for the whole family by winter. I'm stoked just thinking about it :) Off I go to find some yummy yarn to work with tonight.

Knitting Pledge After-Effects

My DD Deborah had a friend over this past Sunday afternoon, Brianna. The original plan was to bake a large batch of sugar cookies, but I had no butter or margarine in the house, and our small town doesn't have a store open on Sundays. While thinking of something else to do, Deb showed Brianna the knitted scarf that she has been working on. I asked Brianna if she knits (no, but she crochets, so I asked if she wanted to learn (Yes!). You can be sure that I was more than happy to teach her right then & there :)

We were all sitting in the living room: Deb, her friend Brianna, my other DD Rachel and me - all of us knitting & crocheting away quite happily. Then, Deb pipes up & tells me that she has been teaching the two older boys from the Kerr family how to crochet. I told her that it was great that she was doing that & as Deb didn't say anything else, I didn't think much more of it.

Soon Brianna's mom came to take her home & she eagerly showed off the beginnings of the dishcloth she was making. Mom thought it was great, gave a thoughtful look, then asked me if I knew how to join afghan squares together. Apparently Brianna, mom & a few of her siblings had crocheted some squares to make an afghan, but having done them without a pattern, were clueless about how to assemble it. Again, I was more than happy to offer my services :) Next thing I knew, Deb is piping up again that, "We should have a kind of knitting & crochet bee. Then we could have your family & the Kerrs & us get together & work on projects together!"

I'm so glad that I took the knitting & crochet pledge a few months ago - it looks like it is having a ripple affect through the neigbourhood now - Long live the Needle Arts!

On to other things & Cro-tatting

The contest still didn't turn out as well as I had hoped for - I only had one entrant & hundreds of spam messages. Phooey! I'm thinking that I'd be better off doing a contest in winter, when people are cocooning at home & more likely to be checking out other blogs that they don't normally go to.

I've also realized that I'm a terrible blogger - I've had this blog for nearly a year, and I've only made 22 posts - including this one. My friend Kelly, at Crazy Dog Farm , has only been blogging for 3 weeks & has already made 17 posts. I have post envy!

So it's time to get on with it and start making some posts!

Recently I've picked up cro-tatting again. In case you've never heard of it before, cro-tatting is a way of making lace that looks like tatting, but using a special elongated crochet hook instead. A really good site to learn the basics of cro-tatting from is MaryM's. Besides having a great tutorial here, she also has a lot of sweet & wonderful original cro-tat patterns. The clincher is though, that it is very difficult to find other cro-tatting patterns. Annie's Attic no longer carries cro-tatting books, and they were really the ones to set the trend. Of course, you can still find some pattern booklets available on Ebay, but if you're like me, you can never have too many patterns, so what to do, what to do?

With a little bit of experimenting , you'll find that you can convert most shuttle tatting patterns to cro-tatting - it just takes a little bit of a work around. Where in shuttle tatting you can just make a tatted chain, with cro-tat you will have to make some chain stitches & then go back over the chain with enough single crochets to match the amount in the pattern. At times this may require that you make your rings first, then do a second row/round to make your cro-tat chains.

This week, I'll be working on some patterns from an Annie's Attic book called Charming Boudoir, My first project is going to be the towel edging, which I'm going to do in a dark pink. I'm thinking that I'm going to sew it on as an edging onto an upcycled denim tote that I'm going to be making. My scanner has been giving me grief again, so I'll have to ask my daughter, Deborah, if she'll take some pics when it is done. If the summer weather stays as cruddy as it has been, that should be tomorrow!

Contest Extension - New Date, July 31st

Well, I guess I either didn't do things right, or I didn't do things right with my contest - I didn't even get one person respond to it with an entry. I checked to make sure that my email address on my profile page is working. Since that wasn't the problem, I'm going to guess that the two main reasons were that

1) I didn't leave enough time for people to enter

2) I just didn't "plug" my contest enough or in the right places.

If that weren't trouble enough, my ISP had a major service shutdown over the last 10 days, due to something wrong going on with their wireless tower. As I'm located in a rural village, you can be sure that it took forever to get a repairman out to fix things. Needless to say, I was a little bit upset!

So, I'm going to give the contest another go & see if I can entice you all a bit more :) They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here are some pics of what you would win:

Learn To Crochet Quickly & Easily

If you've always wanted to learn how to crochet, then you'll find this informative manual to be right up your alley

Learn To Knit & Crochet

A good beginner's guide to get started on your knitting journey. Note from me: It has crochet too, though the instructions for crochet are not as good as in the Learn To Crochet Book above (IMHO)

Quick Tricks In Crochet

Consists of 30 vintage crochet patterns that are in the public domain. These projects make great gifts for loved ones and great selling items at your next craft show or bazaar.

Irish Crochet & How To Make It

Updated format of Priscilla Irish Crochet Book No. 1, published in 1912. This book is in the public domain, but it is very rare to find an original copy of it in good condition for less than $60. Instructions are so easy to understand that anyone can master these techniques, even if they have never crocheted a single stitch!

The Art of Manufacturing Soaps & Candles

This book is a digitally remastered version of a soap & candle making book from the 1850's. This book is in the public domain, but it is very rare to find an original copy of it in good condition for less than $80. Learn about the history of soap and candle making, view illustrations of the top machines used in the late 1800's for making homemade soaps and candles, and relive a part of history as you read information shared by some of the leading soap and candle manufacturing experts of the mid 1800's!

504 Bath And Beauty Recipes

Make unique homemade bath & beauty products for yourself or for others! What a money-saver for your next gift-giving occasion. Whip up some of these recipes, put them into decorated jars and voila! You have an awesome, thoughtful gift! You could even start your own homemade bath products business! There's soaps, hand creams, bath salts, lotions, fizzies, scrubs, masks, massage oils, facials, powders and more! This e-book includes 198 pages/504 relaxing bath and beauty recipes.

Profitable Craft Series (5 ebooks in all)

Volume one covers pricing your products for maximum profits, and how to stock your booths for maximum sales.

Volume two covers selling your products on consignment and the proper way to submit your products for publications in magazines.

Volume three covers designing your own products, and discusses techniques you can use with any type of craft from crochet to scrapbooks.

Volume four covers catalog creation and sales, as well as the proper way to recruit others to sell your items for you so that you can create, while they do the selling.

Volume five covers many different aspects of labeling and packaging your products attractively. Making sure your completed products are pleasing to look upon is one important factor that most overlook although it's one that should never be ignored.

Turning Their Trash Into Your Profits

Even if you are not into making arts and crafts, you can still profit in this market and this special report shows you how!

If you can"t paint, sew, crochet, knit or cross-stitch, that's perfectly ok, you can still make money by selling original handcrafted arts and crafts related items without sewing a single stitch or painting a single brush stroke.

475 Gift Basket Ideas

Store-bought Gift Baskets cost an average of $40. And your family and friends may not be entirely satisfied with what they get. With the detailed ideas in this e-book, you will be able to make your own customized gift baskets for your family and friends for as low as $5!! This ebook features tons of gift ideas spread over 105 pages. Included are ideas with detailed instructions and supplies lists for making your own gift baskets for every person on your gift list. Also included are 'Survival Kits' with witty sayings for each item that goes in the kit, ideas for Holiday Poops, Just for Fun gifts, Gift Basket making tips, Candy Gram gifts etc.

You also get the following e-book titles:

Fun Craft Projects - has a lot of general crafts for all ages

Scoobidou® Mega Guide - crafts you can make with the plastic lacing that is popular with Girl Guides & Boy Scouts

The Complete Guide to Wood Finishing

101 Scrapbooking Tips

Scrapbook Pro

30 Lip Balm Recipes

How To Make Your Own Perfume

I think you'll find that these e-books provide a great foundation for starting up a home-based business, or an endless stream of gift-giving ideas that are sure to please anybody on your list!

And if that's not all, I'm giving you some bonus patterns & recipes that aren't mentioned in this giveaway, so this compilation is sure to please you too!

I hope that I've enticed you enough to take a chance to win - just follow the directions from the previous post on how to enter the Mega Craft Collection Giveaway, substituting the new closing date of July 31st, with the drawing for the CDs being made on August 2nd. Please be sure to let any friends that you know who might be interested in winning one of these CDs, so that they can have a chance to win too!

Thanks for looking :)

Mega Craft Collection CD Giveaway

As promised, here's the contest to celebrate my first 100 followers on Twitter!

I'm going to giveaway 5 of my Mega Craft Collection CDs. On each CD is a compilation of craft ebooks that I have bought the resale rights to over the past 3 years - There are about 25+ ebooks in all. Some of the topics are crochet, knitting, scrap booking, wood finishing, kids crafts, soap & candle making, gift basket ideas and how to start up a profitable craft business.

I've also thrown in some extra patterns from the public domain & of my own design (these will be crochet, knitting & cross stitch patterns, as my focus here is on needlework). All of the ebooks & patterns are in PDF format, so you can read them on both Windows & Mac operating systems.

This CD is easily a $20 value - and you can have one of 5 that I'm giving away for FREE if you enter my contest - and when I say free, that means that you are not signing up for a newsletter, I'm not collecting your email to spam you, and I pay the shipping to send it to you. Pretty good deal, eh?

So here's how you enter:

Send an email to me by clicking on my profile, then on the email link.

Put "Mega Craft Collection CD Giveaway" in the subject line.

Tell me what the biggest craft item you ever made was - do try to keep it short though, as I'm just making you do this to reduce spammers & have fun - I'm not grading your story composition :)

Be sure to leave an email address in the body of the message where I can reach you if you win - I'd sure be sad for you to have to forfeit your prize because you didn't get my email or it bounced back.

All entries will be put on a slip of scrap paper, thrown into my black eco-friendly grocery bag & drawn at random by my children. The contest opens today, Wednesday, June 17th, and closes at midnight (in my timezone - CST) on June 27th. The draw will take place sometime on June 28th, winners will be sent their first notice that day.

Privacy Policy: I will collect your emails only for the purpose of this contest - I will not give or sell your information to anybody else, & I won't keep your emails on file after the contest ends either - I only need them to notify the winners.

All the best to all participants, & happy crafting! :)

Nothing to see here - except maybe a contest.....

Nothing new to report in the needlework world for me. I've been spending all of my free time getting into the garden, watching TOS Star Trek episodes & playing Mafia Wars.

In my not so free time, I've been hastily trying to catch up with inputting the data for my DH's businesses so that I can file our income tax (In Canada, if you own a business, you have until June 15th to file). I just finished DH's books last night, now I have to get mine done - thnkfully they are quite easy - basically just download the reports off of Ebay & PayPal to see what I've sold & paid fees on.

To celebrate my (temporary) release from bean counting, the fulfillment of my crochet pledge (well, partial, as I can't find anybody in town willing to give up baseball season to learn other than my own children) & topping 100 twitter followers, I'm going to set up a contest. I haven't figured out all the details yet - like what embarrassing thing I might ask my readers to do to win - Bwahahaha! So I plan to have the contest start around June 15th, give or take a few days. Keep an eye on this blog or my twitter account for more details as they surface.

Crochet Pledge Progress - Day One - Part Two

Though I never got around to posting again last Thursday, both the girls made a wonderful start that day.

Deborah was a little nervous about trying knitting - she was thinking that two needles would be too complicated compared to one hook. She told me that she wanted to knit something that was a simple as possible, but still something that she could wear, so she thought a scarf would be nice. We went through my stash and she fell in love with some Bernat Handcrafter Cotton called Vintage Wine Ombre & will be using 6.0 mm needles.

Then the teaching began. I skipped showing the chain stitch to Rachel, my reasoning being that it is often difficult for a beginner to get the tension right, and it can result in frustration & wanting to quit before a good start is even made. Instead, I made the foundation row for her so that she could start with making the single crochet stitch right away on her project. The biggest obstacle was getting Rachel used to holding the hook - I have always used the "pencil hold", so I started with teaching Rachel this, but this just didn't work for her. I suggested that she then try to hold it like a knife & so she started stitching that way. I think this is probably the most important thing about teaching any craft - being open to the possibility that there is more than one way to accomplish the same end result.

The next step was to get Rachel to relax her hand, and not have a death grip on the hook, so that she could manipulate it more easily when making her stitches. When your student holds their hook, it should be a firm grip, so that it's not flopping all over the place or being constantly dropped, but you should be able to still slide it out of their fingers - if you can't budge the hook from your student's hand at all, they are holding it way too hard! I checked Rachel's grip every few stitches, just to make sure that she didn't tighten up as she was going along. After about 5 minutes of this, Rachel had trained her hand pretty well, and had switched her hold on the hook (completely on her own accord) to the pencil grip - go figure!


Rachel & a close up of her work - great job!



Now that I had one happy little crocheter, I moved on to Deborah.

Deborah already had 4 years of experience with crochet, so I knew I wouldn't have to worry about issues with gripping the needles too hard or holding the yarn too tight. My main concern was that she is left handed - I can write, crochet, play tennis & many other things with both hands, but I when it came to knitting, I could only figure out the English method, not Continental. I had thought that I taught Deborah how to crochet left handed - "No you didn't, Mom - I crochet with my right hand."

Oh.

Well there you go, I stood corrected - and now I was relieved that I could just teach her the way I learned. I showed Deborah three different methods of casting on: the single cast-on, double cast-on & knitting on. I then explained to her when one would usually use the different kinds of cast-ons. Knitting on is commonly used for adding stitches to an already started item; single is used when you want the selvage to to be less noticeable - like when making lace. The double is a good all around stitch - most patterns will use this if it doesn't indicate what kind of cast-on you should use - it is also one of the easiest cast-ons for a beginner to use. I showed Deborah how each cast-on looks as it is knit into so that she could see for herself how the tension worked with each one. After that, she decided to go with a double cast-on for her scarf.

Deborah did three rows of the knit stitch, then we did a few rows alternating purl with knit so that she could see how the stocking stitch formed. She said that she wants to keep with the garter stitch throughout the rest of the scarf, but ending it so that it has the little bit of stocking stitch to match what we did at the start. Deborah then told me that knitting wasn't as hard as she thought it would be & is happy that she decided to learn how to do it. I think she just may be planning more projects already :)


And here's Deborah - love the colour she chose!



So there you go - one crocheter & one knitter. I've done the first part of my pledge, now I just have to find somebody in the neighbourhood to convert into a fiber artist :)

Crochet Pledge Progress - Day One - Part One

I've had to catch up on some paperwork earlier this week, so I didn't get to fulfilling the actual teaching of the skill part of my pledge just yet. However, I'm going to be teaching two students now. My oldest daughter, Deborah (12), has decided that she wants to learn how to knit (I already taught her how to crochet when she was 8). This is going to be one fun fiber week for me :)

Rachel has already decided on a project for her crochet lessons - she wants to make a snuggle pillow for her younger brother, Zach, in time for his 4th birthday (shhhh now, it's a secret). I think a snuggle pillow is a great choice for a beginner - you only need to have two squares made, and because it's purpose is for snuggling, a pillow form isn't required - it just needs to be stuffed with fiber fill to give it nice "squishability".

We've determined Zach's favourite colours by sneakily asking him which ones he likes best during a lunch time conversation. Blue is his number one, followed by green & orange. I have in my stash a huge bag of blue superwash wool that's a worsted weight (4 - medium, if you go by the standard yarn weight system). We'll be using a 6.00 mm crochet hook to work it up with. If Rachel is suitably comfortable after learning single crochet, I may teach her how to do some simple colour changes so that we can incorporate some of the green & orange into the pillow.

I'll be back later with Deborah's choice & how we've progressed

Take the Pledge - Teach Crochet or Knitting

National Crochet Month is almost at an end, so why not let it go out with a bang - teach somebody how to crochet! Angela Pallatto, Editor of Knit Luck, came up with a great idea to help encourage others during the economic slowdown - take a pledge to teach somebody to knit. I talked her into accepting crocheters too, as though I knit, crochet is much more so my passion :)

I've already signed up, and my own personal goal is to teach my youngest daughter (8) first, then to teach at least one other young lady in my neighbourhood. I'll post about how it all goes here on this blog at least twice a week, with some smaller updates put up on my Twitter account - which you can see at the right sidebar of this blog or by following me by clicking on the link just below it.

To get to the pledge, just head over here: Teach Knitting or Crochet Pledge

You don't have to blog or tweet about it, but I personally think it would be cool if you let us all know how it is going, so that we can encourage each other.

Happy Teaching :)

Me, the Sheep & Ewe

Here I thought that I would be better at updating this blog, due to the easy access I have to it online, but I've certainly been wrong about that! I have recently discovered the simplicity of posting on Twitter, which has not only sucked me away from blogging, but other self-imposed crafting responsibilities. Still, it's nice to only be committed to 140 words at a time when I sit down to write. :)

One of the crafts related things that I'm working on is getting a whole lot of raw wool ready for resale (thus the Baaa-d pun in my title - oops, I did another one again!). I've never worked with raw wool before, and it has been an exciting adventure for me. Let me tell you, any misconceptions I had about sheep being white & fluffy has been completely thrown out the window.

So, for a reminder to myself how bad wool cleaning can really be, I offer up my top 10 list for what I experienced during my wool processing adventure:

10: White fleece that looks only slightly dirty dry, is actually really disgustingly filthy when wet.

9. The ratio of water/detergent mix to raw wool should not be 70/30, but rather 99/1

8. You have to clean the fleece before washing it. Not only must you skirt it, and shake out the debris, but a vacuum is recommended

7. It's probably not a good idea to shake out the debris on your kitchen table while somebody's plate of food is nearby.

6. Wool with very high crimping in it (the Lincoln lamb's wool that I had in particular) felts nearly instantaneously when it hits the hot water, even without agitation.

5. Lanolin smells nice on my hands, but not my kitchen counter, table or sink.

4. Like babysitting doesn't prepare you for childbirth, reading up & watching Youtube about washing wool won't prepare you for doing it.

3. I have a greater appreciation for the price of wool. People who hand wash & spin it should be allowed to charge at least $50/2 oz. skein

2. So much stuff can hide between the hairs. Even after cleaning I still found more dirt, more grass, more sticks, small animals, a child...

1. Despite all the above, I'm a glutton for punishment, because I'm going to clean four 30 lb barrels of wool before I've processed it all.

Anybody wanna buy some raw wool?

Seriously, if you want to be a brave DIY & try out some raw wool, just contact me through my profile & let me know how much you would like. I don't know much about grading, but I can easily get the answers to specific questions about the wool from the shepherd who gave it to me. I do know that most of the fleeces I have are from Lincoln ewes - some is lamb (first shearing), and some is second shearing, there might be some Cotswold available as well (I haven't opened all the barrels yet).

Theses fleeces have a lot of crimping in them, so they are suited for heavy yarns - the type you would use for outer garments or rugmaking. Makes great felting wool too. All of the wool is white with a high lanolin content.

The sheep are "working sheep", used for hard grazing noxious weeds (an environmentally friendly way to get rid of weeds instead of spraying pesticides). As such, they aren't blanketed, and though the fleece has been skirted, the wool has a lot of VM (vegetable matter) and fine dirt particles in it. Though I must say, I personally managed to get the wool very clean with 2 soaks of detergent & 5 rinses of water - and I'm a novice. So if you want to give it a try, just let me know - otherwise keep an eye on my Etsy store as I'll put the cleaned wool there.