Weekly Rec – I Can’t Resist New Patterns

I won’t live long enough to make everything I want to make. I don’t stitch fast enough and I keep getting distracted by other things like eating food, sleeping, and cleaning out the microwave. At the rate that I get things done, I have enough planned projects to keep me busy for the next 50 or 60 years.

I might get another 50 or 60 years on this earth. Maybe. If I’m very tough (only the tough can handle getting old), very lucky in traffic, and don’t meet up with any homicidal microbes, I could live that long. Maybe. I might even have enough wits and eyesight left at the bitter end to weave in my last yarn tail and wrap the final wool-y thing around my shoulders before scooting off to a condo in the sky. So if I stop looking at patterns right now, today, I have a razor-thin chance of finishing up everything I want to make.

But that won’t happen. I added four new things to my que just this month. I’ll probably add at least four more next month. Why? I can’t stop looking at patterns. I download them and read them like they were stories and if I like the story the pattern tells, I add it to the list of things I want to make.

Weekly Rec – Let’s Talk Coffee

Did you know that one of the names I considered for this blog was “Runs On Coffee”? It was. (Another was “Covered in Cat Hair”, btw.)

My current coffee stash*. I’m set. With this much coffee I can stitch and write for months!

Weekly Rec – Old Yarn Labels

I love yarn. I love old yarn. I love those labels on old yarn. 

This probably reveals too much about the depths on my obsession with the whole making-things-with-yarn hobby. Perhaps I should be keeping this particular passion to myself. It may make me look like a weirdo. But… I do love those old yarn labels. I had so much fun going through my stash and reading them all. Again.

And maybe there are a few fellow weirdos out there that will enjoy all the pictures of my old yarn labels! Maybe they will even share a few of their own. I can’t be the only one…. right?

Weekly Rec – Handi Tools are Pretty Handy

I love my Handi Tool. I didn’t always but I do now. I use it all the time. I know several ways to fix boo-boos in knitting but I prefer to use my Handi Tool. Its faster, easier, and requires very little brain power. Let me try and talk you into getting one.

Weekly Rec – Keeping Bugs Out of Your Stash

Bugs are everywhere. There are an estimated 10 quintillion (10,000,000,000,000,000,000) bugs living in the world at any given time. Some of those bugs want to eat your yarn. You know what’s even more disturbing than that? They want to eat MY yarn.

I’m enduring a very wet, very rainy summer. In Texas, Rain + Heat = Insect Invasion. Fire ant mounds are everywhere. The mosquitoes are so bad that after they’ve sucked out all of your blood, they knock you down and steal your lunch money. So no one has to tell me that the Eaters of Yarn are out there multiplying their little buggy brains out. I already know that and I’m getting my defenses ready. You should too.

Weekly Rec – Online Stitch Libraries

A crafter can never have too much yarn, too many patterns, or too many websites on which to waste hours and hours thinking about yarn and patterns. Which is why we have online stitch libraries. These are collections of patterns, motifs really, that have been organized by helpful souls and available for free.

Weekly Rec – Mackerel Should Come with a Warning Label

Feline Overlord and I are six months into our regimen of regular Mackerel eating and its going great! Really, just great. She is doing so fantastic with her supplements of this amazingly stinky fish that I might not survive. 

Club Mackerel: Cat Super-Charger!

Remember this stuff?

Weekly Rec – For the Deeply Addicted Knitter, Barbara Walker

Barbara Walker collects knitting patterns. Lots and lots and just lots of knitting patterns. By patterns I mean motifs really. She has filled up and published four books worth. You would think that would take up all of her time but, as I learned later, she’s more than a knitter. She’s also a noted author and feminist.

Barbara G. Walker – a woman who accomplishes more in a week than most of us do in a year

For me, Barbara Walker is the reason I know about and love mosaic color work. Of all the knitting patterns she collected, rescued, and designed herself, the mosaic patterns are my favorites.

Weekly Rec – Some of My Favorite Yarns

I don’t have a favorite “of all time” yarn. That would be like trying to pick a favorite book or a favorite doughnut. Impossible! But I do have favorite yarns for certain categories. These are categories that I have made up and use to organize my stash. When I say “organize” I mean stuff into bags and pile those bags into the stash closet of course.

By the way, every time I go in that closet I find my cat. Funny how that is.

Weekly Rec – Patterns That Teach

Today I’ve got three patterns I’d like to show you. I like them because each author takes the time to explain or demonstrate exactly how the item was made. They take the time to teach the technique(s) a crafter needs to make it. Too many patterns (and their writers) make assumptions about our skills. But these don’t. And these patterns are free!