The yarn bearer

 

I won yarn from Kayla!  That’s 1200 yards of hand-dyed, 100% fingering weight yarn.  I’ve actually never worked with fingering weight yarn before, so I’m very excited.

Kayla hosted the contest on her blog, The Yarn Bearer.  All she required was a comment with what you would make from this skein.  I chose the Celestine Crochet, which looks like a spiky ball.  If I like the pattern enough I’ll try the knitted version, too.

 

I plan to start crocheting just as soon as I wind this hank into a ball.  I’m a bit scared about tangles from Angela‘s experience, but I think I’ll take her advice and hang the yarn off the end of a chair. 

Thanks again, Kayla, for the beautiful yarn!

 

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Warm up america

The twenty-five rectangles I made finally made it to Donna at Crochetville!  They’re for the Soften the World Simply Soft Sweepstakes Caron is holding. You can see a picture of my rectangles and the 1000+ rectangles other Crochetvillers have contributed on the 2 for 1 – Warm Up America and Crochetville! thread.  I crocheted every last bit of Simply Soft in my stash, including two unused skeins in navy and remnants from the Cable and Divine Hats. 

I used Donna’s 7×9″ Rectangle Granny pattern for the majority of the rectangles.  I thought about using a bunch of different stitches, but finding the gauge for each pattern was taking too much time.  Grannies work up fast and once I figured out the perfect hook size the rest was easy. 

To get the right gauge I actually left out Row 8 of the pattern.  My gauge was still too large with a size F hook and I hate using the size E hook with worsted weight yarn.  My yarns splits, the handle is too thin and I generally can’t crochet as quickly.  Also, since I can’t stand weaving in lots of ends with a granny-style stitch, all the little yarn balls that I couldn’t stretch to a whole rectangle were made up in plain double crochet. 

I’m glad I tried Donna’s granny pattern because I learned a new way to join granny-style rounds.  For the last corner, you chain one and single crochet to join the round.  The single crochet ends in the middle of the last corner and from there you make half a corner and continue around.  It’s difficult to explain, but simple to use and there’s no slip stitches involved!

Anyway, I crocheted twenty-six rectangles total.  Twenty-five went to Donna and the last rectangle was sent out in my name for the individuals category.  The deadline for individual square entries is May 1, 2008 with a prize of twelve skeins of Caron SS.  Crochetville is still accepting rectangles through the mail until April 29, 2008 for their effort to win the $300 cash prize.  All the squares collected for the contest will be donated to the Warm Up America charity. 

 

*That’s cool* a random fact

Granny Smith Apples are named after Mary Ann Sherwood (1799-1870), who never saw her apples become a commercial apple variety. 

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Rain drops

Happy Easter everyone!  If you have some extra blog time today, vote for your favorite rain cloud over at Knits and Knots.

*That’s cool* a random fact

Wet air is less dense than dry air with temperature as a constant.

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