Beading Knitting Markers and Copper Wire

While taking a break from closet reorganization, I started another lace shawl (The Beginner's Triangle from the book A Gathering of Lace.) The shawl is made from a brownish golden DK weight wool. It was the dickens to start, but thanks to knitting friends with savvy, it is off and running.

The only minor glitch in knitting the project is that it requires many, many marker rings for clear delineation of repeat designs.

And I had only a few (maybe 15) rings on hand that I had made last year. The photo below shows those rings already in place in another project.

If you are interested in making some of these markers, hop back to the post a year ago (using jump rings and directions for making them explained there) .

So now it was time for more markers and a new technique. The finished markers were made with beads and 20 gauge copper wire, shown below.

Supplies: a small roll of 20 gauge copper wire from any craft store, beads, crimper beads, wire cutters, a round nose pair of jewelry pliers

Directions: I doubled up on the wire, making the strands stronger, then twisted the wires together, added beads, and closed up the ends with crimper beads. This is an easy, quick project (several pink ribbon markers are going to knitting friends). Be sure to crimp the wire together closely so that the ends will not nick into the yarn fiber while knitting.

If you make some of these beading markers with wire, please show me your designs (or just email me) and give hints on improving them.

Organizing a Closet (aka Just Throw it Away)

Yep, my husband overstepped his bounds. He irreverently referred to my obsessive admirable habit of trying to organize my clothes closet, and even went so far as to tell the world about it. Honestly!

The chore of cleaning out my closet is an ongoing battle. The DH has a ridiculous and completely unnecessary house rule of "whatever item comes into the place, an item of the same size/category must go out of the house". Example: if he buys a new fishing rod, the old one is discarded. In his orderly mind, this is a way to keep clutter and unnecessary paraphernalia under control. This may be an admirable rule, but it is also a trial for me since I am more of a hoarder collector. After all, you just never know when that old wool sweater could be used for a felting craft project.

Yesterday, I had several empty shoe boxes, a couple pairs of shoes and a few articles of clothing separated out from the closet. These items were innocently placed in the adjacent bathroom ready for the next step of closet organization: sorting into piles of "throw away" or "give away", or "take to the resell shop". (Granted, the stuff had been there all day.) In steps DH with a snarky question about how long this pile would make its home on the bathtub rim. I told him this minor delay in organization was just part of the process of "staging" in the closet cleaning process.

And THEN he had the nerve to ridicule my staging process on his blog. Read it at Cleaning Closets on Living the Grand Life and see if YOU think it's funny. (It really is.)

(from 2009 Engagement Calendar by Anne Taintor)

"Staging" in the process of reorganization is a perfectly legitimate, although slow, method of getting rid of junk. In My Humble Opinion.

Maybe I SHOULD just throw everything away ... and start over.

Cooking in An Economic Depression

Looking for information about cooking in "hard times", you might find this 91 year old woman's recipe and remembrances thought provoking. Take a listen to her YouTube presentation on cooking a potato, adding a can of peas and then adding pasta to make a filling dinner for a family of four. Now that is saving a dollar!

Then there is this post from a fellow from Texas who said:

Never been to a DollarStore ? I have, and not just because I've been down on my luck financially. Dollar stores often are just where you need to go when your regular stores are closed or out of stock on a standard household item.They offer one-stop shopping, convenience and basic value in a crunch.

His post talks about buying food at a DollarStore, among other things, and is worth a read.

Another site you might like to visit is this: Menus for Moms Cooking in Hard Economic Times. This article puts things into a realistic perspective.

Blog Material: Blog Hunt

I saw this on Jane's daughter's website and decided to copy the idea. The concept is to share good writing in the blogosphere.

So after considerable thought and intense snooping, my listing of blogs meeting the criteria is below. Be sure to stop by each one and see for yourself what incredible writing there is to be read in cyberspace.

In My Humble Opionion (Peggy Hill's favorite saying on King of the Hill), links to a blogger who:

has an online shop: Sweet William

has flawless taste: Keep it classy

has admirable qualities: Too Jazzed To Sleep and Throws like a Girl (both inspirational)

has awesome links to other blogs: Tip Junkie

is an artist: dianes mixed art

is intriguing: michelle perkett

is a daily read: country pleasures

is an old favorite: cast-on

is creative: a year from oak cottage

is a designer: sew liberated

is wildly prolific: daily danny

features fabulous layouts: grimitives

features loveliness: cates back porch

features fantasticness: Indie Collective

lives far away: Craft n Cook (India!)

lives pretty close: living the grand life (in the next room)

takes fantastic photographs: robin's woods

tells great stories: Gaston Studio

crafts up a storm: knitted gems

writes about life: a second cup

gives fabulous recipes: the pioneer woman

gives fabulous tips: tip junkie

makes me want to be her best friend: Heather at Craftlit

makes me believe in the goodness of people: Proverbs 31 Living

makes me laugh: What I Should Have Said

Check out these blogs; play along, and feel free to copy this neat idea for your blog.

Tea Party in Grand Junction - Wear Tea Bag Protest Jewelry

Are you gearing up for the April 15, 2009 Tea Party to be held in Lincoln Park at UPDATE: NOON at the the southwest corner of Lincoln Park near the intersectioln of 12th Street and Gunnison 1:30 pm? (See Dennis White's comment below)

From the local Grand Junction Sentinel:

The theme is similar to the Boston Tea Party, in which colonial Americans protested British taxes on tea by dressing as Indians and dumping tea overboard from ships anchored in Boston Harbor. The events have sprung up in the wake of the economic stimulus package and President Obama’s budget proposal.

You can dress up and attend your local Tea Party with a pair of newly minted GENUINE TEA PARTY EARRINGS like these beauties below.

Make your own protest earrings: buy a package of silver wires, open a tea bag from your kitchen cabinet and remove the outer packaging, tie the paper string onto the earwire, perhaps add your personalized slogan to the outside of the teabag.

You will surely want to wear a pair of these bold symbols of your conviction that you want to be heard and that you protest the slogan of CHANGE CHAINS WE CAN BELIEVE IN to your local Tea Party held next month. Make a few extra and hand them out. Sporting these aromatic earrings will show your protest over the national stimulus package that will cost you hard-earned dollars.

Maybe the national press will get hold of this idea to bring extra attention to the several trillion dollar stimulus package.

Knitting Terminology is Sometimes Confusing

While starting to knit a beginner triangular scarf from Meg Swanson's book A Gathering of Lace, two terms had me baffled in the pattern directions for the supposedly "easy" lace pattern. Those two terms were: "sl 2tog" and "p 2 sso".

Now, I knew what the terminology meant in terms of language, but the actual execution of the technique was open to interpretation. Remember the book Eats - Shoots - Leaves (Zero Tolerance for Punctuation)? ... the true meanings of words can be construed in several ways, as explained by the author of that classic little book.

These terms were driving me crazy! I knit it one way, then another, but which was the right way - the way the author intended?

So here comes my friend Google to the rescue: Respondent Fran said:

For the sl 2 tog kw, that means slip 2 together knitwise. To do this take your right needle and insert the point into the next 2 stitches on the left needle as if you were going to knit them. Slip them to the right needle.

For p2sso, that means pass 2 slipped stitches over. So, first your sl 2 tog kw, then knit 1 stitch. Then take the two stitches that you just slipped previously and pull both of them over the stitch you just knitted. As for visual aids, none found. Fran

Yea! The above archived response from four years ago popped up in the search engine that some nice person named Fran answered. (That same question was asked by someone else several years back which put her in a similar quandary. )

Happy as a clam, I'm tooling along on my "beginner/easy" shawl (a misnomer), executing those Sl 2 tog and p2 sso terms with a bit more confidence.

The lace scarf being knit is from the book A Gathering of Lace. This is the site where you can purchase it from Amazon.

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Shawl

Have you heard about the The Sisterhood of the Traveling Shawl Project?

The Traveling Shawl is a pink lace shawl that will be knit by compassionate knitters in each of the United States, and travels from person to person in increments of three days per person until it has been completely knitted. It will then be raffled off in late 2009. All profits will go to the Susan Komen Foundation. This site states:

... The shawl will visit all fifty states of the US, with one knitter from each state adding 6-8 rows of intricate stitching. Upon completion of the shawl it will be won by someone who has donated to the Passionately Pink for the Cure campaign.

If you would like to be entered in this drawing, make a donation to our Traveling Shawl Team (ID # 3408007). Then forward your confirmation email to travelingshawl@gmail.com For each $5 donation you will be entered into a raffle to win the Traveling Shawl. If you'd like to join our Ravelry group, please visit us at http://www.ravelry.com/groups/traveling-shawl. You can also join our group on Facebook. Simply search Traveling Shawl.

And from the internet Ravelry Knitting Group:

This is about 50 Ravelry knitters from 50 different states...to document the journey of a traveling shawl. It’s journey will begin in Arkansas and once it has been passed to a knitter in every state of our GREAT country, it will return. We hope to accomplish this by October 2009.

For each $5 donation made to the Susan G Komen Foundation via our Donation Page you can be entered in our drawing to win a chance of owning the completed beautiful lace Traveling Shawl.

Everyone has been impacted in some way by breast cancer. Each entry will highlight the knitter, their state, and the person in whose honor or memory that they are knitting for. Enjoy the journey with us. Check out our blog. The journey has begun - share the news! Don’t forget to get your mammogram.

To follow the progress of the shawl, log in to The Traveling Shawl Blog. Today it is in Oklahoma.

Be generous and donate. Who knows, you might just win the shawl and be able to give it to someone who is in The Fight!

St. Patrick's Day!

Try Decoupage with Wood Picture Frames

That useful product Mod Podge is a favorite medium when decoupaging. It is fast drying, and tough as nails. A little goes a long way with this finish, and sanding between coats of the varnish is not necessary.

In just a bit over two hours, I created two picture frames from unfinished wooden frame blanks purchased at the craft store. The frames cost between $1 and $2, depending on size.

There are many sources to learn how to make a picture frame using the decoupage technique. Check here and here for complete, easy instructions.

These two frames have an undercoating of blue acrylic paint. Then various photographs from the trip and a few post cards were used in the decoration of the frames, including maps and tour tickets as mementos. (You can tell that the recent New Zealand and Australia trip was good photo fodder for decoupage pictures.) There is even a whorl of indigenous possum and wool fiber incorporated into one of the frames that I am currently using to knit a lace shawl.

This is an easy and fun project to create for your favorite vacation photos that will incorporate even more memories preserved on the surface of the frame.

Crafting Boxes and PaperDolls

Looking for a box template on the internet, I came across a variety of sources. One especially talented crafter came up with many different designs, including a template for making articulated paper dolls.

The directions given for making these creations are given for using card stock. You can enlarge the size to make almost any small box. This being said, I looked through my file of greeting cards which I save for just such a project, and came up with a sweet little bear card which I cut out, making a small puffy box to hold gifted handmade earrings. There is no need to purchase new card stock paper if you have a few cards on hand. (This is a good way to recycle your previously received birthday or other special occasion cards.)

Here is the template for a box made from cardstock from websource Mirkwood Designs for the puffy box:
Please note the restrictions:

Copyright 1999-2008 Mirkwood Designs, a division of ruthannzaroff.com. These templates are free for your use to make craft items to give or sell, to use for teaching purposes, or for submitting projects to magazines. I would appreciate it if you provide a link to my Web site. The templates themselves may NOT be auctioned, sold, or published in any way without my permission.

This adorable template could provide hours of fun for all age groups from children to adults. One of my blogpals, Diane at Dianes Mixed Art could go to town with her mixed media talents, making a spectacular work of art from this template, courtesy again of Mirkwood Designs:

I am going to make this doll about 7-8" in height for an indoor potted plant, whimsically dangling from one of the leaves.

Here is the original template:

Salt Cellars and a Contest for Best Uses Today

Several cut glass anachronistic salt cellars were among my mother's prized what-nots in her dining room buffet. She used these little dishes as water holders when she painted with watercolors (a "no-no" in art instruction now, since one is taught to use large containers of water with this paint medium). As a child, I thought it odd that these little containers used to be set on the table for individuals instead of the larger salt shakers now in play.

Since I inherited these little glass objects, it was worth a look into their history. Here is some information about them:

This site gives a bit of history about salt cellars:

...historically, salt was a very precious and valuable commodity -- and salt was kept on the table in small but sometimes elaborate dishes known as salt cellars -- and just being able to afford salt was something of a status symbol. Where salt cellars were shared amongst a number of people at the dinner table, unless an individual spoon was not provided with the salt cellar, the proper way to take salt from the salt cellar was not with one's fingers but with the clean end of one's knife or fork (rather than the side that goes into one's mouth!).

Collectors of salt cellars even have annual conventions where they can meet, greet and purchase their favorite item of collection. This seems odd to me, but then again, I play tournament Scrabble, so who am I to say?

From Absolute Astronomy:

Salt cellars, also known as salt dips, open salts, and salt dishes, are not cellars at all, but an open dish, without a lid, that was used by wealthy families from the middle ages until WW II.

Now I'm in a quandary about how to best use these little salt cellars. Maybe I should.....

1) leave them out on the armoire in the evenings, and fairies could use them as wee bathtubs; or
2) perhaps they can be used as earring holders in the boudoir?;
3) or how about fire ants using them as a punch bowl for an outdoor picnic?

If you would like one of these antique salt cellars shown in the photograph, just leave a comment below about what you would do with one of them. I will pick a random respondent to receive one of these antique salt cellars, postage paid, with my compliments.

Don't you just love a contest where you have nothing to lose?