scarf - Daniel Kenneth

I received another Craftsy box last Thursday, which contained a Worsted 3-Way Scarf Kit I bought during one of their latest sales. I really do love their sales. Generally, you can’t even get the yarn for the price these kits go for. Even if I wasn’t going to knit a scarf, I’d probably still buy the kit just for the deal on yarn. So I got the kit, picked out one of their 3 designs that came in the kit and got to knitting. This started off a weekend of yarn.

I picked the kit in the color “Denim”. It turned out to be a pretty simple pattern, which is basically knit the right side and a 1×1 rib on the back which gives this texture. I generally put on a documentary when I work on crafts and sometimes I get sucked in and lose count of my stitches. I’ve already screwed up several times. You might be able to see my mistakes at the top right. But as I go it’s getting easier and easier, so I may just rip it all out and start again. Or I might leave it, because — who cares.

When I needed a break from that I started knitting socks. Turns out you can screw those up pretty badly as well. Take these socks for instance:

Somehow, I completely missed an ankle and heel on one of the socks. It was going to smoothly and then when I preparing to sew up the toes to all the socks I made, I saw this. I thought about ripping it up and trying again, but I’ve done that before and it really isn’t worth it. The way the toes and heels are made basically knots the yarn together, so it’s very difficult to reclaim the yarn. I’d rather just not.

As you can tell, I was totally winning at everything last weekend.

In the end, I still came out with a pile of finished socks. And that sock on top is made from the yarn I was excited about in my last post.

And when I wasn’t playing with yarn, I was deep cleaning my room. I don’t know if you know this, but I’m a bit of a craft supply hoarder. So I went through all my dresser drawers and started tossing anything I haven’t looked at in years.

Who needs this drawer full of shirts? Not me! This drawer could fit so many hanks of yarn in it. And this other draw would be perfect for paint brushes!

So yeah, I love plenty of drawers empty now and waiting to be filled with supplies that are hiding throughout the house.

Yesterday, while browsing the store during lunch, I stumbled upon the LoopdeLoom. I usually avoid gimmicky things or things not marketing towards my general craft experience level, but this one called to me. I don’t know if it was my desire to finally have a loom of some type or the 40% off the clearance price sticker that did it, but I got one. It’s marketed at young girls, so, to be honest, I wasn’t expecting much.

The instructions were very simple. Stick the pegs in, cut your yarn for the length of the project (2 x length + 12″).

My first impression of it was that it was very plastic, but it all seems to move smoothly. I really like the idea that if I like this I can chain several of these together for larger projects. Starting off seemed rough. At first, it didn’t seem like I picked the right yarn, it was very bare and sparse looking. But once I got a few rows in everything started pulling together.

After a short while of watching T.V. and putting yarn on the loom, I filled it up and was ready to progress into the next section. This just meant pulling the sticks out and then putting them back into the base without any woven material on them.

After about an hour and a half of mindlessly adding thread onto the loom and watching late night shows, I realized I had progressed pretty far. After a few minutes with this thing, you really master it and clip along at a good pace.

The only issue I had through this project so far was the pegs kept smacking each other whenever I moved onto the next row and I moved the giant switch. As you can see in the last picture, two of the pegs are stuck together. Now, it’s not an issue really, you just give them a nudge and they go back to where they’re supposed to be. But row after row of this happening really made it annoying, especially when you have a good pace going. But this may be why they include a few extra pegs in the box. Eventually, they’ll likely get all bent out of shape…. it just seemed really soon for it to already start happening.

I really wish the pegs (at least the shafts) were metal. Other than that I was having fun with this thing. Another night or two and I should have myself a nice soft scarf for the upcoming winter.

Tag: scarf

A weekend of yarn

Trying out the LoopdeLooM