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Strike While the Needles Are Hot

 

I think I want to strike while the needles are hot! (or the hooks, the hooks can be hot, too.) All that is to say, I am thinking of starting up the in person knitting group again with the idea we would create things to sell at a craft show through the church.

It’s how it all started way back in the day. I started a knitting group with a friend and we knit so much stuff, we had to sell it. It was a big success and then we left the church,. The sale changed and by the time I got back to the church, it was all but over.

But now, with the resurgence of crochet; it seems like a great time to get back in the groove. Might be time for a holiday sale. The vendors keep 80% and the church gets 20%. If we can pair it with a luncheon or bake sale, all the better.

There are things that would sell at craft shows and I think we should make them. I need to feel out some folks at church first before I start trying to pull in knitters, crocheters and other craft folk to join up and be willing to have their stuff sold.

We need to come up with fundraising ideas that don’t take a big hit of the funds before we even start. Methodists like to meet and eat and we also like to create so this seems like something that would be good for us across the entire board.

As I contemplate this and look at the grocery bags in the photos, I realize I miss making them. Some have sold and the pattern is a bestseller. These would be on my list to make for a holiday sales bazaar. This is worth looking into.

 

 

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Things Going On

I have some things going on. Knit things and crochet things. Blanket things, hat things. Gift things and order things. Even a heartbreak. There are things going on.

So, in the lower right is the wedding afghan. Square no. 4. It’s a little cable, a little lace and a little popcorn stitch. It’s going to take a minute because there is a 24 row repeat. I was on row 14 when I messed it up and had to frog back to row 8. It’ll take more than a minute.

In the upper right corner is the blanket for Lucas. I’m glad for the photo because it shows the purple. It doesn’t look purple when I look at it and I’m also loving the gray. He’s off to Loras College and their colors are Loras Gold, Loras Purple and Loras Gray. My colors are gold, purple and medium gray. Sentiment will make up the rest, I hope.

The lower left is another version of my Rasta Slouch – this is black tweed and the upper left is the beginning of a pair of fingerless mints that are part of an order. So, you see – busy.

Even though the wedding afghan and the Lucas Loras afgan will be given away, they will still be in the shop. They will be customizable for whatever color scheme someone needs: weddings, sororities, schools. For anything you wish, really.

There are deadlines on three of these projects so work is going on most of the time. These are the things I love to do. I am digging on the afghans. I will need until October to finish the wedding one. Good thing the wedding is the last week in October. I have about 3 months to get it done. The mittens and the long sleeves I need to knit have to be out in a few weeks and the Lucas blanket has to be done in another week or so.

I’ve been know to fall asleep knitting and can knit with my eyes closed. This skill might come in handy.

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Coming Along

So, the work is coming along. OK, it’s not going as quickly as I thought. In fact, it is going so slowly, I’ve had to add more work to motivate me to get stuff done. It is almost August, the store officially opens August 1 and there’s 13 items there. Not enough to generate real interest. In truth, it’s going to be a few days before I get something new in there.

You remember this from a few posts back.

Now it looks like this. There’s another square behind it and a third square on the needles. These squares are pinned to my KnitPicks blocking mats. It might seem like the work is steady since there is a third square but it’s been a couple of weeks now and it hasn’t moved much.

I started a another afghan, this time a ripple one, for a friend who is off to college. And I am designing some faith based journal/planner digital stickers. The stickers are part of the planned inventory. The afghans may be as well as a customizable custom order thing. I know I want to do afghans again. While I like Caron Big Cakes, this color is kind of muddy and I am thinking to use some solid cream colors blocks to brighten it up a bit.

It’s probably a good thing I have until October. Lucas leaves in August. We are giving him a send off at church at the end of the month so that one has to be done in a few weeks. Didn’t take a photo of it. Not much to see anyway. But I will do an in progress shot and show it for the next time.

In the meantime, I’ve redone my budget. Let’s just say it’s so tight, I can’t afford to look at anything let alone buy it. I have to figure out how to get the income in.

 

 

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This Looks Familiar

This looks familiar…this pattern looks familiar. It’s not a knit or crochet pattern. It’s a behavorial pattern. Remember when I said I needed a new hobby? It was reading. Remeber? I thought reading would be fun and relaxing and something I could get back into. I still believe it could be all those things. 

The problem (one of them) with technology is that when you go on the interweb and you select something – like a book – then your email gets all these notifications about these new books. And just like with yarn, I now have a stash of books on my iPad just waiting for me to get to. Granted, a great many of these books were free and very few of them cost over a couple of dollars but I don’t know when I am going to get to them.

Kind of like these yarn beauties. I still have them; haven’t used them – or much of them. I couldn’t quite tell you where they are. Well, I kinda could. Before anyone asks, the yarn in the mesh bags came from Paintbox yarns. The others came from a JoAnn sale that was about two years ago – maybe longer.

I think my point, if there is a point, is that this is a compulsive behavior. An addiction of sorts that I have to nip in the bud. Even if the books are free, if I am not going to use them, I’m just contributing to the clutter.

This may even apply to yarn. (I heard the collective gasp and I feel your pain.) But it’s true. I still prowl the yarn sites as if I need or want new fiber to come and just sit in my studio. I have not yet made new purchases and I am determined not to. This behavior will be modified. I will gladly knit and read what I have on hand. When there is room – meaning when the clutter is cleared – I will add to both stashes. I am determined.

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Somebody’s Getting Married

Somebody’s getting married! Not me. I’m already married. One of my doctors. Emily takes my INR every month and her finger’s been itching for that engagement and wedding ring for a little bit now. She got it last year and the wedding is a mere 4 months away. I, in an unusal turn, have already started knitting her wedding afghan.

It’s what I do for weddings. I make the couple an afghan. And in a weird twist, I make it out of yarn I already have on hand. Now, for this one, I admit I went out and purchased three different tones of gray because Emily likes gray. But when I got them home, I pulled out some Caron Big Cake that I already have and settled down to begin the work.

I had in mind I wanted to do an afghan with squares instead of doing it all in one piece. I went online to find a pattern (not to follow cuz I write patterns but I don’t follow them atleast not stitch for stitch. I wanted to affirm the image I had in my mind. I settled on this one from Yarnspirations.

It was so pretty and just what I had in mind. I printed it out with the idea that although I knew I wasn’t going to use all the squares they had or at least not do them the way they did them, I might knit up at least one of the squares. And I did!! Not the one you see here. That’s from another book. What I ended up deciding is the knit the squares from the book and the website. I am using the yarn from that little sliver of the afghan you can see off to the right. It was a wip a bit back and it was never going to be made so the yarn is now going into this afghan.

I don’t think there’s enough of the frogged afghan to make the 20 squares needed for the new one. I have some cream yarn sitting in the stash that can help balance stuff out and brighten it up. It should be beautiful. I am enjoying working on it. I hope I am not tempting the knit goddesses by starting this so far ahead of time. They wouldn’t do anything to curse a wedding. Would they?

 

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Water Blogged

I am water blogged; I mean water logged. Let me explain. I started Intermediate Fasting for the second time. I gave it a try and decided it wouldn’t work. Then, one day it occured to me, I was doing some form of it naturally so I incorporated it back into being and I enjoy it. Not that it doesn’t present me with challenges but it seems to be effective.

I have an app (of course, there’s an app for it) and it, along with my doctor and nutritionist, talk about hydration incessantly. So, I set the app to notify me to hydrate. There I was sitting and knitting when I heard a funny sound coming from the phone. It took me a moment to realize it was the sound of water being poured into a glass. That was the notification to hydrate – every hour. I don’t jump up and drink when I hear it but if I am not in the midst of drinking something when it goes off, I dutifully  saunder and get either juice, tea or water. (The current drink is water.) I go and log it in on the app.

To give an update, here are three selfies that I took a while ago. It doesn’t show a huge loss – this isn’t a complaint. I find this entire process fascinating – but every pound lost is a golden thread to me.Sometimes the results come slowly. I am currently in a loss spiral and where as it took a month to lost the seven lbs in that photo, I am almost seven pounds down this month. Like I said, fascinating.

Back to the hydration. They say keeping hydrated is a hunger blocker and that’s no joke because I am feeling full. I was also feeling a little peckish a minute ago and the water with a single sheet of graham crackers knocked that edge off until dinner.

But what about knitting and crochet?

OK, check out the items in the shop. Continues to grow. We will get back to that in the next post. Promise.

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When Last We Spoke

When last we spoke, I had purchased some yarn from the road trip. Well, I went to the Hobby Lobby by the house just a few days ago….just to see what I could see. Also because someone online said they still had some clearance stuff including their Fireside yarn. The equivalent to Homespun. It was on sale for about $1.75. Prayer shawls, you see. I had prayer shawls in mind.

So I went. And there it was. And now almost every ball that was there is here. I couldn’t reach the last ball of the black so it couldn’t come. There was only one ball of a very pretty color but I needed three. So that stayed. Then there was a not very pretty color. That stayed. I came home with the rest. About 16 skeins. Less than $30.

Score.

But, as you can see, it’s not like I haven’t been busy. This is not all that is finished. There are two more hats. Two more washcloths. Some different kinds of scrubbies. (The inspiration for this particular Happiness Project.) There are also digital stickers. I’ve been thinking about starting the monthly sticker giveaway again. Thinking about it. When I pray about it, I might get an answer one way or the other.

When it’s laid out like this, I have a visual of how much was accomplished in such a short matter of time. Sometimes you have to step back and take a look at the whole forest and appreciate the trees as a group.

This is a pretty nice forest.

 

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I Know

I know. Really, I know. But it couldn’t be helped. We went on a road trip to Montgomery, AL to watch my nephew play baseball for the Chattanoga Lookouts.

It was the same time Hobby Lobby was having their clearance sale and if you know the stores in Chicago, you know the clearance wasn’t going to last long. I was all content to pass it by until we arrived at our hotel in Madison, TN. There was a Hobby Lobby right down the street from the hotel. Still I resisted. I didn’t need yarn – OK. I had just purchased stuff from HB and didn’t need to go back.

So, we drove on to Montgomery (after a stop in Birmingham to pick up my brother and nephew.) And there, right across the street from our hotel in Plattville, AL. Hobby Lobby. I swear, I wasn’t going to go but as it happened, I needed black yarn for one of the projects I brought with me and they were having their regular 30% off sale. So, over I went.

And there was a bunch of cotton on sale. And I am doing a bunch of stuff with cotton. I got the black yarn, some cotton yarn and some other stuff. My haul was less than $50.

But there was a slight emptiness. I left the hand dyed yarn behind. It’s a three weight and I don’t usually deal in that. But there a hat I want to make – for the longest time – that looks good in sock yarn or three weight. It’s this classic right here. You know the hat.

We were set to leave Tuesday morning and Mr. Honey wanted to leave before check out time at 11:00. The store opened at 9 and I was gonna take some luggage down to the car while he was still sleeping and take that 3 minute ride. But he got up and I confessed what I wanted to do and he was good with it. We packed up got in the car and he drove me over.

I found the green on sale – which is great. I need it to go with the pink for the stocking cap I want to make. Found the hand dyed, which I knew I wasn’t going to buy a lot of. I can get two beanies out of each skein. So seven skeins was enough. The haul was less than the first one. All told, I spent maybe $70. Not bad.

But yes, I know. Ton o’yarn. But I know what I want to use it for. The furry yarn for cuffs on hats and gloves. The beanies from the hand dyed and the anti-pill. Wash cloths from the cotton. See? There’s a plan. Trust me.

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A New Kind of Fun

I am about to have a new kind of fun. This arrived in the mail.  Not everything in the box arrived in the box. Some of the yarn I threw in there so everything I needed was in the same box. But the sparkly nylon all arrived in the box. 

It’s Herrschners Suds and Scrub yarn. I got it because a friend said she was down to her last nylon scrubby and wanted to know if I made them. Well, I knew I could make them even if I hadn’t up to then. So, being me, I bought 20 balls of the stuff.

I made four different kinds of scrubbies: a towel made of cotton, a scrubby made with cotton and the nylon, a super scrubby made from Yarn Bee Scrubology (more on that later) and the scrubby made from the Suds and Scrub. That’s the one she used and the one she liked and the one she was telling folks they should get because it’s so good. She has built up an expectation for the product better than if I paid for her to do it. This is straight out of Marketing the Jesus Way. (More on that later, too.) 

The funny thing is, I haven’t tried these for myself. I have dirty dishes and I have a piece of nylon that’s done more of its share of work. I don’t know why I just don’t take what I whipped up and place them on the sink and use them. There would be no more thorough person than Mr. Honey. That could be the problem. 

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The Button Legacy

This is the Button Legacy. A local artist passed and her sister held a three weekend craft estate sale. Crafting material filled the basement. I saw these buttons on the Facebook page and knew I had to have them (including the basket.) I also knew she was a knitter. There was a ton of yarn and I managed to leave all of it there. There were some circular needles but I was fascinated with the wood needles.

But those buttons. It was the buttons that touched me. I love buttons. At another estate sale years ago, I purchased a huge box of buttons. I have used some but I have about 95% of them left and there are hundreds. There’s a fair amount in this basket as well. These buttons are more artistic than the others. I’ve already used one. I recently purchased some Wool Ease and this is one of few times I’ve used yarn as soon as it arrives in the house without needing it for an order. 

The button legacy will have chunky hats and scarves and this is a simple ribbed brim beanie. I really enjoyed it. It was quick and the tweedy look of the yarn is classic, modern and works well. Almost any of the buttons would have worked. There were lighter browns and oranges. I mean, just look in the basket. I’m looking forward to making more hats and the cowls and scarves that will have Parv’s buttons on them. I look forward to using the big needles she has. They are handmade birch needles. The smallest may be a size 9. 

The hat will go in the shop. Which is semi opened. It has a couple of items in it and this will be added to the list along with a few other hats I did for orders, discovered I really liked and want to add them. This is a blessing that is coming together right before my eyes and I am grateful for the part this beloved artisan has played in it.