Tag: RHSS

Carpet beetles!

October 13, 2025 / Deb / 0 Comments

Thank God they only got into some acrylic. The rest of my stash has been carefully gone over and it looks like just a few skeins that were in a box on the floor had our little friends in them. Still threw those away lest the rest of the lot get contaminated.

This is my fault for not thinking of the fact that we’d had the damned things in the past…like several years ago past. Assumed they were gone. Forgot them entirely. Sigh.

Making a pair of house socks for my daughter with obnoxiously bright acrylic. They’re coming out great, though the color sequence left the heel black and seeing that is difficult as hell seeing as how I’m fifty and all lol. So I’ve got to pick a nice sunny day and get that heel turned!

Misbehaving Hexies

June 14, 2025 / Deb / 0 Comments

So I have some of the pieces to Jewelled Star sitting here…I finished all the hexagons then ran out of steam:

For one, they aren’t overly hexagonal, which I thought might be a problem, and two, they are slightly different sizes which makes joining them miserable, and three I really, really don’t want to make the stars and have been putting it off for something like a year and a half. So I decided I’d just make something with the hexagons and immediately ran up against the problem of their irregularity. I have no idea at all what I’m going to do with the damned things.

I suppose it’s time to put them back in the naughty corner until I have a burst of inspiration. Hopefully I’ll figure out what to do with them, but it’s a relief to declare the blanket a failure. Some projects just never come together they way you think they will, and that’s ok.

WiP…Friday?

January 19, 2024 / Deb / 0 Comments

This week has been all about Jewelled Star. I got obsessed with it and went from this:

To this:

Not too far to go until I start the star motifs. I’m so excited to see how this turns out!

And…that is absolutely all I’ve worked on this week. Sometimes it’s good to just work and work and work on something. And it’s always good to go where the work leads you.

Tension

January 12, 2024 / Deb / 0 Comments

I’ve been switching back and forth between knit and crochet recently and it seems to be doing funny things to my tension. I really noticed it when I finally went back to Jewelled Star—I had to drop down a hook size to get the same gauge because my crocheting had become so much looser. It’s a problem I’ve never had before but it was remedied easily enough. I’m thankful that that is all it took to fix the problem; it would have been a pain to start over.

I’m seeing it in my knitting, too. I made this pair of ugly worsted weight acrylic socks just to prove that I could indeed still make a sock (thank you Silver’s Sock Classes!) The bumps and distortions from changes in tension didn’t even wash out. I think I was so stressed about keeping everything on the needles that I was knitting way too tight (the challenge of the gusset decreases proves this out) and every time I started to loosen up I’d tighten up again. This left some unattractive ridges, but I got a lesson and two socks out of the deal, so it wasn’t so bad.

The other factor I’ve noticed is just life. A bad day will leave me gripping my yarn for dear life, until I remember that even the toughest project should be one that brings me some form of happiness. I’m going to resist the urge to turn this into a big ol’ metaphor, but you can easily see how life outside of the fiber arts and life within them can sometimes do a delicate dance and how tension affects tension.

May all your projects be tensioned just as you want them, and all your crafting be calm. 🙂

a “big brown” dilemma

December 24, 2023 / Deb / 0 Comments

So I have this granny square throw underway that I refer to as Big Brown. It’s made of RHSS stripes in the colorway Latte and it looks fantastic in 1′ squares with the way it makes the colors pool. It was the first project of any size I took on after I started crocheting again.

I pulled it out last night to work on it and discovered that I have a problem. The hook I’ve been working it with is really too small for my tension and the yarn. I was having trouble hooking the yarn and my wrists were complaining that it was just too tight. The kids are encouraging me to just continue but I don’t think I’m up for the discomfort.

The problem is that I already have a substantial portion of the thing done. Not half, but enough to make me pause rather than just diving in with a bigger hook. And since I only have so much yarn to work with, there are potential problems with reworking squares if needed.

I think the best thing to do is probably to work a full square with the bigger hook and see how it looks and feels before I stress too much about how to handle this. It’s another bump in the crochet road but how boring would it be if it went smoothly?

Current WIP: the big brown blankie

September 25, 2023 / Deb / 0 Comments

I love a good granny square blanket and I fell head over heels for this yarn (Red Heart Super Saver Stripes in Latte). My photography skills are sorely lacking but the skein runs from a lovely bone color through to a deep brown and back and the effect is quite pretty on a random square.

I was originally going to do all squares about a foot across but I felt like switching it up so I created a center with 6 squares ( 2×3) and am crocheting around them continuing the granny-ness. Right now I’ve only got one round completed so I’m not sure yet if it’s going to turn out the way I’m thinking it will. If it doesn’t turn into a massive frog-ject I’ll try to get better photos in a few more rows.

I was originally planning for a throw but I grabbed some more yarn (the dye lot doesn’t match, but I might get lucky) and we’ll see if that’s on the table when the time comes.