It’s another book review and another giveaway!! Yay!! This one is a review for the newly released book, Creating Glass Beads by Jeri L. Warhaftig. This book contains a bunch of really cool glass bead projects. I’m loving the Glass Momento bead that allows you to create a window to put a picture in once the bead has been finished. I’m also loving the Silver Butterfly bead which incorporates fine silver paste and the usage of a bead press. Both very helpful things to learn about. One of the coolest aspects of this book though is how Jeri brings in project testers, other bead makers, to give their spin on the projects in the book. Another very helpful addition. I highly recommend this book for both the beginner and the more advanced bead maker. Now if you’re interested in getting ahold of a copy of this fab book drop me a comment. Deadline for entries is next Friday, March 25th. And finally this giveaway is for US residents only. Thanks!!
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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
Use All Your Yarn Scraps on This Great Cardigan Knitting Pattern