Yarn Crawl Awesomeness!

Yesterday morning, I got together with several other members of our friendly local knitting and crocheting club for a "yarn crawl," which is like a pub crawl, but to yarn shops instead of pubs.

We went to two yarn shops, ImagiKnit in Tullahoma, TN and The Knit Kit in Shelbyville, TN. In between the shops, we grabbed lunch together at Applebees. I bought yarn and patterns at the first shop, but nothing at the second, primarily because I couldn't think of a specific project to use it for. I will probably go back there soon and buy yarn for a baby project for my friend Amy's new daughter. My Ravelry queue is getting out of control, though.

It was so much fun to see new yarn shops, feel all the nice yarn, and to spend the time with friends who also appreciate yarn and don't think I'm strange if I rub it on my face (because they've done it, too)! We shopped, we conspired to share patterns from an expensive pattern book, we ate, we talked, we even had an impromptu sock-knitting lesson in the car. It was a blast!

I can hardly wait until the next one, set for early September.

On being multicraftual

People who like crafts often like many different crafts. In the knitting and crocheting community, people who both knit and crochet are sometimes referred to as "bicraftual." Since I engage in other forms of crafting in addition to knit and crochet, I think of myself as "multicraftual."

There are many advantages to being multicraftual. You can use supplies and techniques from one craft to augment another. You can use a craft to make supplies for another craft. You can combine crafts in one finished work of art.

As far as I can tell, there is only one disadvantage to multicraftual status. I call it "I can make that" syndrome. I see something in a store or on a website, and it is lovely and I covet it, and it may be reasonably priced or it may be way out of my budget. But I think to myself, "I could make that," and I immediately start to think of ways I could improve upon it. Then, I will not buy the one I saw, even if it is reasonably priced and would take me hours of work to reproduce. If I think I can improve upon it, I will try to do so. Sometimes I succeed. More often, I spend a large amount of time and effort (and occasionally even money) thinking about the project, planning it, shopping for supplies for it, and then never get around to finishing it.

Lately, I have taken to asking myself whether I can truly do it better than the original and how long it would take me to do so. If I don't like the answers, then I am better off just buying it or forgetting about it entirely.

Photography for knitters

I recently ran across some posts on ravelry about photographing one's work to best effect. I had been getting decent photographs of my work, but not fabulous ones. The tips that I found most helpful were these:

1. Use natural daylight whenever possible. This means being patient and waiting until a nice sunny day (or lightly cloudly one). When impossible (ie you've got a deadline), use diffuse light by putting parchment paper over lamps, and positioning them around the work to be photographed.

2. Keep the background simple to avoid distracting from your work.

3. Don't use the zoom. Instead, hold the camera as close as possible to the work.

4. Photograph your work in use if possible. If it's a garment, have someone model it.

Using these tips, I took this picture of my most recent finished work, a crocheted shopping bag.

Moebius cowl progresses

This is the first time I have tried making anything in a moebius loop, and it's certainly an adventure. I have seen many patterns for knit moebius scarves, shawls or cowls. But to me, the real fun of making something in a moebius loop is following the edges around and around, which means it should be crocheted, not knit. (A moebius loop is a loop formed by twisting the edge one half turn before joining, which results in an interesting phenomenon: a three dimensional object that only has one side.)

I started making the cowl to use up some chenille yarn that I bought years ago and never made into the original planned project. I discovered that the reason I hadn't made the original project is that there wasn't enough yarn to make, well, much of anything. So my free project to use leftover yarn turned into a $33 project when I had to buy more yarn. I hate when that happens.

But the cowl is going well. I will probably finish it with a scalloped edge today. Which means I can start a new project! Yay!