Day 23: Use Your Supplies

Back on Day 17 when I was sorting through and sort of taking stock of all of my knitting supplies I realized that it was almost absurd to have so much yarn. My Husband actually saw me stacking up all the now-neatly-rolled bundles and laughed "you'll never need to buy yarn again!". Problem is, I'm CONSTANTLY tempted to buy more yarn when I'm at the store. So, in order to keep off the Hoarding  show, I decided I wasn't going to buy any more yarn until I used up some of that stash!

I have been looking at knitting a cowl, or infinity scarf, for a really long time. I love how they look and figured they would be pretty wearable. I'm the kind of person who is constantly cold, so it would be nice to have a kind of scarf that I could not only wear under my jacket, but also around the house.

When I was sorting my yarn I noticed that I loved the way that these olive toned green and oatmeal colours go together. I was instantly inspired! I grabbed a pair of circular needles and set to work.

For this project I used:

Around 5mm or 6mm Circular Needles (The Packaging is gone, and it doesn't say anywhere on the needles the exact size, sorry!)

I cast on 135 stitches with the main colour
(you could make it wider by casting on more, or more narrow by casting on less, but for the textured pattern I recommend using an odd number of stitches)

I  used a (British) Moss stitch pattern, or Seed Stitch which just means that you Knit 1 Purl 1 all the way around.
        - Because you used an odd number of stitches you do not need to change anything when you start a new row, you just keep going around with your Knit 1 and Purl 1. The design is created because all of your knits are on top of purls and vice versa.

The way I did my rows was 10 rows of the main colour and 5 of the contrast colour alternating, with a total of 55 rows all together.

I'm really happy with the way the cowl turned out! and I'm also really excited to be knitting again. I already have two more cowl ideas I want to try. It's just really fun, relaxing, and rewarding! As these can be knit up in just a few days even if you don't have a ton of time to commit to them.

Day 3: Craft for the Sake of It!

Hey Guys! So basically I was thinking today about how crafting, for me anyway, has become sort of a means to create things for my home or to create something to sell. Either way, everything has a purpose, and it's always "productive". I decided to go back to crafting just for fun today, and actually wasted a good couple hours (VERY unlike me) to make something I've been wanting for a while.

I bought a travel mug a little while ago that was all black, and had a removable insert that you could decorate to have a custom travel mug. I bought it with the intent of making a ton of different inserts so I could really have fun with it and change it up all the time. I FINALLY got to making one, and I couldn't be happier with it.

So for starters I pulled out the black paper insert and sort of used it as a template. I cut out the cardstock and got to designing.

I took inspiration from a lot of the hand painted white ceramic mugs I've been seeing lately. I just love how some of them look like the string from a tea bag hanging out the side of the cup! I wasn't really sure if drawing on cardstock with a permanent marker would have the same look, but it was worth it to try.

I just love it! I proudly showed it to my sister who was over at the time, and she thought I should maybe add some color. Sounded like fun so I gave it a shot.

Coloring took a little lot longer than planned because I could not find any markers, and ended up using a green and red colored pen!

I'm so excited with how it turned out! I think the color really was worth it as it added to the charm. I'm so excited to use this cup now, even though it's the exact same cup I've been using for a while now! It can be really fun to re-vamp something you already have to make it fun again. I think I'm going to be making a LOT more inserts for this cup.

It was also really nice and kind of relaxing to just do a craft for fun. It really did make me feel kind of like a kid again. Back when doing something "productive" and "fun" were the same thing! Do you have any crafts or hobbies that you do just for fun? I think it's about time every body goes out and picks up a pack of construction paper and a box of crayons.