Inviting vine

Tami: this is because of you. Thanks for telling me to keep on beading. The bracelet is from Bead and Button, Dec. 2005 by Donna Graves. It was quick and fun to make and I love it because it's not bombastic (I'm only 5'2"). I think this particular issue was very good so I will probably make a few more.

I got 4 more books this week plus the new VK. There's only one interesting sweater in it with some fairisle on the yoke section. The books are interesting. The new Sally Melville on color might just be the best knitting book of this year but still I have some questions. For example, why doesn't she ever say fairisle? Also, there seem to be some overlaps with this book and her first one using leftover yarns. However, I'm slowly reading it and find some very good information which I wasn't expecting and also a few possible items to knit.
Then: the 2 afghan books and one called New crochet by Terry Taylor. This one disappointed me but I'm not ready yet to explain why. One reason might be the special type of yarns such as hemp. I did like the bikini although I wish there had been a chart with the size. Too many items are just the regular type stuff. Anyway, maybe I'll write more on it later. If you are thinking of buying it, I'd suggest to hold off.
Join as you go afghans is all crochet and mainly granny square type things. The only difference is that the squares are joined so that at the end there's no sewing or joining which is rather nice.
Easy afghans for knitters seems to be a useful item and also has more from Barbara Venishnick and other type knitter/designers.
I was very excited to eat at the new Moses restaurant and was very disappointed with it. Everything arrived too salty so I won't be returning.

New Arrivals

Wonderful mail today:
Assemi Cheryl: Beaded elegance and beaded elegance too. These have lots of bracelets, necklaces and earrings. They look like easy to make but very attractive.
Stringing, Fall 2005. I counted the number of patterns and it is 68 and not 150+ as on the cover. Those extras are items on 4 pages and they have to be bought from various stores. I call this advertisements.

Knitting also came in:
Diagonal delight vest by Maureen Mason-Jamieson. This is quite an amazing pattern using slipstitch, garter st and mitred squares and uses dk yarns. Stash stash for this.
Then Knitscene which is a new item from Interweave press. I subscribe to Interweave knits so first of all I was annoyed that one has to buy this one separately but it seems to be the start of a new magazine or something. It also is geared for the new knitter or the one who wants instant gratification. On a quick glance there semm to be a few interesting sweaters but probably too easy to bother with. The magazine is also smaller in dimensions than IK.
Inknitters fall 2005 has a few interesting patterns as well. This magazine is not for sale outside of the U S and Canada.
However, being resourceful, I discovered that for $9 I can get them plus a few other items all sent by global priority airmail and that is a lot better than ordering just one of them. I recently ordered the crochet magazine from Interweave and I had to pay $12.50 just to get it to me by airmail. So for anyone not in the western hemisphere, contact me and I'll tell you how to get them for less.

63 easy to crochet: heirloom afghan; Morris fairisle

About 3 years ago at least, I bought some Decor in 3 colors for this gorgeous afghan by Darla Sims (Leisure arts #555). There's a Yahoo group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/63AfghanCrochet and also a blogging group http://yarntomato.com/63squares/ doing this one. Anyway, I restarted it this weekend doing about 5 squares so far. The problem is getting them on gauge and for that one needs to be constantly checking and then changing the hook size. H or 5.00mm is the recommended hook but I find that 4.00mm is working for me although one square was good with the 5.00mm. The problem is getting the edge sc going around each square to work out to 25 sc. I can't do it. So I've decided to just make each edge look right and then when I finally sew them (after blocking) I will skip where I must in order to get them matched up.

I thought that maybe I would have to forget this one but I really do want to make it so that is my plan.

I also started a nice fairisle from an older Cast on (fall 2000) by Charlotte Morris using the Harrisville shetland style yarns also in my stash a few years. It looks like a very simple fairisle being only a 6 stitch repeat. So I have already changed the pattern. With 6 sts I see no reason why each size has to jump 24 sts so I want my fairisle to be around 45" on the chest and with my gauge of 7 sts=1", I know that about 320 sts around is right for me. So I rewrote that part of the pattern and also changed the # of ribbing sts.

Beading: I signed up for the second set of classes because I found that the Israeli train system is great and gets me very near to school in only 10 minutes from my town. The train is new, very clean and I would give it top rating except for a few points. There is a very long walk inside the terminals to the actual train. There are elevators but I took the elevator at the main center in Tel Aviv around 8pm when it was already dark outside. When the door closed, there was complete darkness until I reached the floor and the door opened. That was kind of scary. And also, while the announcements are great, they are only in Hebrew and there aren't many signs in English. I know that Tokyo or Hongkong have English also and I think this is a bad mistake. However, the employees that I met were very helpful. So because of this great train, I have signed up for another 6 classes and the teacher told me it is not beadweaving that I have previously learned. I think if all goes well, I will also take the next course after this one with the antique style of beading which uses wires and beads and is gorgeous.

bead crochet

Well, finally. I began to work on this last winter! failure, failure. My books were worse than useless as they gave me the wrong information. Finally, just by looking at it I figured out what to do. There are two books though that have some good points: Carol Wilcox Wells has it correct in her second book and Neiman in her book on this subject while very scanty on material does have a few decent tips. For some reason, this whole topic is top secret. If you want to learn you can pay $$ to learn and that's about it. Now that I've got it, I have to move along to smaller beads and different hooks and threads plus doing more interesting things with it.

autumn

This is a new project with a nearly finished raglan sleeve. The yarn is
Diadomina from Diakeito of Japan. The color is 308 and it looks like autumn colors to me. I'm doing a sleeve first to get the correct gauge for circular. I got exactly 4.5 sts= 1 inch on 3.75mm needles. And it looks tight enough to me although I think on the label it says 20 sts=10cm. There are 112 meters in this 40 gram ball and it seems to be going very far. I haven't finished the first one on the sleeve yet. I actually bought 20 balls, but am hoping I can do a raglan with just 10. I want to finish it quickly and also a few more that I bought of the Japanese yarns as I'm hoping to get back there in November. So I cast on for the body once the sleeve got quite far along. I'm using the instructions in the Jacqueline Fee book as usual. I've always found it successful with any weight yarn for the raglans.
I'm also on the final finish on the log cabin vest with the Koigu yarns and I just hate the whole thing. Each 2" square has 3 yarn ends to weave in and there are so may of these things. Never again. However, I think it is going to be a real stunner.

end of summer

I finished this nice cotton top in baby Sesia. I used a stitch pattern from the Stanfield book and then just winged it on the sleeves. I knit until I used up all the yarn or I would have made the sleeves longer. I actually didn't do the stanfield pattern correctly so I guess it's my own because the one in her book was more open and I preferred a more closed lace.