Ready To Go

 

At last I've finished the 20 tatted 'lavender bunches' for an order. I delivered 8 earlier, so here are another 12 packaged and ready to go. 

Friendship Bracelets

 

The craft group I run in a retirement home is one of a number of such groups. Usually we act independently, each developing our own projects for the week. But every now and then there's a project that all or most of the groups do. The friendship bracelet is one such project. I collected the loom and cut threads yesterday, so my preparation this week is minimal. I do however need to make a sample, and decide how we're going to finish the bracelets. 

Back To Tatting Lavender

 

I'm tatting lavender again after taking a week off to prepare for the market. The market was very quiet, there weren't many visitors, but I did sell enough to make it worthwhile going. Jam was my biggest seller I think. I didn't sell any tatted bookmarks, but I gave one  away to a lady who said she tried to learn to tat and gave up. The next market is the December/Christmas one, so hopefully it'll be better attended. 

Experimenting (once the sock was finished!)

 

I've been saving the second sock for when I wanted easy knitting. For instance, sitting in the car waiting for Jack to buy chicken food. But eventually I got fed up and just wanted the pair finished. I put some time in yesterday and got it done. That freed up my needles to try an experiment. 

I get regular Interweave newsletters, one about crochet and one about knitting. Recently there was a post on the knitting version about Ladderback Jacquard. The headline promised to explain it, but the article left me not much wiser, and in retrospect I realise that even the main picture doesn't show ladderback jacquard! However, it did arouse my curiosity and I googled it. Hmm, I'll have to give it a try. 

I used a tutorial from Knit Darling.  It has a video and a written explanation, which I found helpful - I could watch the video to understand and then just follow the written version as I tried it out. It's easier worked in the round, so I cast on a little tube of 30 stitches. It's a way of managing long floats at the back of the work. The interweave article mentioned that it could be used to knit a sort of intarsia in the round. I'm wondering if I can use it to knit motifs on socks. Hmmm. 

Variety

 

I listened to someone the other day saying that the problem with monthly markets is that the stalls have the same items each time. I'm not sure I entirely agree; I'd be disappointed if I went to the lady I usually buy cream from and found she had marigolds. But I thought I'd try to put something new on my stall on Saturday and tat some bookmarks. Of course I've left it rather late to carry out said plan, so I had to go with a very simple pattern. I'm busy preparing for tomorrow's craft group meeting, but even so I should have time to whip up a few more before Saturday. 

Trying New Patterns

 

I decided to make some beaded key rings for Saturday's market. I've found that a 5 circumference beaded crochet rope works best for key rings. I didn't have many 5 circumference patterns in my file, so I thought I'd look for some more. I browsed Pinterest and found quite a few. I downloaded a bunch, printed out four of them and used three. I like how they turned out. Many of the patterns I found are labelled DB-Beads, but that is just a software program for writing patterns, so doesn't help identify the designers. Thank you, whoever you are! I now have 8 key rings ready for market

30 Bags

 

I sewed the remaining bags yesterday to complete the first batch of 30 jewelry bags. 

It's a great exercise for practising using my cutting board and ruler. They work well for measuring and getting everything square.