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.

Rag Crochet is Upcycling For Hookers

Its time for some rag crochet. I bought new sheets last week. That means I have old sheets. That means I have stuff to make rags. That means rag crochet.

So let’s have a Rag Crochet Pattern Roundup

Penny Bracelet – a Free Crochet Pattern

I love old, tarnished pennies. If they are all battered and scratched up, stained with time then I want them. I like finding all the details and imperfections in them. I like them enough to break out the thread crochet and turn them into something wearable.

I know I’ve warned that thread crochet can be dangerous. It can make you go blind and drive you crazy. I still believe that with all my heart. But these are so quick and so easy that I only went a little bit crazy making them. I don’t think anyone noticed.

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!

A New Way to Make a Butterfly – a free crochet pattern

My students sometimes give me homework. I know that it should be the other way around. I should be the one giving out assignments. I’ll need to work on that.

One of my assignments this week (yes I had more than one, lol) was to figure out how recreate this:

The Weekly Rec – Three Designers That Give it All Away

Happy Thursday! I’ve had a great week watching my blog blow up with visitors thanks to Lionbrand and their FaceBook post on my little yarn-cake-cozy pattern. It was my 22nd pattern. Does that sound like a lot? It’s not! Let me introduce you to three talented designers that between them have published 631 patterns (as of this writing) to raverly. And they are all free.

Today I’m recommending MMario, Tamara Kelly, and Frankie Brown. Ravelry just wouldn’t be the same without them.

Carry Your Cakes – a free knit pattern

I love cake cozies and I LOVE mosaic color work. So when lighting hit and I felt the urgent need to make a two-color mosaic cake cozie I did not even try to resist. Now I have two matching cozies made from leftover yarn from the stash.

Two might not be enough for me. We’ll have to see.

Ripplet!- A free knit pattern

Back 17 years a few months ago, I started spinning up a bag of fiber called Karaoke Rainbow. Its was mighty colorful stuff and its was colorful in the way that made your eyes hurt a little. But that’s okay. If you have the right pattern even color-riot-yarn can be fetching.

New Use for an Old Stitch – a free pattern

A few weeks ago I found a little blurb in  The Encyclopedia of Needlework  by Ms. Thérèse de Dillmont, published in 1884, about the “knotted stitch”. It’s a variation of the half double crochet (that’s half treble for my Uk’ers). It seems it was never much in use, not even in Ms. Dillmont’s day. Its sat around in the shadows, occasionally being rediscovered by a plucky and independent sort of hookers over the years.

Now I’ve re-discovered it too! And I like it. And I made up a pattern that I think is just perfect for this little nubbly stitch.

Twisted Fingerless Mitts – a free knit pattern

Here is a free pattern for fingerless mitts in worsted weight yarn. They are basic ribbed mitts with some twisted stitches thrown in to break up the boredom of knitting them. Also, twisted stitches add a little something, don’t you think?