(Well, except for music - I do enjoy teaching piano lessons to my students, and playing organ and piano at church every Sunday.)
Recently, I went to Barnes and Noble to look at the Fall 2011 knitting magazines, to look for plus size patterns for my Plus Size Knitting Blog. Look at all the issues I found!
It took over 4 hours to look through them all. You can see the results of my labor on that blog.
Plus Size Knitting
As for YARN, I have made some very lucky purchases lately. On eBay, I won an auction for a box full of vintage nylon sock yarn. Just $4 (plus $4 shipping) for all of it! To make things even better, when I received the package, the yarn was in a vintage Bear Brand yarn box!!! LOVE IT!
A few days later, I was looking at Hobby Lobby's clearance shelf, and found some good acrylic yarn for my charity knitting. Just over a dollar a skein for all of these.
Those will all make a nice addition to my huge yarn stash. If I don't use them all, I'm sure I will find a knitting or crochet friend who will be happy to use them. :)
A few weeks ago, a member of my church asked me to do her a favor. She said that she had an afghan that her grandmother crocheted for her - and it had been damaged when someone was cutting something with scissors, but didn't realize the afghan was caught in the scissors at the time. I told her that I would try to fix it for her, and she could give me some yarn in exchange for my work.
Last Sunday, she brought the afghan to church, along with a few skeins of yarn for me. I took it all home, put the yarn on my stash mountain, then pulled out the afghan to have a look at the damage.
Yikes! That damage is PRETTY BAD!! :(
I don't know if I'll be able to fix this or not. I still consider myself a beginning crocheter, so this is a very big project for me.
One option would be to just sew across the damaged areas with strong thread, to keep it from unravelling, then doing some handwork with yarn across the cut, to try to make it look better. The problem with that is I don't have any yarn that EXACTLY matches the afghan.
Step One: Look for Matching Yarn
I looked in my huge stash, and found precisely ONE skein of yarn that was close.
Not exactly the same, but not AWFUL.
Next, I went to Hobby Lobby, to see if they had anything that would match better.
Nope.....not a thing.
I still need to go to AC Moore and Michaels, but I don't have high hopes. I think I will have to live with my Bernat Super Value in Oatmeal.
My other choice would be to unravel the afghan to the section where it is damaged, and re-crochet the blanket from that point. It would certainly look better than sewing by hand....and I wouldn't need to look for matching yarn either. But, that would take a LONG TIME, and I don't know what the pattern is for the existing stitches.
Any experienced crocheters out there who can offer some advice on the pattern?
4 comments:
Hi Shandeh! I hope you are having a fun Saturday evening! Looking at your pictures of the afghan, I am wondering if Red Heart Yarn in: "Aran" or "Winter White" might not be the exact color you need? I think it might be just your match. I like your idea about unraveling the stitches.
It would probably take a good week of rework, depending on how fast or how long you have to crochet each day. You would probably have to pull out several rows and rework them. I think it might be really hard to "patch" it, in just the torn area and get the pattern to match.
The only way I have found to decipher a pattern if I don't have a written copy, is to pull each stitch out slowly and write down what it is as I go along. Or I look at it very closely and try to figure out what each stitch is from the beginning edge and write it down, moving forward.
Your idea of sewing it with strong thread was also very good, especially if there isn't time to restore it completely. Perhaps they could fold the blanket and put it on the end of the bed in such away that the tear doesn't show?
I wish you all the best in your restoration efforts! Keep us posted on what you decide to do. Have a lovely evening! Delisa :)
Thanks for your advice, Delisa! I've searched through all the Red Heart yarns at AC Moore, Hobby Lobby, and Michaels. No match so far. Same with Caron, Bernat, Patons, Lion, etc. I guess I'm just going to unravel the blanket, and make it a little shorter than it was. That way, I won't have to worry about matching the yarn, because I'll already have the yarn I need. As for decifering the crochet pattern....that's gonna be the real challenge for me, since I'm still learning crochet. I'll be sure to post updates!
Hi Shandeh, brilliant idea about making the blanket shorter! I wouldn't have thought about that and it is the easiest solution to the problem.
It's hard to tell from the picture but I think that 99% of it is made with double crochet stitches and chain 1 stitches. These are at the heart of the two major designs in the blanket.
The chevron-ripple-like stripes look like they are done by working about 10 DC then working 3 DC together in one stitch and then another 10 DC, repeating the pattern.
The inside part of the blanket again appears to be all DC. this time worked in a shell pattern of some kind. I hope that is helpful in any small way. It is a beautiful vintage blanket. Keep us posted on your progress. Have a nice evening! Delisa :)
Thanks again, Delisa! :)
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