A Learning Experience

I love tutorials.  Whenever I have a vague idea of something I want to make, I always seem to be able to find some kind of tutorial on line.  Here are two great things I recently made, with links to where I learned to make them:

Drawstring Sock Project Bag – I love this one because its fairly easy for someone of my limited sewing skills, plus it uses two fat quarters which are cheap, easy to find and come in great prints.  Of course, I still managed to screw it up because apparently I cant measure anything correctly – so I had to frankenstein it up a bit, but I think it still turned out adorable.  Its perfect for sock knitting and other small projects – I always find that I can stuff more in here than I think I can. Tutorial from Yarnmonster can be found here.

Row Counter Bracelet – I found this one by accident – I was trying to find the cheapest place to find a decent row counter for someone who asked for it.  Mr Google pointed me to this great tutorial for a bracelet pattern.  This was a little bit of a challenge for me to because apparently my jewelry making skills are even worse than my sewing skills.  My husband helped me with squooshing the clasps on the ends.  If you’ve never seen this before, here’s how it works.  The clear beads on the bottom right is actuall a small circle of clear seed beads strung on elastic cord.  There are 9 small beads and 10 big beads.  Each time you knit a row, you move one small bead through the circle (whose opening is normally too small to let the beads pass through, hence the elastic) to the other side.  After you pass all nine beads through and then knit your tenth row, you move all nine beads back where they came from and instead pass one big bead through.  You continue on like this for as many rows as you need to count, up to 99 rows!  The bracelet below “reads” 12 rows have been knit (one big bead and two small ones).  Pretty neat huh?  If you didnt want to wear it, you could loop it around your knitting bag instead.

So here’s my tutorial for you.  If you’re a (top down) sock knitter like me, you always have to drag out a reference book to remember how to kitchener stitch your toes closed.  I wanted something sturdy I could keep in my project bag to remind me.   I saw the kitchener stitch dog tag on knitpicks for $6.50 plus shipping and thought, “I could do better than that!”.  Since I dont have a laminator, here is my bright idea.

“Laminated” Kitchener Stitch Tag:

Materials:

• Paper
• Light weight cardboard
• 2″ wide Packing Tape

Instructions:

Print out the kitchener stitch mantra (either how I’ve done it below or in some format that helps you remember it) on regular paper.  I drew a text box that was 2.5″ by 1.5″ and wrote the lines inside it.  

Cut it out close to the edges of the drawn box.  Cut out a rectangle out of light weight cardboard that is the same height, but half an inch wider.

Place the paper on top of the cardboard, with the paper’s right and bottom edges lined up with the cardboard.  Rip off a piece of packing taper several inches longer than the cardboard.  CAREFULLY place the tape over the paper/cardboard so it sticks right in the middle. My packing tape is two inches wide so I had about half an inch clearance at the top and bottom.  Turn it over and place another piece of packing tape over the first, sticky sides together.  You are sandwiching the tag between the tape.  Burnish the two layers of tape with a sharp object (Im using scissors below) to make sure the two layers adhere and there are no air bubbles.

Trim around the whole thing, leaving a quarter inch border and rounding the edges.  Punch a hole in the end where just the cardboard is (be more careful than I was, I cut into the box as you can see below)

Ta DA!  I threaded it through the drawstring on my sock bag.  Now just make sure you remember to have your tapestry needle with you!

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