Well, at least my Saturdays seem to be about yarn. Last Saturday I went to the Estes Park Wool Market and had a lovely afternoon of petting yarn, talking about yarn and purchasing some yarn.
Mary Carol in front of the LambShoppe
This Saturday I went to PJ Jam at the LambShoppe in Denver. This is a great way to spend a Saturday evening, stitching and laughing with my crochet and knitting buds. The owners, Mary Carol and Anita, open their shop the 3rd Saturday of each month from 5 pm – Midnight for an evening of stitching fun. Some folks even wear their PJs.
I love Novelty yarns. Anything fuzzy or sparkly tends to draw my eye. But knitting and crocheting with these yarns can be a challenge. Particularly if you have to frog your work when stitching with fuzzy yarns.
Shawl in Universal Yarns Swiss Mohair
A few of my favorite commercially available fuzzy yarns are Lion Brand’s Homespun, Premier Yarn’s Alpaca Dance, KnitPick’s Suri Dream, Caron Yarn’s Dazzleaire and Universal Yarn’s Swiss Mohair.
Basically what I consider “fuzzy” yarns are any yarns that have a “halo” to them while you are working with them. Generally if there is Mohair or Suri Alpaca in the blend you are going to have some halo to contend with.
With crochet it is easy to twist the fibers of the halo together within a stitch. Making undoing the stitches, or working into the top of a stitch extra challenging.
So here are some tips for working with and frogging fuzzy yarns without losing your mind:
1 – Don’t work tightly. Using a small gauge needle or hook with these yarns is almost an engraved invitation to insanity. Most are marked as a bulky or super bulky yarn, and folks, they are not kidding. When crocheting with most novelty yarns the smallest hook I use is a K (6.5mm).
2 – Working with a very pointed hook can help you get through the stitches without splitting the yarn.
3 – Avoid the grab and yank approach to frogging or even pulling your yarn out of a center pull skein. Be prepared to be patient with these yarns and make your stitching (un-stitching) speed a bit slower.
4 – Have a small hook or needle on hand to tease apart the fibers if your stitches get stuck when working.
5 – If you are making a toy or other project that needs tight stitchwork requiring a smaller hook or needle. Work slowly and be prepared with extra yarn in case you run into problems. Generally it is nearly impossible to frog your work when tightly stitching fuzzy yarns.
6 – If your fuzzy yarn gets it’s fuzziness from Mohair, sometimes sticking the project in the freezer for a bit can make it easier to unravel.
Good luck with your next fuzzy project. It’s well worth taking pains with these yarns to create luxurious wraps, scarves, garments and cuddly toys.
This past weekend included another Saturday night spent (or is that mis-spent?) at the LambShoppe with my stitching friends. Admittedly the amount of actual stitching I got done was minimal. But I did do some damage shopping for yarn and consuming yummy food.
Yummy Yarn
Everyone brings a dish or nibbles to share. My contribution was a Smoked Salmon Cream Cheese ball. Even me, with my severe culinary challenges, can manage to mash up smoked salmon with cream cheese and shape it into a ball. I also provided gluten-free crackers to eat with it.
When I wasn’t being a social butterfly visiting with the friends there I was having fun cruising about petting yarn and filling a shopping basket with balls that needed a home. Some of this yarn is destined to be sent away as gifts to stitching pals further afield. Much of it is for me to play with though.
In particular is this gorgeous stuff. Lang Yarns’ LanaLux (40% Merino, 28% Polyamide/Nylon, 32% Polyster). Anita, one of the owners of the LambShoppe actually helped me find this yarn at the last PJ Jam. I was on the hunt for seriously sparkly yarns. You have to admit, this is seriously sparkly.
It is also really fun to stitch with. I made up a couple of my Little Christmas Wreaths in it and was quite pleased with the way the yarn performed as well as the beauty of the finished wreaths. I may have to come up with some other fun designs using this yarn.
I keep visualizing an open work FreeForm Lace style capelet. Worn over a black shirt it could make for a wonderful bit of dazzle and warmth for New Year’s Eve. The more sedate version would be to use one color. But the wild woman in me is seeing something using every color.
So on this jaunt I was determined to acquire every shade they had available to experiment with. There will also be a few more wreaths made as gifts for family and friends this holiday season.
I was feeling a bit blue the other day. Partly due to lack of sleep and my twisted ankle. But it got me to thinking about one of my very favorite colors. Blue.
Now folks that know me might guess that is my favorite color, as there are subtle hints everywhere in my life and accoutrement.
My briefcase has colors of blue, and a sort of retro thing going on too (which I adore). My poor abused “Better Back” hand bag is a denim blue. I wear blue jeans out and about in my public life (though at home I am more a yoga pants gal, and those tend to be black or gray). I have quite a few shirts that are various colors of blue.
My design office walls are 2 different shades of blue. I seem to have acquired a number of cobalt blue glass items over the years. There are also quite a few glass beads of that hue in my beading supplies. And of course…there is always lots of blue yarn.
This particular ball of yarn has been tempting me to make something lovely for myself. I’m not sure that it is the absolute best shade of blue for me to wear, but it is so glorious that I may have to anyway.
I purchased it from the wonderful Gypsy Wools shop in Boulder. The owner, Barb Day, dyes the yarn herself and this skein practically jumped off the shelf into my hands. I have worked with this yarn before in other colors. Best of all is the name of the yarn: “Andee”. It is an alpaca and wool blend that is toasty warm.
I originally made myself a hat in a green colorway (to go with my coat, which isn’t blue). Sadly I managed to lose the hat somewhere during all my errand running adventures last winter. I’m looking for a project to work on during my flight next week and another hat would be just the right size.
I’ll have to be more careful if I do make another hat, don’t want to be blue about losing my new blue hat.
I love bags, purses, satchels, totes. You name it, likely I have at least one in my collection of “containers for carrying stuff in”. I am particularly fond these days of this bag.
Kanji Project Cozy by CozySpirit
My dear friend Cozy has a lovely Etsy shop: CozySpirit where she sells bags of all sizes, moth-away sachets to match, and gorgeous yummy hand-dyed yarns. This bag was a synthesis of both our creativity. She did all the hard work though.
I wanted a bag that was a good size to carry a small yarn project in. I was particularly looking at it from the standpoint of classes at conferences. I sent her the measurements I was contemplating and she did some figuring for me.
I purchased 5 bags from her and I used all the bags at this summer’s Chain Link. They were ideal for the classes, easily holding numerous small balls of yarn, my hooks, class notes and a pen.
The pockets of this bag are a gorgeous Asian style print she had leftovers of. I had fallen in love with another bag she had in her shop, but missed out on purchasing it. She only had a bit left and came up with this design to utilize it. It is perfect in so many ways.
Stitching on the Go
The straps are long enough that I can slip the bag over my shoulder and keep stitching away on my project while walking around. The outside pockets are very handy for a place to stow my keys, a small pad for design notes, or even a spare hook or needle when I need my hands free to do something else.
Interior Details
And the interior details are just as nice as the exterior. The seams are fully finished, so there are no fuzzy edges to add lint to my yarn or otherwise gumm up the interior. There is a handy pocket on the interior too for keeping my hooks and such from diving to the bottom of the bag. A nifty little loop on the interior also provides a good spot for stitch markers to rest when not in use.
Cozy has numerous versions of this style of bag at her shop now. She calls them “Project Cozys” and they are very reasonably priced. I use all of mine on a regular basis.
Cozy has also come up with a larger project bag that I will be adding to my collection very soon. Sometimes I need more room in a bag for a project that outgrows the Project Cozy, so I’m looking forward to getting my new bag. This one will be large enough to carry a big shawl project in.
And even if you are not a stitching kind of person Cozy’s bags are a wonderful well-made addition to your own collection. The Project Cozy size is ideal for using as an everyday handbag with lots of good spots to stow your wallet, phone, car keys and all those other necessities when running about.
That was the question in my mind recently when I decided to finally attack the task of making an inventory of my yarn stash. I hired a friend to help as each time I’ve attempted to get a handle on things I get too overwhelmed or distracted by the beautiful yarn.
First thing we did was corral every bit of yarn from my household and work areas into one corner of my office. I was happily amazed that it took up far less room than I had anticipated.
Then began the counting.
I had already gotten a good portion of it sorted out by yarn company.
And I had purchased some bright green dots to put on each skein as it was counted, as well on the containers that were filled with inventoried yarn.
My friend Laura really is a marvel. She has helped me with numerous organizing projects over the years. Best of all for this project, she has no interest in yarn and fiber, so is the ideal candidate for keeping me on task.
Whenever I would get all a flutter about the re-discovery of a beautiful skein in my stash, she would be asking what to put into the spreadsheet about it. She did grace me occasionally with a kind comment about a color that caught her eye. And we had many a good chuckle about some of the color names.
I am now down to the last 15% of the inventory job. This is the part where I identify all the yarn that has lost its ball bands and map out storage locations so I can find the yarn I want when it is time to crochet this all up into lovely swatches and designs.
My gorgeous yarn and beads from the Chain Link 2010 Market.
One of my favorite vendors to see again was Leslie Pope of Twisted Sistah Beads. She always has a beautiful array of beads in every color you can imagine. As well as the perfect sizes for using with yarns. I actually ended up making 3 visits to her booth. I bought beads all 3 times, but the third visit I also couldn’t resist these wonderful charms.
Those hands were too cool. Remind you of anything?
The rest of the charms I purchased for some fun gift making (I’m thinking about Christmas gift giving already).
I also made a search for some laceweight yarns as there is a sad lack of laceweight in my stash. Habu Textiles had so many beautiful ones to choose from. But the lovely colors of the Bamboo Lace finally won the place of honor.
Then I stopped into another booth to purchase a funny mug with goofy sheep on it, and spotted the Classic Elite Silky Alpaca Lace. I decided the laceweight would pack down fairly tightly so purchased 2 balls. Of course once I got it home and read the label closer I did have a bit of a giggle.
No matter….I think I’ll get good results with crocheting it too.
Mamas2Hands 