Tikvah Shawl
Wow! You are amazing people! I now have $180 towards my NAMI donation. Isn't that wonderful? Knitters and crocheters, and spinners and weavers are the best people.
Minneapolis NAMI is featuring me on their blog, and will also feature me in their next newsletter, so, Minnesotans, buy a pattern and help out. All my profits are going to NAMI; I'm not keeping a cent for myself. I have to pay Ravelry and PayPal, of course, but everything else is a contribution. And you don't even have to be from MN. I'm from New Jersey, but I have a connection with the MN group. So that's why my donation is going there.
Do you suffer from a mental illness? Do you have friends and/or family with mental illness? This amazing organization not only provides support to those suffering from this disease, they also give amazing help to the care-givers, and the families, and anyone else who needs or wants it. They advocate in all our legislatures for better mental health support. This is a top of the line charity!
And what do you get for your $5 purchase? You get the Tikvah Shawl pattern. "Tikvah" means "hope", and I hope you will donate your hard-earned dollars to this organization. AND, YOU DON'T HAVE TO BELONG TO RAVELRY TO BUY IT, EITHER!
Crocheting news: Yep, I'm still into it, but the knitting might be calling me again. It's fun to have so many choices. One of the gazillion crochet projects I'm working on is the crochet bag from Attic24.
I'm doing it in good old Encore worsted. The stuff wears like iron, it has lots of colors, washes and dries in the machines, and is about the fattest yarn I can work with. I think it's more of a heavier worsted than Cascade 220, but I could be wrong. At any rate, I've used it for kids wear, afghans, baby clothing, and such, and it is perfect. Lots of folks are using worsted weight cotton, but my hands wouldn't tolerate it, and besides, I want this baby to be light weight, and cotton is heavy. And since this is a schlepping around bag, I'm certainly not going to use merino or silk or any other lovely fiber. This demands acrylic, and Encore is very nice acrylic. So stop shuddering, you yarn snobs, acrylics can be lovely yarns too.
So I'm crocheting it and crocheting it and it is ginormous! The thing looks like a basket. I was going to try to line it (without a sewing machine since mine is dead), and make handles, but now I'm thinking that it works so well as a couch basket. It's soft and clean and won't hurt the upholstery, and it holds all those pesky balls and cakes of yarn that want to run away. And all in one spot. And since I typically have at least 5-8 projects going at a time, I can haul out the ones I'm working on and plop them into this bag/basket.
Here it is, upside down, and filled with a couple of Encore skeins. See what I mean? The thing is large!
And here it is, holding a little bit of the ongoing, never-ending projects in space.
And, see those adorable little crochet hexagons in the top photo? Those are the African Flower hexies and I made them out of Mandarin Petite cotton, which I can work with provided that I crochet slowly and kindly with those pesky wrists. The strange yellow and green mess in the upper left hand corner is a shawlette, and I think I might have lost my charts to it. If so, I'll either have to punt, or frog. Doesn't matter either way, I just like to start projects.
The second photo has the yarns I'm using. Doesn't my bag make a great couch basket? The Hubbo claims that the colors are blinding, but he is not using it, so there. That's what's neat about making these goofy projects: you can pick whatever yarn hits you at the moment. It's all about fun.
And now I'm seriously looking for smaller bags to either knit or crochet. Who knows, I might even felt one, although the thought of working with very large needles puts fear into my heart.
I've babbled on enough today. This is one prolix post! unduly prolonged or drawn out : too long2 : marked by or using an excess of words
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