Multicraftual

I love this word coined by Sandi Wisehart, editor of Knitting Daily. It definitely seems nicer than having “crafty-ADD” or something equally psychological-sounding. Sandi gives the impression that she has nearly as many different things going as I do and I’ve been enjoying this new free online addition to Interweave Press. Beading Daily is coming soon too and you can sign up for the emailed newsletter now.

Hey, Sharon honey, if you think the dolls in the book I reviewed yesterday are too weird for you, what do about inside-out teddy bears? Kent Rogowski has used them as art works and their photos are in his book. Click on Images for more of them. I somehow like the one on the cover (yeah, I know – what does that say about me?) but the rest are downright eerie! There’s an interview with Kent if you’d like to get a bit more insight into his motivations for treating the poor teddies in this drastic way. Don’t forget to check out the comments on the book site too. Very interesting!

Anyway, I have another book review that hopefully you’ll like better: More Sensational Knitted Socks by Charlene Schurch. This is a welcome follow-up to her first book, Sensational Knitted Socks, and I think if you had only these two books available, you could knit a different pair of socks from them every week for the rest of your natural life and never run out of combinations to try. This book expands on the information in the first one and Charlene gives you more options to create personalized socks for virtually any-sized feet and knit with dpns or circs, toe-up or cuff-down, heel flap or short-row and variations, plus a number of different toes. I like her colour-coded charts that make it easier to follow just the instructions you need, though I probably would scan them and mark up the copy to make sure I didn’t miss anything or read the wrong choice of numbers. The sample socks are attractive and sprinkled throughout the book with details on how they were achieved so you can copy them if you don’t want to come up with your own. You don’t need the first book to use the second one since some of the information is repeated, but none of the stitch patterns are the same.

I don’t know if anyone has discussed this at length, but you could very easily use these stitches to make wonderful wristwarmers, gloves and fingerless gloves — and even hats. They are small patterns already charted to be worked in the round so why not? Some would also look great in self-striping or painted yarns, especially the stranded and mosaic stitches. So now all my extremities are warming up! Oh wait…that was the summer sun. Though today we’ve had quite a bit of high cloud that’s keeping the temp pretty reasonable.

Remember way back to April when we took part in the second neighbourhood Mosaic Project? Today is the Grand Tour, finishing up with a BBQ for the participants. I’m bringing a 3-bean salad as my contribution and our lighthouse mosaic stepping stone will be officially on the books with the title of “Cape Manitoba.” (There’s a joke there, but I’m not explaining it to ya!) It’s really fun to walk around and come across these circles all over the place on publicly-owned verges by people’s homes. The symbolism is very personal to the makers so it’s a challenge to figure out sometimes! That’s why the tour will be informative as we get to explain where our inspiration came from. Maps to each stone with their titles will be distributed and my copy will join the one I kept from last year when we made “Darth Dragonfly.” It’s been a welcome chance to get to know some of our neighbours a little better and to work together to bring a little artsy-craftsy feel to our streets.