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.