Planet Nice Crafts

The last summer school assignment was completed last Friday so now I have three weeks before the Fall semester begins. It sounds like a long time but it will be filled with catch-up activities such as creating blog posts 😊. Knitting continues. Planet Nice Crafts did make the goal of having FOUR knitting entries for the Lake County Fair. Here they are: Yes, there are some additions that have not been mentioned before. The hat utilizing the 5-ply dark green cashmere yarn was completed since the last post; the pattern is “Milanese Lace Topper” by Tante Ehm with a modification. I like the pattern for this chunkier yarn, but towards the end there were several mistakes in the lace pattern SO I may rip it out and re-do it. Every row has lace stitches and keeping the pattern required uninterrupted concentration, unfortunately, with looming assignments and late nights, there were plenty of breaks in concentration hence the mistakes. It did have a photo shoot on the head mannequin...

I apologize greatly for the delay of this blog post. My schedule for school is intense, but it is going well – it is reassuring to know that I can be a full-time student once again because I keep finding classes that I would like to take. Planet Nice is adjusting to the latest schedule as best as it can and I am really happy with the material that I want to share with you. First of all, the cap is complete! And it had a photo shoot on a head mannequin as well as flat. I like the reflection in the mirror of this shot. This flat one is nice because you can see the pattern. I am VERY satisfied with the end product – I am not sure if it was worth all the messing around, but I can sleep soundly now. I have not washed it again, but I plan to when I have another piece to wash it with. It will be interesting to see if the superwash wool keeps up its antics of stretching - I did make adjustments to the number of stitches to compensate if it does or perhaps it will not stret...

Planet Nice really enjoys the month of World Cup as it provides the best background to the crafting activities. Duration is long so you have a full day, this year from 7 AM to about 3:30 pm, to give the environment a little extra energy. This post is a couple days later than I wanted; this semester, school is a full-time venture and I am attempting to keep disciplined, putting homework before Planet Nice. As for project updates, a reverse in orbit has occurred since I last posted. Here is a picture of the headband: No, you are not seeing things. It IS the yarn back in a ball. The previous headband was going very well and there was yarn left so it did grow to a cap. A problem arose when I washed the cap, it stretched and grew to a very large size! I was hoping for a bit of shrinkage but I received quite the opposite. After trying three attempts to shrink it, one even involving the use of a microwave and reading that this was not uncommon for superwash wool – I decided that...

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 headba...

Though the hours of daylight have been increasing as we march to the Summer Solstice, here in the workshop of Planet Nice, there has been a loss of ambient light. How? Is this evidence that the workshop is truly on another planet? No, the workshop is not on a different planet but now that the trees have budded out and the leaves are nearly full size, the great Southern windows are shaded. Though ambient light is now more strongly filtered, the advantage is that temperatures are almost always comfortable no matter how hot it gets outside…humidity is another story. 😉 An update to the cashmere neck warmer or scarfette is well – here goes. It made it to 8 inches: Then it made it to the previous goal of 15 inches with plenty of yarn left: The FINAL length is 24.5”, which is a wonderful length for a scarfette. So, I am very very pleased because at this length, it can be a useful item for someone. The knitting did become familiar but because of the multi-ply nature of ...

Well, because PBS did NOT ask me to do a guest post on their blog for Civilizations, I am just going to have to do one here 😊 The first 2 episodes have aired and are available at http://www.pbs.org/civilizations/home/ . I thought they were fantastic.  As promised, the show delivers a global perspective from Mesoamerica Mexico to Prehistoric Spain to Ancient Greece, Italy, Egypt, Jordan, and China. T he photography, both of the close-up details and the landscape with the help of drones, is breathtaking. Just from my traveling experiences, it may be better than actually being there meaning to watch these remote, historic places from the comforts of home so that you can focus on the actual objects of interest without having to worry about anything else is kind of a treat.  The “big” pieces of art, no matter how early in time they were created, are beautiful and represent the awe-inspiring potential of human achievement in my mind. Other pieces are more haunting such as the ...

Hello loyal readers! Now that the quilt is finished, time yesterday was spent on planning the next projects for Planet Nice. Thank you to those who took the survey – it was fun to collect some data and it did influence the decision process. The most attractive time periods of design were post-World War II or Mid-Century Modern and the big block between the two World Wars with Art and Crafts, Art Deco, and Art Nouveau. The most popular project types were women’s clothing and home accessories. There are endless possibilities here. After looking at the survey results, I started going through my existing supplies: books, fabrics, patterns, laces, kits, and everything else. I did want to have a project that was more portable this time, because I am hoping to make it to Needlework Night at the local library to spread the joy of Planet Nice! And, I would like to have a project that minimized the supplies necessary to be purchased. One of the motivations of Planet Nice is to start using ...