After a month's delay thanks to the busy-ness of life, Purl and I are back! Rather than the fortnightly episodes originally intended, we will now aim for a monthly schedule.
The main topic of today's discussion is having a craft room. We also look at a nifty tool for darning and mending, and I share my progress and mishaps on knitting socks.
Craft for Thought - 02:23
Stat Chat - 15:58
Eye Candy - 19:10
Handy Dandy - 28:09
Heart full of Craft - 43:57
Craft for Thought
This year I've been noticing that I'm not spending much time crafting in my craft room. It could simply be that I'm less motivated to craft in here when it is also my home office, at least while I'm working from home. But even so, with less time being shared amongst other crafts and more time spent knitting, I've started wondering whether I even need to continue having a craft room. If I have a comfy chair and enough room to store all of my yarn and tools, then maybe that's enough.
Somehow, I forgot that this isn't actually my first craft room. But in my defence - this is my first craft room since really getting into knitting. My first craft room existed when I was a bookbinder and contained my tools for that trade, all of which are much bigger than knitting needles. In between that room and this one, my crafting has taken place on the living room couch.
You can also watch a couple of timelapse clips of me cleaning my current craft room while I describe its layout.
In 2021 I have spent approximately:
8 days knitting in my craft room; and
88 days knitting in the living room (so I could more comfortable watch other knitting vlogs).
This equates to:
around 9% of my knitting time in my craft room; and
an average of knitting every second day.
Eye Candy
I was struggling to choose one of the many patterns in my Ravelry favourites to feature in this episode when a friend of mine asked if I'd ever come across Speedweave darners. Well I had! In fact, there have been quite a few on my Etsy wishlist for quite some time.
They are a very nifty little tool that kind of combine a darning mushroom with a loom. And I must admit that it was their intriguing appearance that first caught my eye. The vintage ones in particular are so beautiful! But they can also be quite expensive. The most affordable, and the most modern, example I've seen is the Darning & Mending Loom by Katrinkles.
While they are still just on the wishlist and haven't been moved to the cart, it's only a matter of time... In the meantime I will continue to duplicate stitch, as you can briefly see me doing on the Simple Skyp sock on my hand at the start of the episode.
Handy Dandy
This episode's Handy Dandy is actually the item I was knitting at the very beginning of Episode 1, but I didn't discuss it back then. With much more progress to share, please meet my second pair of Skandium socks by General Hogbuffer!
This pair is being knit for my partner. The first pair was made for me, in large part because I wanted to sort out any issues on mine so that Ben's would be as close to perfect as possible. Sadly, while I matched yarns better on his in using two solid colours it turns out that I didn't have enough of the second colour to finish them. My choices are:
Knit the rest of the sock using a variegated yarn to replace the white yarn.
Knit the rest of the sock using the main colour and just have the pattern cut off.
Knit the heel flap and turn of the second sock in the main colour and see how much farther this allows the second colour to go.
Option 1 was never something I was happy about trying. So I will go ahead with option 3. Wish me luck!
The yarn I was considering for option 1 had previously been knit into a sock that ended up far too long. So since I show the sock to show the yarn, I also end up discussing that particular design which is the Skyp Rib sock by Adrienne Ku.
Heart Full of Craft
This month I am very grateful for both having a craft room, which I know many crafters out there wish for, and for having the luxury of choice in where I can do my crafting. This is of course dependant on the craft, but as we are here to talk about knitting then, yes, I am very lucky to have multiple places at home where I can work.
The main area this year has been the living room. Another favourite that I haven't actually used this year is the armchair in our bedroom, which sort of has a view of the golf course across the road. And of course, there is my craft room.
Resources
Speedweave darners on Etsy
Darning & Mending loom, Katrinkles
Simple Skyp socks, © Adrienne Ku
Skandium, © General Hogbuffer
Skyp Rib socks, © Adrienne Ku
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