Loom Knit Slippers

I’ll admit it: I haven’t had my looms out much since I taught myself how to crochet and then subsequently learned to needle knit. It’s not that I don’t enjoy loom knitting but, honestly, after learning the other two crafts, I was beginning to find looming to be too limited in the items I can create.

Having said that, when I was looking through my completed projects page at Ravelry a few days ago I remembered what fun it was making Denise Layman’s Mary Jane Parkers, (if you are not a Ravelry member you can also download this pattern for free on her website).When I made my first pair of these adorable Mary Jane style slippers for my mother last year I really liked how quickly the pattern worked up. I had originally wanted to make a pair of these slippers for myself but never got around to it and so having rediscovered the pattern I began looking through my yarn stash for the right yarn. I found some Lion Brand Jiffy yarn which was just perfect – not too bulky and not too thin – for the blue Knifty Knitter loom and set to work.

All told, I spent about 3 hours making two slippers. They turned out perfectly sized. I went back after the heel was seamed up and decided to add a single crochet border around the edges in a contrasting color just to give the slippers a little flair and they look really cute.

I’m happy I picked up my looms again for these slippers. It made me remember that I can do more than just make hats and scarves with my looms.

T-Shirt Yarn Experiment

While I was doing some much needed housekeeping with my bookmarks today, I stumbled on a site I’d saved several months ago on making your own yarn out of recycled t-shirts.

When I originally saw this I remember thinking, “Wow! What a clever idea!” and then I quickly buried the page away in my bookmarks. Seeing it again reminded me that I had more than one t-shirt that could be made into yarn.

I quickly gathered my supplies and set to work on two shirts. The shirts were made into “tarn” in no time flat.

And because the colors coordinated with stripes on a hand towel I found recently I’ve decided to crotchet this into a granny square bath mat for our master bathroom.

I need to find shirts in yellow, orange, and lime green to finish this off. I’m going to make a trip Goodwill tomorrow after class in search of the perfect materials.

Ballet Neck Sweater

I’m working on a Mary Jane Hall’s Ballet Neck Sweater from her book Crochet That Fits. It’s constructed side-to-side and I’ve never seen a sweater pattern made this way. So far I’m really liking how it’s turning out. The stitches are all worked in half double crochet in the back loops only which is going to help the fabric drape nicely. Interestingly, I can see when I hold the finished pieces up they look like they’ve been knit. I’m not sure how I feel about the sweater looking like it has been knit to be honest because I like the look of crochet but … well, it’s interesting. Not good or bad, just interesting. I’m trying to hold off on final judgment of the knit look thing until I’ve finished the sweater.

I’m Still Here!

As you may or may not be aware my husband and I only recently moved to Memphis. I’ve had a difficult time find permanent work since we’ve been here and decided that 1) with the economy showing no signs of turning around and opening up tons of jobs any time soon and 2) since I never finished when I went the first time I should finally go back to school. And so in January I re-started my academic career.

Why am I bringing this up, you ask? So that I can give some kind of excuse for why this blog about my yarny exploits has been neglected. I have actually been looming, crocheting, and knitting but with classes and homework it’s become harder and harder to remember to post about my progress!

I’m working on better managing my down time so that I’m being more productive and one of the goals of managing this time is to work in time for blogging, even if it’s only 5 minutes a week because 5 minutes is 5 minutes more than I’ve been doing. Maybe then I won’t feel like I’m neglecting this blog? Not that most of my visitors will care but I care and I’m going to make an effort to post new content regularly.

Stay tuned!