donutsweeper | (no subject)

Going to try to do the Snowflake Challenge again next year, I think it's new every-other-day schedule might work a lot better and be less stressful, we'll see. I hope to start the new year with not only a Yuletide reveals post but also a 2019 general fic in review thing, but I plan to do one of those every year and always fail.

I also have a bingo card for The Losers I should work on. I was all excited when it was proposed, but it's a 2.5k min and while I often write over than now it's still a high enough number that stutters my brain to a stop.

In the past few months I finished two crochet projects: the first was very ambitious for me- I had a sweater that was a beautiful dark red and super soft but didn't fit and I figured out how to unravel it and then found an easy patterns and crocheted it into a throw. I used the leftover scraps to make cat toys (little balls that I stuffed with fabric scraps- the cats showed how much they loved them by immediately batting each one under furniture). Then I went looking for my yarn stash to start a new project but COULDN'T FIND IT. Ugh, too many boxes downstairs. I did find over 100 grannysquares for an afghan I abandoned probably 15 years ago because I *hate* joining up squares but wth, I had YT canon to review so I finished it up. Now I'm trying to figure out what to do next. I have two abandoned braided rugs I could take a stab at but.. meh. They're annoying and hurt my wrists and fingers. I'll figure something out.

picture of red throw: afghan

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Woo, I'm so excited to see you in the Snowflake Challenge! (I've signed up to be involved on the moderator team this year, eep!)

And GO YOU on the crochet projects! Hooray! The throw is lovely. I've finally taught myself to knit this fall, and now I'm finding that I like having a crochet project and a knitting project going at the same time, so I can alternate between them if my hands get irritated by one.

Thank you!! In theory I know how to knit, but I really have to pay attention to what I'm doing while I'm much more at ease with crochet. Being able to switch like that seems smart. Maybe I should try knitting again. Or pick up a different craft.

Congrats on modding it! It's such a fun challenge but seems like it could be a lot of work.

The thing that finally got me to actually knit was watching YouTube to learn the 'continental hold', where you hold the yarn in your left hand -- it feels so much closer to crochet that way, my brain was like, OK I GET IT NOW.

And thanks! It seems like we have a fairly large mod team, so I think it'll be fun to be involved but not be like, the only one running stuff.

Oooh, that sounds more my speed. I taught myself so long ago it was from books and always had the yarn weird. Youtube might be the way to go if I can hunt down my old needles.

I've become really intrigued by making things (crochet or knotting or braiding) from tshirt yarn because I have a ton of old tshirts and I doubt goodwill really needs boxes and boxes of crappy shirts so it seems like a good way to repurpose them.

I found verypink knits a really good resource when I was learning to knit. She has videos on pretty much everything and explains things really well. She even has a series of very slow motion videos so you can clearly see what she's doing.

I'll check them out, thanks!

I found continental knitting way easier, too! I use continental combined knitting, though, where you purl by wrapping the yarn the other way around the needle and then knit it through the back loop during the next row/round to 'untwist' it. I find purling a lot easier that way. I swap between holding the yarn in my right and left hands, so when one gets tired I use the other.