Thursday, July 29, 2010

Videos at the library

As I was making a round this evening, I found a set of DVD's on knitting and crocheting. It looked like it had thirteen TV episodes with techniques for these yarn crafts. It's called Knit and Crochet Today. That should get your needles clicking.

Here are a few more:
I Can't Believe I'm Knitting
Basic Knitting Techniques: Volume 1
The Art of Knitting: Stitches, Colors, Fashion (Also Volume 2)
Annie's Quick & Easy Crochet with a Q-hook
Rag Crochet Annie's Do-and-Learn Way

So if you are visual and want to see how it's done between meetings, Come and pick up one (or more) of the videos, pop it into the machine, and start crafting.

Kathi

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Always Astounded

I'm trying to make several lap robes for the wounded soldiers before Christmas. (See http://www.soldiersangels.org/)

In order to prevent boredom, I've been borrowing afghan books from other libraries in the system and finding cool new ideas. My first amazement is that there are so many books to choose from if I am willing to wait a week or so for them to come in. For example, "crochet" pulls up 96 pages of listings! "Knitting" has 195 pages!!! Wow!!

My second astonishment is that whenever I need to see the correct way to do a new stitch, be it crochet, knitting, or knitting loom, I can find numerous examples on http://www.youtube.com/. As I am a very visual person, it helps me tremendously to watch how something is done. I'm grateful to Georgiann's knitting group because they helped me get curious about knitting again. If you can't come to a knit or crochet meeting, youtube might help you.

My mother can hold her yarn while knitting so that she has only to move her index finger to make a stitch happen or to switch from knit to purl. I checked out a number of videos in youtube and found one with Asian subtitles (Chinese, Japanese, Korean...?) in which I saw nothing but hands, needles, and yarn. The left hand wrapped the yarn between her ring and pinkie fingers and over her index finger. It was one of those "Eureka" moments. Someone half a world away showed me something I wanted to know.

It's just astounding!

Happy crafting,
Kathi

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Learn on a trendy scarf of different patterns


Featuring scraps of yarn, this trendy, narrow scarf will give those wanting to learn advanced stitches a small item for practice. Click here to see the pattern at Lion Brand. (Picture courtesy of Lion Brand Yarn.)

Saturday, July 10, 2010

Scrappy scarf - Beautiful!

To all knitters.

Courtesy of Linda Higginbotham, we have a beautiful scarf that looks like it would be very easy to knit and would use up those scraps of yarn for which you have no other plans.

Here's the website: http://zona.livejournal.com/2008/09/11.

Happy crafting,
Kathi