Stitches At Home October starts this weekend! I’m excited to get started.
And a little nervous, of course. It’ll be my first time teaching through Zoom.
But once we get going – once I figure out how to ensure everyone is learning happily, even if we’re not in the same room – then I’m sure I’ll be fine. And I can’t say anything specific yet (sorry!), but I’m going to be doing a bunch more teaching via Zoom in the near future.
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It’s also likely I’ll be doing more guild presentations via Zoom. Case in point: a talk for the Fox Valley Knitters’ Guild on the 14th.
Really, it’s no surprise. Bringing in guest speakers via Zoom is a great way for guilds to offer their members something fun during these weird socially-distanced times.
If your guild would me to “come” and speak at one of its meetings, by all means, let me know!
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Recently I cleared some projects off my plate. None of my long-term WIPs held any appeal; I “needed” something new to knit. (You know how that works, right?)
Fortunately, I’ve been maintaining a special collection at Stitch-Maps.com. I call it my “Things to swatch” collection: interesting stitch maps, most without matching swatch photos. Bingo! I could knit fun little swatches until my next “real” project grabbed me.
And it was fun. Knitting a few swatches proved to be a nice “palate cleanser” between projects. If you have a subscription at Stitch-Maps.com, I highly recommend creating a similar collection for yourself. Any time you encounter a stitch pattern that catches your fancy, add it to your “Things to swatch” collection, and you’ll have your own tailored set of palate cleansers ready to go when you need them.
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It didn’t take long for the next project idea to hit me.
Long-time newsletter subscribers may remember Paisley. I’ve known for months that I needed to find some use for that stitch pattern. When the thought “make a hat out of it” popped into my head, I immediately dropped everything, pulled some Stunning String Luxury Fingering out of my stash (oh, praise be for stash!), and got right to knitting.
I’m super happy with it so far, despite an early hiccup: On the very first pattern round, I accidentally did two decreases where I only needed one. And I didn’t discover that goof for another four rounds. Oops. I had to rip. Understandably, I was not pleased.
Since then, I’ve made a bunch of similar mistakes – a decrease leaning the wrong way, and a few missing increases – but I haven’t needed to rip back, for a couple reasons: One, the pattern is well-established, making it much easier to see mistakes. Two, I’m regularly looking for mistakes, checking halfway through and at the end of every pattern round. As a result, the most I’ve had to unknit is a half a round. That’s not so bad, right?
So. At the rate this hat is progressing, I should be able to publish its pattern Real Soon Now. Most likely, I’ll write it for multiple sizes, since I like how the sample fits me snugly but others might prefer a looser fit.
How about you? Do you like your hats snug, or a little on the loose side?
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Much as I like to have at least one knitting project active at a time, I like finding time for other crafty stuff too, like quilting. If you follow me on Instagram, you may recall that last November I gave foundation paper piecing a try.
And though I liked the precision that FPP made possible, I found it a little too fussy to consider for large-scale projects.
Then the idea hit me: why not a wall hanging? Why not a clock? A useful wall hanging!
It turns out you can get clock mechanisms easily enough. And they’re actually pretty darn easy to put together. Really, the project’s only real challenges were putting a hole in the middle of the quilted clock face (oh, the thought of messing it up and ruining hours of work!), and stiffening it so it would hang nicely on the wall.
For the hole, I decided to zig-zag around the center, then cut. (And to hide the zig-zag under a decorative button.) Naturally, I practiced first! Creating a tiny quilt sandwich and putting holes in it gave me the confidence I needed to put a hole in the actual clock face.
To stiffen the quilt, I had hoped that hand-stitching it to a piece of plastic mesh would be sufficient. The mesh didn’t quite do the job, though, so I ended up having to add a layer of foamcore.
Overall, I loved puzzling through each step of the project. I’m already trying to convince myself I don’t need to make a second one, all in shades of blue...
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Do you enjoy listening to knitting podcasts? When knitting (or when quilting)? Then I have good news for you: Brenda Dayne is re-booting her Cast On podcast!
The next episode is due to drop October 9th for Patreon supporters, and October 10th for everyone else. In the meantime? Check out this “Not a podcast” preview, or this audio archive of past episodes.
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