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Knit Crochet Blog Week Day Six

Skill set
     I've been knitting as an adult for about two years now.  I've come a long way since those first few projects.  I've learned many techniques, but I still have a long way to go.  I find that I work myself up too much before I try something new.  I always find the new technique easier than I think its going to be.  Knitting in the round made no sense to me.  Then I got the correct length needles.  I couldn't even spell Kitchener Stitch, now I've got it memorized.  I waited forever before I tried cables.  Cables rock!  I "don't" crochet.  I just finished a project that was a third crochet.  (More on that later)  The only thing I've tried and miserably failed at was double knitting.  When I say failed, I mean my finished project looks like crap.  I did, however, finish, and I now know what I'm doing.  So I guess that's not a failure.  So, to make things easier for all of us here's a list of the things I want to learn/master.
-Double Knitting
-Socks!  (There is a deadline on this one 12/21/12, its a long story and it involves the Zombie Apocalypse)
-Felting
-Color work, stranded knitting and I think its called Swiss Darning, where you follow over existing stitches with a different color.
-Real lace knitting, shawls or wraps with small needles (I have a small needle phobia)
-Knitted Ami, not sure if my little Red Blood Cell counts.
-Sweaters, I tend to do smaller projects so I want to do some more time consuming ones.
-Crochet, I was intending to keep focusing on knitting but I found out I do enjoy crochet.
-Finishing, its what makes an item look handmade not homemade, as they say.
-Traveling cables, the Celtic ones

     The list could go on, and of course it does.  My queue on Ravlery is getting longer and longer.  I have given up on keeping it short.  I have many years ahead of me to make everything I want to twice.  So more on the crochet.  I learned Half Double Crochet (HDC) and the Puff stitch.  I think my puff stitches were too small.  I was using a two ply baby llama (you know the one if you've read my blog before), its very splitty for crochet.  I kept grabbing only one of the plys with my hook, or bringing parts of another stitch with me.  So when I do this pattern again, I'll use a four ply.  The pattern was Elf Clobber (link at bottom).  The pattern was a bit vague for my liking but with the help of YouTube I muddled through.  The second cuff looks better because I had figured out what I was supposed to be doing in the crochet part.  It still isn't correct, since I crocheted through all the back loops (yarn splitty problem).  But, I really like them.  I used Queensland Collection Soft Mohair for the purple knitted section.  I checked today.  I got that yarn more than a year ago, April 11 2011.  I love it!  I'm really glad I used it for these.  I was going to use both skeins for a scarf, but these cuffs used up really close to half of one skein.  They are much smaller than I thought they were.

     I got some really good pictures today.  Who would have thought that natural day light makes that big of a difference.  This is a bit off topic but I posted three challenges for Nerd Wars today.  The RBC and the IgG Antibodies were for the Noob challenge.  I've showed you those.  I also posted these Elf Cobbler cuffs for the Follow the Leader challenge. I also posted Bella's Mittens.

The cable on Bella's Mittens was a new one for me.  It really stands out, its why I made them in the first place.  These were super fun to do.  I think they'll be pretty warm too.  I used them for the Battle of the Bards challenge.
  That one shows the cable off a little better.  There is very little time left here in April, so I'm not going to be melting the cube.  I'm really hoping to get one more project done before Monday.  Wish me luck. 
I also got kind of an artsy pic today, I think its really cool.  Happy crafting!
-Q


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