Summer is Here

With a break in school, the industriousness of Planet Nice has increased. This will be short-lived as Summer semester starts next week. A planetnicecrafts Instagram account was opened and there is a widget showing the photos on the Blog’s website (planetnicecrafts.blogspot.com). A preliminary logo was used in the profile:

The first photo is a crayfish so not a craft project. The goal is to explore how Instagram can be used along with the Blog, there will be a wider breadth of photography topics than the Blog and some photos will display Photoshop’s more artistic tools. The craft projects, however, will remain the bread and butter of Planet Nice Crafts.

The next knitting project was started with this:

It is Lorna’s Laces 100% superwash wool, leftover from a pair of socks knitted a couple years ago. It is a quite fine wool yarn and again, I had only a very rough idea of how much yarn remained. I decided to go for a hat but knew that most likely it would be a headband. Even with a headband, I would learn how to work with a circular needle. Despite studying the gauge and patterns thoroughly - the first pattern I chose was just too loose. Then the second was better but the result would only really fit a potato. So, I increased the number of stitches and pursued again the pattern Leaf Lace Hat designed by Sarah-Hope Parmeter from my go-to book Luxury Yarn One-Skein Wonders edited by Judith Durant. I like this book a lot because it divides its patterns by yarn weight. Here is the cast on the circular needle:

Very colorful! Through my trial and error, I also decided to modify the above-mentioned pattern so that it could be a nice chunky headband. First, I made the ribbing a bit wider (2 additional rows) so it would be plenty snug and yet have stretch.

This is where I started to take the photos outside which I thinks works well for such a bright yarn. Very little needs to be done in Photoshop with these photos as there is plenty of color! Then I started the pattern which has a little cable stitch which was also new to me. Cable stitches in knitting are when a selected number of stitches are put on an additional needle to be passed over. After the next specified number of stitches are knitted or purled, those that were passed over are stitched. The effects are stitches appear to be on a diagonal and those stitches are slightly raised to give a bit of a 3-D effect. The cable stitches in the headband are minimal and with the variegated bright colors, you really can’t see the effect. In this pattern, there are also some lacy stitches. It is interesting that cable stitches require more yarn while the lacy stitches require less when compared to just knitting the stitches plain. Here is the beginning of the pattern:

Again, you can’t really see the pattern – but I will fix that once this little item is complete and has its final photo shoot. You can see, however, the pile of yarn that is remaining. I still can’t estimate how wide this headband will be. Not until I used a majority of the yarn could I have a better forecast. Here is the latest photo taken this morning:

The diamonds of the pattern are a bit more visible here. I think I have enough yarn for another set of diamonds and then the ribbing on the other side.

So that’s the project update. The Craftsy video gave me some good tips on how to work with the circular needle or “in the round” and how to do the cable stitches.

Other updates include PBS’ Civilizations was also on break and will be back with a new episode on June 12 (there are still 2 previously shown episodes available to stream). Also, the Lake County Fair (www.lcfair.com) released its Competition Handbook. Planet Nice Crafts would like to enter the previous scarfette and hopefully 2 more knitted projects that will be pursued after this headband. The Domestic Arts Challenge is also an option with this year’s challenge being anything that could be sewn while incorporating 3 men’s neckties. I always like participating to show that crafts remain alive and well!

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