Yarnalong!

Today I'm linking up with Ginny, over at Small Things, who says, "Two of my favorite things are knitting and reading . . . I love seeing what other people are knitting and reading as well. So, what are you knitting or crocheting right now? What are you reading?"

What I'm Making:

My cat, annoyed that I'm interrupting his nap on this marvelous new blanket by putting a book down next to him. 

He closed his eyes again right after I took this picture.

I'm still plugging away at Anna's afghan, but I'm within spitting distance of the end now. I've only got about four more stripes to go. (You can see the beginning of the afghan back in this Yarnalong post.) 

The book:

I'm reading "The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets".  

I'm not much of a poet, but I like writing it, and I wanted to write more of it, if only as cross-training for my fiction-writing. Sort of like a swimmer doing weights or running on her non-practice days. 

Also, poetry is just a good thing. As the author of this book points out here:

Also, it made a lovely poolside read for one of our too-hot October days:

What are you making and reading this week?

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

This post contains Amazon affiliate links; if you purchase a book from this link, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price.  (See full disclosure on sidebar of my blog.)

Yarnalong: An Afghan for Anna & "Mysterion"

Today I'm linking up with Ginny, over at Small Things, who says, "Two of my favorite things are knitting and reading . . . I love seeing what other people are knitting and reading as well. So, what are you knitting or crocheting right now? What are you reading?"

The book:

I'm reading an advanced review copy of "Mysterion", which is a collection of speculative fiction (sci-fi, fantasy, and horror) written around Christian themes.

I've just started this (enjoying it so far--review to follow in a week or two), and I have to say: even if it doesn't turn out to be perfect, I love that there's a book like this out in the world, a book that is engaging Christian genre lovers outside the strict content guidelines that are normal in the Christian publishing. 

I just love that this book even exists.

The crocheting:

So, when I made this afghan,

my eldest daughter instantly claimed it as her own.

Which prompted the rest of my children to let me know that they ALSO wanted their own big, warm, woolly afghans.

What I'm working on now is the first of those afghans, for Anna, one of my eight-year-old twins. You can see in the picture at the top of this post that Anna chose some lovely cool-toned colors for her blanket.

I love how satisfyingly fast all those chevroned stripes build up. So satisfying!


What are you making and reading this week?

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

This post contains Amazon affiliate links; if you purchase a book from this link, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price.  (See full disclosure on sidebar of my blog.)

Ugly corner fix

This is the story of a small, happy, homemaking fix. I hated how ugly this cardboard box of printer paper was on our entryway shelf:

Then I thought: I have yarn; I can fix this.

And so I crocheted a basket to fit the printer paper box, using a large hook and several strands of yarn at a time.

And lo, the ugly corner became pretty:

It's a simple, small thing, but now when I look in that corner, I no longer feel growly about the ugliness.

I love sweet little solutions like that. 

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

New Finished Objects!

I recently finished a few large projects: an afghan and a table runner.

The table runner was made of laceweight cotton, and it was one of those slow, meditative projects. I designed it myself, specifically for this yarn. Very plain, the only decoration was a line of eyelet lace on either end:

But it looks pretty on our oak table, and I've been enjoying seeing it in our dining room this week. (Forgive my terrible photography! I promise it looks better IRL.)

The afghan was another project where I made up the pattern in order to fit the yarn: in this case, the yarn was passed on to me by someone who'd decided to go a different direction with her own project. I started crocheting it, and my daughter, Bess, asked, "Is that for me?"

And with that question asked, it was. :)

Now that it's done, Bess has taken to coming home and curling up straight away on the couch and burrowing under her cozy new blanket, which is just very gratifying to this crafter.

Of course, now the other three kids are sure they need one, too.

They all already have full-sized blankets that I've crocheted them, but those blankets were made of acrylic, and I admit that I love the idea of making them all wool afghans that are really, truly WARM. I think I just might ...

And that's how it goes: projects beget projects.  

I wouldn't have it any other way.

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

Handmade Crocheted Beaded Necklaces

So the Saturday before last, I decided it was time to make some jewelry. I hadn't done that for awhile, and so I had to dig out all my beading stuff from the dark recesses of the living room bookshelf wherein it resided.

I was inspired by the pendant in this picture, which I'd recently found at Michaels (I'm a sucker for botanical imagery):

And even though I ended up ditching the twine for some plastic beading wire, I did end up with a successful necklace:

Though I think I might go back and redo it. Not sure I like the plastic wire, even though I worked it along with some gold quilting thread. I might just use some cotton laceweight yarn instead.

But then, I went on to make this:

and I love it so much!  This was made with semi-precious stone chips (pretty affordable, actually, at your local craft store) and three strands of some DMC gold embroidery floss. I basically crocheted a tube shape for the middle stone section, and winged the two beaded sections on the end (sort of chain stitch, but with a bit of extra fiddling around to make it as thick as I wanted).  I had the closure in my stash, and now I think I need to get a few more like it, because it worked so well.

I think there's more jewelry-making on the horizon for me. It's just so much fun!

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

Crocheted Finished Object: Altar Cloth for the Credence Table

Or maybe I should call it the Credence Table Tablecloth?  A little repetitive, that.

This was really a labor of love.

But so little labor, really, at least in terms of tiresome labor. The pattern was simple and pleasant to work, and the work itself joyous.

Someday, I want to make something better, something that uses actual Christian symbols (crosses, etc.) in the lacework, but for now, this covers a rather beat-up table that our little church plant is using out of necessity, and adds a bit of beauty to our weekly worship.  I'm so happy I got to do my little bit here.

The idea of the church-members working with their hands to deck the church is a concept I love, and one I think that goes back to the making of the tabernacle. Someday, I'd love to see a needleworker's guild at our church, to work alongside the Altar Guild.

But here's a bit of a start. I'm so happy with it.

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

Yarnalong: Credence Cloth and "Working Stiff"

Ginny over at Small Things says: ~ Two of my favorite things are knitting and reading, and the evidence of this often shows up in my photographs. I love seeing what other people are knitting and reading as well. So, what are you knitting or crocheting right now? What are you reading? Take a photo and share it either on your blog or on Flickr. Leave a link below to share your photo with the rest of us! ~

The needlework:
This is, I hope, going to be the new tablecloth for our credence table at church. I'm using this pattern from WEBS and I'm crocheting it in cotton crochet thread.  I'm happy with how it's turning out so far and I'm really curious how it will look once it's properly blocked. I expect the lace will open up a lot.

The book:
I'm reading "Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner". I've just started this, but so far it's really holding my intention.

I worked, for a brief time, at a private investigation agency. We investigated workman's comp claims, and so I got to hear a lot about what could go wrong in work places. Reading this story about a woman who investigates what can go wrong, well, everywhere reminds me of my old job, somehow.

Yet the author says that learning more about death made her less afraid. I'm really curious to see how that plays out over the course of the book.

What are you reading and making this week?

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell


This post contains an Amazon affiliate link. (See full disclosure on sidebar of my blog.)

Knitted and Crocheted Finished Objects!

I've done lots of yarn-a-long posts this year, but I've neglected to post pictures of the finished objects!


So, here are some things I've finished knitting and crocheting recently. (All the links go to Ravelry, where you can find sources for patterns and yarn.)

A knit cap with lovely cables:

A lace blanket in wool that I swear looks prettier in real life than it does in this crappy picture:

Socks! (with, again, a terrible picture. I'm sorry!)

A garland of sparkling stars! (I think this might go up on the tree next Christmas.)

More socks! (I love knitting socks. Happily, I love wearing them, too!)

A pair of bright red fingerless gloves for a relative in the snowy north:

Some colorful potholders (I dig how the colors pooled):

What have you been making lately?

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

My favorite knitting & crochet projects from 2013

I failed at my crafting goal of learning colorwork in 2013 (new goal: learn colorwork in 2014!), but I did succeed in creating some finished objects I'm really proud of! Here are my favorite projects of 2014:

1) My husband's kilt socks. This was a looooong project, but it turned out so well! Pattern is Kilravock, free over at Knitty.

2) This lace scarf. It's the fanciest knitted lace I've attempted so far and only confirmed what I already suspected: I really like knitting lace. I'm hoping to tackle a few more complicated lace patterns in 2014! Pattern is Florence, free on Ravelry.

3) This enormous crocheted lace tablecloth. This one confirmed my suspicion that I love doilies. Yes, I'm secretly 83. But, seriously! There's such lovely symmetry in these old patterns. They deserve a resurgence in popularity. Pattern is "Large Pineapple Doily", free here.

4) This warm afghan. The fun part of this was figuring out how to take the multiplicity of thrifted laceweight yarns in my stash and work them into a unified whole. I'm really happy with the gradient I achieved, and I love having this piece in my living room. The "Ripple Afghan" pattern is available for free, here, though I will note that I modified it by holding a variety of weights of yarns together, and swapping them out in a pattern I worked out myself.

5) My new favorite cardigan. I've been getting a lot of wear out of this. This pattern's available for purchase here at Interweave, but I got it by buying an old copy of the magazine it originally appeared in. I love laceweight sweaters!

6) A second Color Affection. This is such a great pattern (Ravelry link). I'm actually scheduled to make a third this year, this time for my mom! The pattern's not free, but I found it worth the price, especially since I've used it twice already!

If you're a crafter, what were your favorite patterns and projects in this last year? Any of the ones I linked to look like something you want to try?

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Crocheted Finished Object: Giant Pineapple Doily!

Okay, I'm so, so happy with this one. It's just so pretty. All that symmetry. All those points.

All that math that I didn't have to do myself. :)

In the picture it's pinned out and blocking. Tomorrow, after it finishes drying, I'll unpin it and wrap it for its intended recipient.

(The pattern is free, and you can find it here. My Rav notes are here.)

Yay for handicrafts! Yay for beauty that just appears when you follow the instructions! There's something so lovely and predictable about doily patterns. Such a nice antidote to every day life.  :)

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Knitted and Crocheted FO's: an afghan, a pair of socks, and some gloves

Well, I've been neglecting to post craft progress here on the blog, but that doesn't mean I haven't been busy!

I haven't quite caught up with photographing my finished objects (two rather large projects still need to be washed and blocked), but here are a couple of smaller - and one not-so-small - bits of handiwork.

These gloves are to replace my previous ones, which were just a bit too short at the wrist and knuckles. Rav notes here.

These socks are just plain ol' vanilla socks. Rav notes here, for those interested in yarn details.  
This afghan is probably the most fun: it's entirely made out of yarn recycled from thrift store sweaters. Most of it is laceweight, and I held the yarn double/triple/quadruple/+ stranded throughout, which let me switch out one strand at a time to get that ombré effect. Rav notes here.



Now if only the weather would cooperate and give me some cool days to go with all these wooly wonders!

Peace of Christ,
Jessica Snell

12 12s in 2012 (and favorite projects of 2012)

(The first part of this post is about my 2012 crafting challenge. The second part has the pretty, pretty pictures, if you'd rather just scroll ahead. :) )

Amber asked me how my "12 12s in 2012" craft challenge went. On New Year's Day last year, I wrote:

I'm participating in a crafting challenge this year called "12 12s in 2012". (For those interested, it's hosted on Ravelry in the group "Stash Knitdown".)

The idea is that you make a list of twelve kinds of things that you're going to make twelve of this year.

How'd it go? Well, I managed to complete most of the categories, if you're generous in your definition of "most". Here are my results:

Goals I made: 12 items made from patterns I already have, 12 items made for me, 12 items made for others, 12 knitted items, 12 crocheted items, 12 household items, looked at 12 new craft books
Goals I didn't reach: 12 socks (only made 7),  12 new-to-me-techniques (only learned 6), 12 scrappy projects (only two! But they were both huge afghans, so together they represent a lot of stash used up), 12 Christmas gifts made and ready BEFORE December of 2012! (only did 4).

So, it was a fun challenge. I didn't complete it, but I enjoyed it and I did get a lot done. Here are some of my favorite projects from 2012:

So, for 2013, I have some new, (maybe) more modest goals:

1) Learn colorwork. Specifically, I want to make the fingerless version of Stephannie Tallent's Quatrefoil Mitts, and then I want to progress on to the hilarious "Fightin' Words" mitts.

2) Learn Irish crochet, using my laceweight scraps. My inspiration is the otherworldly, crazy beauty found in the Russian magazine Duplet and the amazing tutorials Máire Treanor has been writing in Interweave Crochet.

3) I also want to use up some of the older yarns in my stash. So I think every other project I start has to be made in an older stash yarn.

What about you? How was your 2012 in crafting? And do you have any goals for 2013?

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Knitted and Crocheted FOs: socks and blanket!

I finished a pair of socks for me - they're knit in Knit Picks Stroll Tonal in Wine-Tasting - but it looks more like Lambic Framboise than wine to me!

I also finished a crocheted blanket for my son. I set out to make each of my kids a full-sized twin (or larger) handmade blanket, and this completes the set. Four blankets! Whew! (The other three can be seen here, here, and here.)

Gamgee picked out both the colors and the pattern for this one. The yarn is Knit Picks Brava Worsted, and the pattern is the Good Cause Afghan from Crochet Today. I had the magazine, but I believe the pattern is free at that link.

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

Finished Object: Flowers in the Snow Afghan

I don't even know how many back episodes of Writing Excuses I listened to while I worked on this, but I do know that it contained approximately 1536 yarn ends. All of which I had to weave in.

1536.

Which is enough to say: I'm thrilled with how it turned in and I am never, ever doing it again. ;P

But the little girl who requested it is very happy with her flower garden blanket, and sleeps under it every night - and it's big enough she'll be able to sleep under it even when she's not a little girl anymore.

This wasn't my favorite project to work on, but it was one of the most satisfying.

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Yarnalong: "Flowers in the Snow" afghan and "The Queen of Attolia" by Megan Whalen Turner

These are the many, many circles for my "Flowers in the Snow" afghan:

There are 192 of them. You'd think that was an accomplishment, but the real accomplishment is going to be when I finish weaving in the 1000+ ends.

The novel I'm reading right now is "The Queen of Attolia" by Megan Whalen Turner, which is the sequel to "The Thief" (you can read my review here).

Wow! Talk about a palate cleanser. Whalen Turner is just everything that is good about literature. Give me a clever hero with a conscience, and I'm yours. Give me that plus a well-realized setting, a subtle romance, and a twisty plot, and I'm downright ecstatic.

More yarn and book fun can be found here, over at Small Things.

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Crochet Finished Object: the Chain Reaction Afghan!

Done at last!

Here are all the squares, joined together:

And here's a slightly worse picture, but it shows the border a little border (oh, that border! I thought it'd be the death of me! Three different balls of yarn, and I had to switch between them every few stitches!):

It's certainly an eclectic project, but it was fun to try so many different techniques, and as soon as it was done, Bess promptly dragged it up to her room and she's been sleeping under it every night since. So, the customer is happy. :)

Close-up shots of individual squares can be seen, here, here, here, and here. If you want to try the pattern yourself, it's available for free on Interweave's site here.

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica snell

Chain Reaction Afghan: the Final Four Squares

I finished the last four squares for my Chain Reaction Afghan!  Actually, none of these four are official Chain Reaction squares - they're replacements for the four squares in the pattern I found I disliked for one reason or another.

Here they are - you'll notice on a couple of them that I changed colors in odd places. That's because this afghan is actually an attempt to use up my many, many Caron Simply Soft yarn scraps, and so I used each color all the way down to the last teeny, tiny end.

That last one is my favorite - it's supposed to look like stained glass, and it does!

I seamed up the afghan over the weekend and started the insanely long border, which is made of three different colors all used at once, so that you have to drop one yarn and pick up another every two stitches - very time consuming, as you also have to reorder your balls of yarn every two stitches in order to avoid tangling them.

BUT. As soon as I'm done with the border it will be DONE and I will have FINISHED something. It feels like forever since I actually finished a project . . . just checked: the last thing I finished was my Petals Wrap Cardigan, and that was TWO MONTHS AGO. Wow. Forgive all the caps; it's just that I'm used to finishing something every week or two, not every month or two! It's all that knitting instead of crocheting, probably. :)

Or maybe I'm just getting more ambitious.

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell