yarn – The Sick Chick's Constantly Crafty

The Quilt and Fiber Marketplace

I had the opportunity to attend the Quilting and Fiber Marketplace which was held in Sanford, NC on the 6th and 7th of January. This was a really delightful gathering of approximately 40 vendors, about 75% quilting and the others assorted yarns and fibers. Four or five guilds were also represented. A number of the vendors do not have bricks and mortar shops so this was a rare chance to see their wares in person. We were also pleasantly surprised at how much wool was available for appliqué and rug hooking.

This is one of the three main aisles, there was also space on the stage at the far end of the room (sadly that was not wheelchair accessible but fortunately for me I was not using my chair that day, still it’s a pain to carry the rollator up 5 steps :/) and there were some smaller booths and raffle quilts set up in the lobby.

The booth of the Quilter’s Loft was my favourite. I would love to take home all of the batik — see the half yard pieces lined up in the bottom left of the photo. There were also many modern quilts that really inspired me. I’m fired up and itching to quilt now 🙂

This was my total haul from the day. Actually the wool on the left is to be shared with my mother, I need to cut out some grey circles for needle felting on a rug, the rest will be for her rug hooking. I have a lot of batik and some solid black fabric for the Craftsy Block of the Month quilt that I have decided to work on. (Although like all BOMs I do reserve the right to not make blocks if I particularly dislike them! We have not seen all of the upcoming blocks yet.) I also have some Bali Pops that you can’t see very well under there, I’m working on a strip quilt from the Craftsy Quilting Quickly II course using those and some of the black solid. So I should have two color coordinated lap quilts when I am done. The embroidery floss was a great bargain. I didn’t really need it for the Take a Stitch Tuesday challenge but that is a good excuse 😉 There’s also a small scrap of undyed woven wool that I plan to try dyeing with Colorhue dyes. Those dyes work well on silk (I’ll post about them soon) and say they work well on wool so I wanted to test them out. The Lumiere paint I just got because it is pretty. I’m not sure what I will do with it yet but I still haven’t started with the fabric-based visual journalling I had hoped to do last year, plus with all of the silk I am dyeing I am sure those lovely paints will come in handy. Finally in the center is a needle threader (that after seeing in Quickly Quilting my mother and I decided we needed!) and the new Pilot pens that disappear when heated with an iron. Since I do sometimes work on fabrics that really shouldn’t be wet much I’d tried a few air-vanishing pens but they don’t stay on very long. I’ll give the heat pens a go and see if that is better.

Overall I really enjoyed the market! If you’re in North Carolina they are having another one in Statesville at the Civic Center the 27-28th of January. The vendor list is not identical but there is a significant overlap. With batik fabrics as low as $6 a yard and other fabrics I saw as low as $4 a yard it is a great place to stock up for quilts. The fiber offerings were not very interesting to me, but I already have a huge fiber stash and attend fiber fairs throughout the year so get a better offering there. But if you don’t have a local yarn shop or don’t have access to dyed rovings, etc., this is not a bad place. There are probably 10 vendors with yarn and two or three of those had roving or other spinning/felting fibers. I don’t know if it would be worth the $5 entry if that is all you are going for. I got a coupon from my local quilt store for $1 off so that helped. Please do let me know if you do go, I can’t make it that weekend but I’d like to know if it was as good as the Sanford one 🙂

April in Paris, part 3 – Crafty Shopping

This is really long and photo-heavy. To save on your downloads I have tried to keep the photos small, but you can click on any of them for the full-sized versions.

Day 1: Galaries Lafayette

We were staying quite near the “Grands Magasins” (big department stores) so on our first day we went to our quasi-favourite*, Galaries Layfayette. The craft department is a respectable size but I didn’t like any of their yarn. I did, however, find a delightful set of stamps from a French company:

I didn’t take photos of the store as we’ve been there a dozen times but t has loads of photos, although you may have to search a while as he has sooo many photos from this trip! I also bought socks and leggings there but I’m only showing the crafty stuff in this blog.

* our actual favourite is Samaritaine but it’s closed for remodelling

Day 2: Flea Markets (Les Puces)

Because it’s not very wheelchair-friendly, I walked this day — with many rest stops of course! We saw so many wonderful things, but alas our budget was limited. I do somewhat regret not buying the wooden hat block that was only 40 Euros, but it was so old that I think I would have to baby it and I’d rather a sturdy new one, even if that means a plastic one.

We saw: We bought:

Again, a lot more pictures in t’s Flickr (see above)

Day 3: Closed shops on Rue Saint Denis

Unfortunately, it was Sunday and these shops were closed. We never did get a chance to come back to them, but they looked interesting.

Knitting shop: Button Shop:

Day 4: Shop-a-rama!

We made it a point on this day to hit as many craft stores as we could.

L’Art du Papier: a paper goods store with stamps, scrapbooking supplies and lots of journals. This was my favourite craft store from the trip!

I bought a Fleur-de-Lys seal, an Eiffel Tower stamp and a nice “J” stamp

La Drougerie: Famous for its knitting patterns, I found the yarn selection pretty poor, the beads plain but the trims were mind-blowing! I didn’t buy anything as I don’t have any sewing projects at the moment and I couldn’t get the attention of any of the shop assistants as it was packed in there.

Bazaar du Hotel de Ville (BHV): I’d heard great things about this store (a department store with a very large arts and crafts department) but was disappointed as a lot of the material seemed to be American imports. Which is fine, if you’re not able to shop in the US, but as I’m spending most of the summer abroad I only bought a few things (erasable disposable fountain pens by my favourite brand). Their hardware section rocks though and we spent a huge amount of time there, I bought some washers for beading projects and a wooden wheel to make a spindle out of once I find a decent dowel for the stick.

Day 5: Montmartre, at the base of Sacre Coeur

This is fabric store heaven, with several very large establishments to choose from. Unfortunately, many are too crowded to get the wheelchair into so we chose Tissus Reine (Fabric Queen) and got some lovely stuff: upholstery fabric to make a bag, iron-on crystals and pirate patches. They had fantastic wool very suitable for re-enactment gear but it started at 17Euro a meter so was out of my price range.

Diagonally opposite Tissus Reine was a knitting shop that seems to be named “Laines” (“Wool”) that carries a lot of lovely Spanish yarn. I indulged just a wee bit 😉

We saw a really cool shop in lower Montmartre, near the Place de Clichy, called Tombees du Cambion. It sells all kinds of antique bric-a-brac and ephemera. We didn’t buy anything as it was a little bit overpriced but man, they had great taste! (Creepiness of the photos aside, t was just playing when taking them.)

Last but certainly not least, I finally found some craft magazines at the train station on the way home. The Marie Claire Idees is pretty beaten up as it was the last copy and I found it was nice but I’m not gushing over it. It’s sort of a very girly/romantic version of Martha Stewart and that’s not my thing. The Idees Magazine, on the other hand, is exactly my sort of thing, especially as this is the black and white issue — my favourite! There were several other mags to choose from but as my French is still pretty limited I decided not to buy any more.

Happy Hollydaze

Not much crafty goodness to report over the holidays, but enough to warrant a wee post 🙂 I got two new rubber stamp inkpads on sale, in royal purple and peacock blue (two fave colours) on Boxing Day. On the 27th we hit the sales, and in that we went to Fenwick (didn’t like anything and didn’t notice anything on sale), John Lewis (where I bought 16 skeins, all half price) and the yarn stalls in Grainger Market (there are two, but they’re the same company, all very cheap but mostly acrylic). From a cheap skein from John Lewis I made a basic loomed hat that evening, but it was for my hostess so I didn’t get a photo of it as I gave it to her within minutes of it being done 🙂 It was very basic anyway, you’re not missing anything…

I’ve also finished the first of my experimental armwarmers, using the horrid yarn that came with the Reader’s Digest loom kit. It’s working out for my purposes, but I will alter the design for t’s armwarmers. Still, it is good to know that I can do them on the Knifty Knitter round blue loom rather than having to do them as flat panels. I will finish the other one of mine in the next few days, then move on to his. Then I will post patterns for both. I’m just making things up as I go along but since I hadn’t found any for that loom before I thought other people might be interested in seeing how I did it.

Other than that, not much crafting happened, but I need to seriously get cracking as I have a medieval tunic to make in the next week!

Camnesia

[Term stolen from Hankering for Yarn blog. It means forgetting to take a picture before it’s too late.]

Now is about time to start tallying up all of the things I have knit since I started on 8 November. Unfortunately, several of the gifts I forgot to photograph and as for the rest I left my microUSB cable at my parents’ house, so unless t (my husband) can borrow one from work, it will be a while before I can get any images off my camera. Sorry!

I’m usually not so good about finishing projects and my mother and t are both blown away by how much I have done with looming. What can I say, I just love yarn! So far I have made one plain brimmed hat from the basic Knifty Knitter instructions (in Red Heart Light & Lofty), 6 children’s hats (in Berocco Foliage) that were gifts to kids in my family, got 1/3 of the way through a scarf in Red Heart Grande then decided I hated that yarn so threw it away (it was splitting and frizzing horribly!!), made myself an 8 inch by 8 foot double knit scarf (in Moda Dea Metro) and a matching hat similar to this pattern from Knitchat.com, a 12 inch by 6 foot scarf double knit in the alternating rib stitch for my mother (out of Trendsetter Yarns Blossom), a magic scarf for myself (out of Lion Brand Fun Fur), three dishcloths doubleknit on the loom for my mother (in Lily Sugar ‘n Cream), an 8 inch by 8 foot double knit scarf for t (in Bernat Soft Boucle) and a plain knitted hat (in same) — working on matching fingerless gloves and legwarmers — and what I call a ragdoll hat (a Fraggle hat that looks rather more like Raggedy Ann) from a yarn I LOVE: Colinette Marshmallow. Plus a couple of coffee cozies that I didn’t like so I frogged.

I’m pretty pleased with that for 6 weeks’ work!

Things I have learned so far: I hate regular Red Heart yarn as it’s horrid to work with and makes my hands itch. I love using knitting boards and definitely want an afghan loom. I want to make socks if for no other reason than to indulge in sock yarn. I like working with cotton. I really want to start felting (I do felty stuff that’s not knitted already.) I’m entirely smitten with Colinette yarns at the moment and want more right now!

Anyway I shall try to get pictures of the things I still have on hand (not the kids hats or the dishcloths) soon, as I am aware that this blog is woefully boring without pics!

Charity begins at home

Well, I generally think that charity begins with MEEEEE. OK, that sounds pretty bad, but as the recipient of grants and money raised to pay for my wheelchair, assistance from my parents for chair maintenance and other mobility aids, and the outrageously high cost of living as a disabled person, I do get somewhat fed up with people who come asking me to donate money to this charity or that. Not that I don’t want to give, but well, what spare money I have generally goes to charities involved in finding treatments or cures for my plethora of diseases. (OK and for history & preservation things too, but that’s much farther down the priority list, financially.)

That said, I do WANT to help out others, it’s just that I have a lot more time than money. So now that I am finally able to knit basic things on my looms, I am ready to start knitting for those who — well, may or may not be not less fortunate than me, but still need nice things to make them feel special and to know that people care. I *KNOW* how it feels to think that the world has abandoned you, and how even a small gift from a random stranger can totally brighten your week. So I want to give back. Of course, I can’t say that this is entirely unselfish — crafting makes me happy and is good for my mental health, so I am getting a lot out of it, too. I’m just going to have to watch my pennies so that I can make sure that I always have enough yarn to match my semi-endless amount of time.

So, the first charity project is to make a child’s afghan for the Tricot du Coeur (Knitters of the Heart) project which this winter is making afghans and quilts to support a camp for disabled children in North Carolina. The kids get to take their blankets home with them, so they need a LOT of blankies to go around! I don’t yet know what pattern or anything I will use, but someone pointed me to a good deal on a washable wool/acrylic blend yarn in eye-bleedingly bright colours (hey, they said bright!) so I have some yarn on the way (I’m nearly out, it’s a travesty!!!) for that project and also some discounted novelty yarn to make some magic scarves for any ladies I may choose to gift 🙂

I’m always on the lookout for good causes to knit for (I prefer disability/illness over shelters but will probably get around to everyone eventually) and also good prices on yarn that I can use for these projects. It has to be affordable, but not scratchy or nasty. (NO Red Heart! That stuff makes my skin itch so I can’t cope with using it, let alone give it to anyone…except their Light n Lofty which is OK)

My skills are still pretty meager, but as my mom puts it, it’s the love that counts, not the fanciness of the pattern. Anyway, I don’t know if my yarn will get here before I leave for the holidays, so it may be 2008 before I wield my looms for good, but I plan to keep charity projects as high on my priority list as all of the friends I plan to inundate with gifts in the coming year (as a way to say thank you for standing by me through last year’s spell of worse-than-ever health).

Note to self: Ask Ricky if the Adults Need Smiles Too programme is still running, as that would be an ideal place to go next.

As it turns out, I do like Lion Brand Yarns!

I don’t exactly know why I got onto the Lion Brand Yarns mailing list, but several months ago I joined and have been pleased with their weekly e-list even before I knew how to knit. Then their podcast, Yarncraft, came out and I enjoy it even more as it has a beginner knitter and I love the yarn designer (whose name escapes me but she sounds just like my friend Genny!). Creating yarns and colourways sounds like a dream job!! Still though, I had no yarn skills and had never encountered Lion Brand. I need to see if it is easily available in the UK. However, on my trip to the US I found it in several big box craft stores and I am very pleased to report that I actually enjoy their yarns, at least the ones I have acquired or have seen in use. Homespun is especially a favourite for gifting as the machine washability is a big plus but the softness is something I’ve generally seen only in yarns that cost twice the price. I’ve also tried Fancy Fur and have several skeins of Suede that will eventually make it over here. I want to try their Cotton Ease and also feltable wools. What I have used has been very easy to work with and comes in so many fabulous colours that one is rather spoilt for choice

(This is not to say that I don’t like other yarns, or that I haven’t bought things that are much more expensive…but when dealing with people with very sensitive skin or various fiber allergies, Lion Brand has many products that fit the bill perfectly and at a price I can afford.)

Anyway, it would have been awful to find out that despite their lovely list and podcast that I didn’t like their stuff…so I’m very pleased that I like their products as much as their marketing 🙂

Now, to find what sorts of yarn shows one has to get into to get the mythical bag of free Lion Brand Yarn! I have soooo much charity knitting to do this winter, plus half my friends are disabled and have special fiber needs (but I’m not counting that as charity knitting) — I need all the Lion Brand yarn I can get my hands on! 🙂 Maybe I can convince them that I should be a tester to see how well their products work for people with extremely sensitive skin? 🙂 Well, a girl can dream, anyway…*sigh* Now, how do I get my hands on a sample card…. off to search their website now!