The Flame Off is a very important part of the Best Bead Show that takes place in Tucson. The show has ended as of today but I’m sure their memories live on. The Best Bead Show is the bead makers show. The best of the best show here as well as the suppliers of glass and tools and equipment. After a full day of selling their wares they gather and show off their glass working skills in the Flame Off. Crazy! So some of my favorite bead makers won! Whoo hoo!! Check out the winning piece above. So awesome. And the winners are…JC Herrell ( you soo her work all over this blog), Kim Fields and Judy Carlson. Go ladies!! And Judy is pres of the So Cal Flame Surfers, the local Southern California chapter of the ISGB. I”m posting other pictures from the Flame Off but if you can get over to Facebook look around and see the other guys…and their big flames! Wish I could have been there!
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Gather Your Scraps for a Fun Wrap
Are you all tired of scrap knitting projects yet? I hope not, because I probably never will be.
This is one of those that was actually designed to be worked with scraps, though I’m sure you could use whole or partial skeins of a few different colors if you want a less scrappy look.
The Rock Salt Wrap by Nick Davis is mostly made with mitered squares (which is a fun technique to learn if you don’t already know how to do it). Make each square a different color, or alternate colors, if you don’t want to make it fully scrappy. The pattern actually suggests places where it would make sense to change colors and includes line drawing you could color in if you want to plan it out more carefully.
Because it’s mostly made out of squares you can easily alter the size by working more or fewer squares, or making them smaller or larger. The borders are worked in garter stitch and you could also make those wider, narrower or add more of them depending on the size of shawl you want and how much yarn you have to use.
Nick says their version took about 520 yards/475 meters of worsted weight yarn to make a shawl that measures 58 inches or almost 1.5 meters long and 14 inches/36 cm wide. This same technique would be fun for a scarf if you made it a bit narrower, or you could make a bunch of strips of squares and make a blanket.
Another thing I love about this pattern is that it calls for worsted weight yarn. So many scrap projects are made for lighter weight yarn, which is fine, but the vast majority of the knitting I do is with worsted weight so I always love seeing options that are made for using those leftovers. Of course you can also use lighter weight yarn if that’s what you have on hand.
You can get this pattern from Ravelry.
[Photo: Nick Davis]
Take Your Scrap Yarn on a Voyage
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