A week ago I came to the six month mark on my yarn budget (I also have not bought an item of clothing in the past six months, or any new books or DVDs, but that's another blog). The verdict--I have too much yarn, yet again. In fact, I've never had such a huge stash. You'd think this would be freeing, that I would be able to experiment and goof around with the stuff and not worry I'd ruin anything. But instead, I worry that if I use up something, later I'll find that it's just the color I need in some other project. I do this even though I have enough yarn and enough projects written out to take me well into the next year. The huge bag of baby yarns was definitely a mistake, and has been stashed in a closet. I've made a number of hats from this, but it really doesn't interest me very much, especially the pompador stuff with the sparkly bits. If I'd known how much yarn was floating around out there, I would have saved my $2.50 or whatever.
This week I finished another little purse with the thread, and also the boot socks, which I'm wearing on my cold feet right now! Since I've never used a sock pattern, I'm trying to read through some other patterns to see how detailed they are. There seems to be so much to explain. I guess I should just assume people know how to make socks, or how to find out the basics somewhere else. Right now I have two pairs of my grandmother's slipper socks and two pairs of my own socks to somehow pattern up for you.
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On our trip around the state I was given several afghan hooks and two very old books on afghan stitches by a relative who found them in a pile of junk and knew I was interested in such things. I loved reading about the history of this technique, especially how it is often called "railroad crochet" in some parts of the world, after the women who worked on the railroad and often used this technique in their needlework and passed it on to the other workers. Very cool story. Unfortunately, I've spent all week playing around with the stitches and hooks, and am doing a very sorry job of making anything nice. I finally learned how to avoid the curling problems, but now get holes in my work, and often pick up the wrong strand of yarn. It's very frustrating, as I'd already charted out a good paisley design I wanted to embroider on the finished fabric.
I think I'll play around with it a little more before I give up, but it's certainly not as easy as it looks.
The sleeves on my boy's ski sweater are taking some time, as I ran out of red and am trying to substitute something. I think I'll just put a solid brown band on the bottom of each sleeve, and then color the ribbing.
Another grandson's birthday is in two weeks, and I'm making up a hat with a skull pattern on it.
Thus ends the project notes for the week. I hope you all have a good weekend with your families. Hugs.
2 comments:
Wow, Sally, you knit fast. I'm poky so my desires get way ahead of my needles. I need a year of sitting on the couch knitting just to make a dent in my stash.
Nice socks. Afghan stitch is pretty fast once you get the hang of it.
Sometimes I knit too fast. I'm making a vest for my MIL, just finished the back, and saw that I skipped a pattern row waaay back. Everytime I look at it, my eye goes right to the spot. I can't face shaping those armholes all over again. ARGGG
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