Extra Large Hooks & Needles

Knitting and crocheting are not things I do often. I'm generally pretty satisfied as far as winter gear goes, so most of my knitting usually happens in the form of teaching others. I crochet a small amount more, because it's way easier to do fancy things, like netting or working in the round. A few years ago I crocheted vegetable bags and  more recently I crocheted a cozy in the shape of an organ for my cup.

I pick up large knitting needles whenever I see a good price on them, because they are much easier to learn to knit with, and I find that giving a reluctant learner the supplies they'll need makes them way more enthusiastic. Crochet hooks, I don't quite have this habit -- but I *did* buy a few large ones once. You know, just in case.

I might have knit something with plastic bag yarn and those needles a while back, but I hadn't tried the hook yet.

And then, waiting for my oil to be changed, hundreds of miles away from home, I spotted this chunky yarn in a color I really like. I'd been drooling over this scarf on Purlbee, but decided to do a seed stitch a la this blanket instead. They have a whole post on a scarf modification, and if I'd read that I probably would have made my scarf a bit thinner and thereby longer, but alas. This is the first time I've successfully done a seed stitch. It was helpful to read in a comment that if you have an even number of stitches, you alternate starting your rows with knit or purl, but if you have an odd number, you always knit first. You're knitting the knit stitches and purling the purl stitches. It's like you're making dashed lines of knit.

And then finally, I was perusing Apartment Therapy's January Cure, and read their page about creating a "landing pad" in your home. They suggest having a place to dump your things when you come in the house, which I do, and having some sort of coat hooks, of which I'd ordered some recently on Etsy, and also a doormat, which I've resisted. I think I just hate how most doormats look, but I figured I'd browse Etsy and see if I liked anything.

It turned out there WERE doormats I liked, but the shipping cost put them from the "I should support other artisans" to the "I should make this myself" category.

I used cotton cord to match the look and feel of my throw rug, and the Etsy doormats in question were made from synthetic cord, so I'm going to chalk that up to the reason that I ended up spending just as much on materials. That and I bought 250 of 350 ft of cotton cord from my favorite local hardware store, Pfiel's. That's fine.

The cord I bought from Pfiel's was easier to work with for whatever reason, but I'm pretty sure I bought them out of all the 1/4" braided cotton cord they had, so I had to finish up with a more sturdy and thereby worse-for-my-purposes 1/4" braided cotton cord from a TrueValue.

It was a really quick project and I'm fairly happy with how it came out.  Hooray large hooks and needles!