3KCBWDAY2 - Photography Challenge Day!

Today challenges you to be creative with your photography, and get yourself in with the chance to win the photography prize. Taking interesting photographs in this instance isn't about flashy cameras or a great deal of technical know-how, it's about setting up a story or scene in a photograph and capturing something imaginative. Your photograph(s) should feature something related to your craft, so that might be either a knitted or crocheted item, yarn, or one of your craft tools. One example of setting a scene would be to photograph a girl in a knitted red cape walking through the woodlands with a basket of goodies, as in the Red Riding Hood tale, or you might photograph a knitted gnome hiding among the flowers in your garden. Photo editing is permitted for competition photos. 


I don't have very many 'creative' photos of things I've knitted or crocheted. I don't even think I have anything of my finished objects being used!


But today is also National Pigs in a Blanket day, so I give you a picture of my newest skein of yarn and a pig in a blanket!

Oh, apparently I lied about not having any pictures of my finished objects in use - here's a picture of Murphy cat trying to make off with my cowl:

Check back tomorrow for more of Knitting and Crochet Blog Week! And it's WIP Wednesday too!

3KCBWDAY2

Material Monday

I ordered some new yarn this weekend: Stroll Tonal sock weight in Nevermore from Knit Picks.

I also ordered some size 2 DPNs. I've never used DPNs before, so this ought to be interesting...

WIP Wednesday the Twenty Seventh...

Yesterday I started on the final gray stripe on the Slytherin Scarf:

I'm only one row in, but still - it's the final gray stripe! That means I'm only two stripes away from being finished! 48 rows! Whoo-hoo!

The Gryffindor will probably be a little while longer. The coworker who I am making it for is going on a mini vacation this weekend to someplace cold, and I'm trying to get it done in time, but I'm afraid I won't. I'm still going to try though!

I already have the next project lined up - a baby blanket I promised to someone in the spring that didn't get made because of the wedding chaos. I'm thinking I might try a rectangular granny square or a granny zig-zag (I have a thing for granny squares and granny square-esque stuff)

I also got caught off guard by a yarn sale at Michaels. I walked in to see if they had any Halloween stuff on sale (they did, but nothing interesting) went to the yarn aisle just to look at stuff and pet the yarn and ended up walking out with 8 skeins of yarn. 

Surprisingly the maker of the yarn is Red Heart! I couldn't believe it the first time I saw it! Normally Red Heart has the worst stuff ever - it just feels so nasty, like it's been treated with something. This new brand of Red Heart, aptly named Red Heart Soft, is so nice and they have some really awesome colors. I can't wait to use it!

As always, check out Tami's Amis for more Works in Progress

Work in Progress Wednesday the First...

Tami's Amis does something on her blog called Work in Progress Wednesday and, like the lemming that I sometimes am, I have decided to join in.

Yesterday I was finally able to get more Lion Brand yarn for the Harry Potter Scarf I am making for a coworker, and I was able to make a bit of progress on it. In fact, it's grown quite a lot since I last showed it off:

There hasn't been any progress on my hat because I realized that we're only 4 months away from our trip to Ireland, and HTB really wants to have a Slytherin scarf by then, so the hat has been put aside in favor of yet another scarf. However, I haven't cast on yet because I'm still torn between using the pattern available on The Leaky Cauldron, or if I want to actually buy the Charmed Knits book. A friend loaned me a copy, which I then passed on to another friend with her permission. I could ask for it back, but I know my friend needs it as much as I do, and frankly, I'd just really like to have my own copy to dog ear, y'know? Also, the yarn that I have for that project is sport weight Telemark from Knit Picks (which is really nice BTW) but the pattern calls for worsted weight, and suggests Cascade 220 specifically.. and I noticed yesterday that WEBS is having a sale on Cascade 220... hmmm.... but I think HTB might have a conniption if I buy any more yarn, so I may have to start with the Telemark and just see how it goes. 

How are your projects going?

Day Three: Tidy mind, tidy stitches (part 1)

How do you keep your yarn wrangling organised? 


There is no rhyme or reason to my yarn wrangling. I tried to keep it organized at first, and then we moved, and now we're looking at another move, and the cats love attacking the bags and climbing onto shelves where the bins were stored and knocking the bins over, so now it's just scattered about the apartment. 


I have a Haunted Mansion tote that is home to my current project and the yarns needed for it that stays next to my love seat. The new Harry Potter scarf that I'm working on for a coworker is kept in a plastic bag next to the tote because there isn't enough room in the tote for it right now (The baby blanket has gotten huge!) and the yarn for my cowl is kept in the same area. 


The stuff I ordered from knit picks is currently buried in one of those 5 gallon plastic storage bins that I meant to use for my fabric. Some other yarn is kept in a plastic bag in the hall closet, and the rest of the yarn (including my yarn hair falls that I made for Bats Day one year and never wore again because they shed so much) is kept in a smaller bin that was in the bedroom closet, but the cats have knocked it down from the shelf it was on so many times that it just sits on the floor now because I got tired of putting it back up there. 


And that's all the places I can think of that my yarn might be hiding. I will post pictures later because I didn't have time to last night...

Day One: A Tale of Two Yarns.

This week is Knitting and Crochet Blog week, so every day I'll be discussing various topics that have been pre-decided by the people who run this event (A full list of the topics can be found here) Today the prompt is to choose two yarns in my stash of yarn and discuss what I love and hate about them.

(The above yarn is not a picture of yarn from my actual stash. I forgot to take a picture so I just borrowed this one from the internet :P)

My go-to yarn lately is Caron Simply soft. It's one of the best buys out there for name brand yarn - a skein is usually 6 oz and you can get it at Walmart, Joann's, or Michael's for around $3 when Vanna's Choice is only 3 oz (give or take a bit) and is usually around $4 - and it really lives up to it's name! It's probably one of the softer big name yarns out there, Lion Brand Wool-ease or Jiffy, Red Heart, and Vanna's Choice just feel so rough on the skin after working with Simply Soft. In fact, now that I think about it, I think it's even softer than most of the baby weight yarns on the market!

The only downside to Caron Simply soft is that there aren't as many colors as available as you can find in some of the other brands. I have another baby blanket I would like to make using a tartan pattern that I found, but the colors I want to use that would match my friend's tartan just aren't available. Also, the closer you get to the end of the skien, the more the yarn begins to split.

(The above yarn is not a picture of yarn from my actual stash. I forgot to take a picture so I just borrowed this one from the internet :P)

I have a love/hate relationship with Lion Brand Homespun. I love the colors, I love how soft it is (I'm big on texture when it comes to yarn, if it's not soft, I'm not going near it) but OMIGOD is Homespun a bitch to crochet with! The first scarf I ever made was out of Homepun in Lagoon. It was a gorgeous blue that I couldn't turn away from, but the yarn is a loosely woven bulky boucle type yarn, so the fibers begin to blend in with each other and you're not really sure if your hook is actually going where it should be going and then you'll accidentally end up splitting the yarn on the row you just did and then if you try to unravel it it snaps and breaks on you. 

And yet, I keep buying it to make scarves out of it. I must be a glutton for punishment. 

Ice Yarns

I discovered a new online yarn shop today, completely by accident. I had gone on ebay and was looking around at the yarns available on there, and saw a brand that I didn't recognize. When I looked up the company it turned out that they had an online store, and they actually had really good prices! They are a wholesale company, so you have to buy a minimum order, but that's really not such a bad thing when most of my patterns require two or three skeins of the same color.

Check them out here: Ice Yarns