Such Sweet Hands

Good Morning, even though it’s past noon…

Today, I have a little tip for ya! I could go on and on about cork bulletin boards. I have several and I put them to all sorts of “non-bulletin board” uses. Cover them with fabric to make them soft and pretty and you have a great portable, pin-able surface to place your work on.

I love my swift and winder, but I don’t really have any furniture that I can attach them too. Most open surfaces in my place are too thick for the adjustable clamp thingies. Then there’s the table that’s too nice and I don’t want to scar it. There’s also the problem of clutter. When I’ve had the swift and winder set up in a more permanent way I’ve found the set up gets in the way of other things or piles of said things get in the way of my actually using the swift and winder. So, most of the time the winder and swift live in a shelf cubby. When I need them, I attach them to one of my fabric covered cork bulletin boards and Voila! I have a portable winding set up to use as I please. I like to place the board on top of a stack of sturdy floor pillows so I can sit on the floor and watch teevee while I’m on a winding spree.

If you haven’t already checked it out, week before last I contributed a spooky, tacky, pattern and story for the CRAFT pattern podcast. You can go here to download the pdf. I played around with telling a story to go along with the pattern. I hope to do some more things like that because I have a head full of imagined creatures with stories that need to be told.

One morning I sat at our table prepping the Triplets for a photo shoot, sticking a curved needle through their heads to run thread for hanging and posing… Rob was sitting beside me eating his breakfast and jumped a little at the sound of a needle piercing a rubbery dolly scalp. He gasped and looked a tad spooked. That’s my kind of Halloween fun:)

A Simple Ikea Hack:

Lion Brand was very generous, they sent us a ton of yarn to use in our booth. How were we going to organize the yarn in an attractive way that still kept the plentiful supply at the fingertips of our eager crocheters and knitters? Shannon was at Ikea and I was standing in the booth space surrounded by boxes of yarn, so we shopped together via cell phone. She’d announce something she’d found and we’d brainstorm ways to use it, then discuss if it would really work in this booth space. She found the Ikea trash bag holders and suggested we use them attached to the back wall of the booth, but there wasn’t enough space on the booth wall. I convinced her they’d work laying on their backs and begged her to buy a lot of them…

The idea blossomed the next morning when we stuffed the containers with a variety of yarns with the center pull tails strung through the holes. It worked! The set up survived two days and a ton of people using the yarn to knit and crochet.

We also had a lot of fun brainstorming even more ways to use these awesome containers. One suggestion: close the open end and trap a cat toy inside to provide your bored kitty with a challenge. I brought several of them home with me, more later on what I come up with them. I just hope the one I’ve used for 2 years as a boring old trash bag holder doesn’t get jealous!

Making a simple useful cloth is one of my favorite things to make in my personal crochet time. I wish to cover my friends and loved ones in blankets and sweaters and toys made by hand, but I simply don’t have the time. I can give anyone I think might enjoy it a pretty little square of handmade cloth to use as a washcloth or a hot pad for holding a hot bowl of soup. Something small and simple to let someone know I want to contribute something comforting, useful, and pretty to her life. . .

I use mine for holding tea mugs and bowls of soup. A good friend recently told me she uses one (the purple one in this photo, to be exact) as a washcloth when she bathes her daughter. She says it’s soft and sturdy and everything you need for a baby’s bath. I feel humbled that this sweet little cloth is an integral part of her daughter’s bath time.

It feels good to sit down and make something so useful and simple. They’re easy to whip up too! I like to bundle the cloth with something else, a package of tea, a fancy soap, etc. You don’t even need gift wrap, just a string or ribbon to tie it up with.

I often use Blue Sky Alpaca Cottons (Dyed or Organic) and Crystal Palace Cotton Chenille. Anything that can stand up to washing and repeated use, as well as creates a nice, useful fabric. If you’re making a washcloth I suggest working with cotton, I bet hemp might be nice for an exfoliating cloth. The texture is part of what makes this useful cloth as sweet as it is useful. Bobbles, stitch patterns full of mixed stitches, anything that creates a crunchy, yummy texture will work. With just a smidge of planning you can pull double duty trying out new stitch patterns and making a useful cloth.

You never know whose daily ritual (be it bath time or tea time) your cloth could become a part of.

I have found the secret, how to transform a simple crocheted sphere ( what will it be or be a part of in the end? will it be part of an amigurumi creature? will one of the cats steal it? there’s just no knowing!) into something as sweet to the fingers as a bonbon of the finest decadent kind is to the mouth? Oh, it simple…

Here sits a humble sphere composed of single crochet stitches, stuffed with ends and stray bits of leftover Koigu from the Larger Than Life Bag. Some yarns are simply too nice and I can’t discard even the shortest strands that are too short to use. Until now I never thought to use these little leftover delicasies as stuffing. I suppose the strands of yarn make for a heavier stuffing. The weight combines with the squish of the plush yarn to make for a little crocheted ball with a bit more substance. I’m not tossing out the bag of fiber-fill in the closet, but now I want to play with other treasured fancy things as stuffing. . . .

Two Sundays in a row we’ve gone to Cha Cha Cha. Last week it was brunch before Felted Circuits class and this week it was early dinner after class. It’s simply one of the yummiest and most satisfying places. And who can refuse decor that is so colorful, with strings of lights and and all sorts of interesting altars. These last two visits we’ve been seated by a new piece in honor of our mayor.  I noticed it makes a lot of people smile…

More to come on what I’ll be doing there, of course it involves crochet…

Rob and I are taking the Felted Circuits class at the fabulous Machine Project.  The class is a pretty good combination of our separate abilities.  In the class we are learning about and making circuits that make noise and will put them in a felted creature we make from our own handmade and hand dyed felt.  It’s a four part class, part one was an introduction to both ends of the project, we used a software program to map out a circuit and we each wet felted too.  I had never done this version of felting and quickly wore some skin off of my hand…  I wonder if it’s in the felt now.

We brought our felt home so we could admire it through the week, but other class members hung theirs on the wall of the basement classroom.

That’s right! Proof that I do sometimes knit… This Tuesday, February 6th, the Knitty Gritty episode featuring yours truly will air on HGTV. I’ve yet to see myself in any of the other shows I’ve been a part of for Uncommon Threads or Knitty Gritty, so I’m excited that this one will actually air on a channel my cable provider is kind enough to “provide”.

What is the Book of Bright Ideas? A simple book cover knit in stockinette with a nifty, pretty, entrelac sunburst motif on top. That’s right kids, entrelac worked in the round! The motif design came from pure inspiration and perspiration and over a year later I still look at it and get chills. It’s simple once you get the hang of knitting outside of a straight line. How easy? Before I made the design up, I had never worked with entrelac! I’m hoping to see some folks take a whack at working up the motif, there’s something simply goofy and fun about working with all those needles.

Check out some old photos of it all here.