One of the fun thing about being a designer/blogger is that every once-in-awhile yarn company’s will send a box of yarn and other goodies. This is a great chance to review new products and swatch with new yarns to see if they will fit in with one of my designs. I knew that Red Heart was sending me such a box, but had been so busy with work and family stuff it had slipped my mind.
So I was very pleasantly surprised today when the FedEx truck came and it was a box for me (instead of my beloved, who gets lots of boxes for work stuff).
Inside was this wonderful tote bag full of all kinds of fun stuff.
There are knitting stitch markers, chain for counting off stitches or rows, yarn cutter, knitting needles, crochet hooks, new issue of Crochet Today magazine, Susan Bates and Red Heart product catalogs and…..
Yarn!
More about all this fun stuff once I get caught up on some patterns.
The third Saturday of the month is lots of fun. I go to Denver to hang out with all my stitchy pals during PJ Jam at my favorite Denver LYS: The LambShoppe. Of course one reason it is so fun is that I can buy yarn, tools and nifty buttons.
So I did. Plus being October is my birthday month I got a discount. I’ve some special plans for these sparkly buttons and yarn, but Shhhh…it’s a secret for now. Hopefully I’ll be able to share with you soon, but for now I’m going to be a swatching, sketching, designing fiend.
I was so excited to see these fun little skeins from Lion Brand Yarn. They call them “BonBons”, which is a very cute name too. You can see more of the colors and fibers available at the Lion Brand Website, I’m not sure what stores they will be in.
Sparkly BonBon in my Favorite Color
Of course I am now faced with the dilemnia of deciding if I am going to crochet the yarn. They are so adorable like they are. And the 2 packettes I purchased are the sparkly ones. Jack Blumenthal of Lion Brand said that they had a customer that put them in a glass jar as a decoration in her crafting room. I am tempted to do the same.
At the booth with Brandyce & Zontee
It was great fun to talk to the Lion Brand folks at the Reno Knit & Crochet Show. They were the sponsors of the Professional Development Day and had a booth in the Market with their lovely new yarns for sell. Lots of exciting things happening with their yarns. Soft luxurious yarns with subtle sparkles and of course the fun BonBons in sparkly and other options.
I’ll be doing some fun designs over the next year using their yarns so watch for news about them here on my blog. In the meanwhile you might want to get some BonBons for yourself.
You may have heard of Blue Heron Yarns. The description you’ll get from most folks that have worked with these yarns is “yummy”. The colors they offer it in are eye pleasing. The drape and fluidity of the fabric, whether it is knit or crochet is delightful.
My 2 hanks of Blue Heron Yarn
When I knew that Blue Heron was going to be one of the vendor booths at the Reno Knit & Crochet Show I made immediate plans to swing by to check out the lovely colors and pick up a few hanks to play with. The yardage in the hanks is very generous, so I knew I would have a great time creating some wonderful crochet designs.
Demian and Miguel
It was fun and interesting visiting with the 2 gentlemen at the booth. I’m sure these fellas were wondering what they had got themselves into. Neither of them crochets, though Miguel said he was learning. Demian’s Mother started Blue Heron Yarns and he gets to go to all the various shows and sell their yarns. If you can’t make it to a show where they are selling their yarns, you can purchase them thru their website: YarnJunky.BlueHeronYarns (a great name for a yarn website).
I did get a bit of a giggle from Demian when he was surprised that I would be looking to crochet with their bamboo lace weight yarn (that’s the gorgeous pink and coral colored one in the first photo). Of course I’m always amused when folks think that certain yarns can’t be crocheted with. It’s wild how crochet’s hey-day of Irish lace work has been replaced in most people’s minds by the 1960-1970’s Granny Squares. Don’t get me wrong, I adore granny squares. It’s just that crochet is so much more.
Clearly I’ll have to create something gorgeous out of this yarn soon and get the pictures out there. Even if I worked simple granny squares in these yarns though, they would look amazing.
Just a quick photo of all the fun stuff I came home from the Reno Knit & Crochet Show with. Funny, I thought I hadn’t found time to do much shopping. Clearly I was wrong. This is a happy thing though. Soon, I’ll tell you more about some of the individual purchases.
I’m off to town today for my first ever local CGOA chapter meeting. I’m so excited. I’m hoping we can get a chapter going well in my area so I can meet more nearby crocheters.
Back in January, when I went to TNNA in Phoenix, I was very excited to see and touch the yarns being offered by many of the companies at the show.
I was particullarly struck by the “Mohair Mountain” yarn from Universal Yarns. One reason it caught my eye was that the balls were massive!
Each ball contains 660 yards of wonderfully fluffy yarn. The colorways are mouth watering and best of all there are long runs of graduating colors which crochet up gorgeously. You can see all the wonderful colors at Universal Yarn website.
Hopefully, I will have some lovely new designs to show you in this yarn this year.
In celebration of Valentines Day I thought it appropriate to post a picture of something luscious….
…my new hanks of yarn from the Skacel Collection. Zitron’s Filisilk (70% Extrafine Superwash Merino, 30% Silk), Filigran (100% Extrafine Superwash Merino) and Fil Royal (100% Baby Alpaca).
I know you must be drooling as much as me. These lovely lace weight yarns are my “carrot” each day as I finish up other projects. I can hardly wait to get my hands on them to swatch with (and i have been cheating by fondling them occasionally). At this stage it is definitely Lust, though I expect when I do get to work with them it will become true Love.
Hope you are having a day filled with indulgence and some love of your own.
This afternoon I went down our mountain to pick up my oldest son from school and drop off a package to be mailed at our local Post Office.
While I was at the Post Office the UPS driver was there too, he tells me, “I have a package for you too.” This tells you a bit about how many UPS deliveries I get that the delivery dude knows my face and name when he sees me away from my home.
I was sort of hoping it was my new snow/winter hiking boots I ordered the other day. Instead it was yarn. Yes, I was really broken up over this. Ha!
Red Heart Boutique - Midnight in "Shadow"
Take a gander at this gorgeous stuff. If you haven’t had a chance to look at some of the new yarns coming out from Red Heart go take a peek. This is some yummy stuff. I am loving the long runs of colors that blend into each other and the touch of sparkle. Best of all the yarn is still nice and soft.
How about that?! Two weeks have flown by so I come back with a bit of Latin.
It’s been a wild August here on the mountain. Between my boys starting back to school on the 15th, 2 very large design projects I’m working on and all the swatching for proposals…..I’ve been wishing I had either a live-in assistant or that I could clone myself.
So I promised some substance for this post. Let’s take a quick look at WPI.
Worsted Yarn, WPI = 9
WPI – Wraps Per Inch. It’s a measurement used to tell the thickness or weight of a yarn. Spinners use this term a lot. It simply refers to the number of times that a particular yarn can be wrapped around an inch wide length. You don’t want to wrap the yarn tightly as it will distort the yarn and you want each strand of yarn to lay flat next to each other on your measure.
I had never heard of it until I joined Ravelry in 2008. Once I had though, I was amazed that it isn’t used as part of yarn labeling. It is a fairly accurate measurement and far less subjective than the categorizations of “worsted”, “dk”, “sport” and “fingering” etc that we see. Or the nifty little drawings with the number on a skein.
On that subject, I purchased this ball of yarn at Hobby Lobby ages ago. I liked it because it was a bright-colored light weight yarn. Imagine my surprise that it was labeled as a # 5 “bulky” weight yarn. Seriously?
Now sometimes with a really fluffy mohair kind of yarn that has a thin core I can see a yarn being labeled bulky. But there is no way this is a bulky yarn. Being I’m an experienced yarner, this sort of labeling mistake doesn’t bother me, but for your new yarn consumer or those less experienced this can be quite confusing. Particularly if you are looking to substitute a yarn.
Measuring by placing ruler at 90 degrees on top of ball.
It is easy to measure WPI in a store, especially on many of the larger commercial skeins. You can do it by laying the ruler at a 90 degree angle to the yarn wraps on the ball, or by slipping the ruler under one layer of wraps to see the number of wraps across an inch.
Measuring by slipping the ruler under one layer of yarn.
I’ll talk more about how this all helps when you want to substitute yarns. For now I challenge you to play with measuring WPI on your own. See if you start to get a feel for the WPI of various yarns.
As is known by many of my stitchy friends and my dear readers of the blog, I have a slight addiction to novelty yarns and crocheting with unusual materials (spaghetti anyone?). So the first time I heard of Jelly Yarn I had to investigate.
The talented Vashti Braha had mentioned it one evening on the Getting Loopy podcast chat room. I was immediately intrigued and decided I must find some of it to play with. Fortunately not too long after that I was at the Buffalo Knit and Crochet Show (August 2009) and Jelly Yarns had a booth.
My Jelly Yarn Purchase
Jelly Yarns is owned by Kathleen and Nick Greco, super nice people and lots of fun. Their booth was a bright fun corner of the market floor. I was especially excited to find Glow-In-The-Dark and glittery Metallic (sparkles!) Jelly Yarn. I purchased a couple balls of the metallic and one of their “Glow in the Dark” colors.
If you can’t find Jelly Yarn in your area check out their website at JellyYarns.com (it’s also a great place to explore tips about using Jelly Yarn and to see the latest fun stuff they have planned).
The yarn is available in 3 different weights and 14 colors. Kathleen works with their manufacturer in Pennsylvania (another thing to love, this yarn is made in the USA) planning and developing new colors. She also creates wild wonderful knit and crocheted art pieces and patterns from Jelly Yarn.
It is a bit strange to crochet with at first. The yarn is 100% Vinyl, reminding me a bit of the lanyard lacing type stuff used to make woven key chain fobs in summer camp (way back when). This isn’t “yarn” in the fibery sense, but it is very flexible and I love the sculptural quality of it. It is fantastic for beaded crochet with big hole style beads.
Kathleen recommends using a hand lotion or hand salve on your hook to improve the “glide” of the yarn over the hook and thru stitches. Her favorite salve to use is Burt’s Bee Hand Salve. She also recommends the use of a metal hook like the Susan Bates Silvalume. I found I didn’t need the lotion or salve when using my Clover Soft Touch hooks especially as I wanted a loose stitch structure. I do like the salve for tighter projects though. The finished fabric is very elastic with a structured quality and a slight grippy feel to it.
When I returned home from the Buffalo show I made some single crochet bracelet “worms” for my boys from the Glow-In-the-Dark yarn. I also strung a bunch of blue toned beads on the Silver Icing sparkly yarn with the intention of making some fun jewelry items. Unfortunately life got busy like it does and I tucked it away to work on later. This past Monday I was having a clear out of my working space and re-discovered the ball of yarn and decided it was time to play with it again.
So here is the fun and slightly funky bracelet pattern I came up with. Enjoy!
Glittery Beaded Cuff
designed by Andee Graves
Materials:
Jelly Yarn (100% Vinyl) in Silver Icing color. Fine weight
Size J (6 mm) hook (I used my Clover Soft Touch – the matte finish of the metal seems to help)
79 – Size E beads (I used Blueberry Pie Mix [color 01] from Twisted Sistah Beads)
Large yarn needle for weaving ends
Gauge: 6 sc and 7 rows = 2 inches
Special Stitches
Beaded Single Crochet (bsc): Bring bead up close to work, insert hook in st, keeping bead to back of work yo and pull up a loop, yo and pull thru both loops on hook.
Double Beaded Single Crochet (dbsc): bring bead up close to work, insert hook in st, keeping bead to back of work yo and pull up a loop, bring second bead up close to work, keeping bead to back of work yo and pull thru both loops on hook.
Pattern Notes
My cuff is 2″ wide (5.1 cm) and 7 3/4″ around (19.7 cm). If you want yours longer for a larger wrist just add un-beaded rows at the end and beginning. If you want more beaded rows add 5 beads for each additional bsc row and 12 beads for each additional dbsc row. Remember you will need an odd number of rows in the end to make the finishing seam work correctly.
Jelly Yarn isn’t a fiber yarn so taking care of the ends is a bit different. Vinyl will stretch thinner and then relax back into its original size, so knots tied tightly in this yarn tend to stay put. Read the details in the finishing closely to keep your bracelet from coming undone.
Instructions
First string all the beads on your yarn. This is easy to do because the yarn is stiff enough to act as your needle. If you have extra beads you might want to add a few just to be sure you’ll have enough for this project.
Foundation: Chain 7, turn.
Row 1: Sc in back bump of 2nd ch from hook, sc in back bump of each ch to beginning of ch. [6 sc]
Row 2: Ch 1, turn, sc in each st to end of row. [6 sc]
Row 3: Ch 1, turn, sc in first st, bsc in each st to end of row. [1 sc, 5 bsc]
Row 4 – 12: Alternate repeating Row 2 and Row 3, ending with a Row 2.
Row 13: Ch 1, turn, dbsc in each st to end of row. [6 dbsc]
Row 14: Repeat Row 2. [6 sc]
Row 15: Repeat Row 3. [1 sc, 5 bsc]
Row 16: Repeat Row 2. [6 sc]
Row 18 17: Repeat Row 13. [6 dbsc] Aug 27, 2016: Thanks to June T. for pointing out that Row 17 was missing. I had mis-numbered the rows. Eep! It’s been on here wrong for nearly 5 years!
Finishing: Pull beginning and ending tails to tighten slip knot and ending knot. Using tails sew top of Row 28 to bottom of Row 1, sew half way for each tail so they meet in the middle of seam. Tie a square knot with the 2 tails. Weave the loose ends of the tails back toward the sides of bracelet and cut off so ends don’t show.
I am offering this pattern for free so the only tech-editor for this pattern is me. Please let me know if you run into a snag with the pattern.
Mamas2Hands 