It Shouldn’t Have Been That Hard

Some things in life go smoothly – others just don’t! But it had a happy ending.

As stated in my last post, I have decided to make a few scarves for the Special Olympics program. I also stated that I was unable to find both colors of the yarn I wanted to use. Well, that frustration continued!

The other day, I went to the local JoAnn Fabrics store. I was looking for that same pair of Red Heart Soft Yarns. They had a fair amount of Red Heart, but almost none of the Soft Yarn – and zero skeins of the two colors I want. So by that time, I’d been to three different stores and was the proud owner of only one skein of yarn. It shouldn’t be this hard to find that yarn!

We’d been planning a trip to Ocoee in the near future. We had a Groupon to try a restaurant we’d never been to. I knew there was a Michael’s near that restaurant location. So that plan got moved up in time.

I called the Michael’s store and asked if they had the two specific colors I needed. I was told there were 4 skeins of the red, but no navy. Well, OK, that would at least get me some of the color I didn’t have. With that information, we took off for Michael's and lunch.

When I got to looking at the red yarn at Michael’s, the numbers weren’t right! No, she didn’t tell me wrong, did she?!?! No, she didn’t – I was looking at the wrong number on the package. My bad! There were indeed four skeins of red, so I swept them into my basket and started for the check-out.

But wait! Why not double check for the navy? And sure enough, I was rewarded with several skeins of the correct color number. Woo hoo! I threw three of the navy into my basket and then headed again for the check-out.

It was a pain trying to find the yarns, but in the end I have more than I had planned on originally. By the time I found it, I was pretty committed to doing the project, so getting more is a good thing. I’m already looking at more patterns and planning my next scarf.

Now that I have the yarn I need, I have been steadily working on my first scarf. The pattern calls for repeated stripes of navy and red. OK, the easy stuff is handled, but how do you change colors? Enter YouTube – again! I learned what I needed to do and changed from blue to red.

From watching the YouTube videos, I decided to carry the one color up the stripe until it was needed again, thus not cutting and weaving in the colors. What I didn’t expect was how bad it looked. If it was a shorter stripe, or if the colors were more similar it might have looked fine. But I just didn’t like it – not professional at all. See it running up the left side? Ugly, right?

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I’m not an accomplished knitter, but I don’t want to send anything I wouldn’t like to wear myself. So I’ve decided to cut the yarns at the color change and weave them in so they disappear. Here’s how much better the red stripe looks after I did that.

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I’m leaving the tails hang, for now. They will get woven into the scarf in due time. Since I’m also basically lazy, I’ve decided to do the rest of the scarf in blue until I get to the other end where I’ll add another red stripe to balance it out. Then I will have minimal color changes and fewer ends to weave in at the end. And I think the scarf will still look great.

I’m sure I’ve given you way to much information. All of this has been rolling around in my head and now that it’s in print, I can forget about it. Tag, you’re it!

Happy crafting! And thanks for stopping by.

A New (Old) Craft Gets Under Way

As I was walking my three-mile route yesterday, I got to thinking about doing some knitting again. We travel in our RV in the summer and I can be a bit of a backseat driver if I don’t watch myself. So I was trying to think of something I could do and still be able to enjoy the ride. Knitting came to mind.

I remembered that my sister had made scarves for Special Olympics last year. That type of project seemed like just the ticket – something that was easy and wouldn’t require too much of my time.  So I did some research when I got home and then wrote my sister for HELP!

I haven’t done any knitting in at least 30 years! So I went looking for help in casting on and other such important thing. Then I picked a couple of (hopefully) easy patterns from the Scarves for Special Olympics site. I made a shopping list and planned to have everything I needed by now.

We went to Wal-Mart which indeed stocks Red Heart yarns. They even had a few colors in the Soft Yarn… but not the two colors I need for this project! Luckily, I was planning a trip to Michael’s anyway. They had the Soft Yarn, but only the navy, not the red! (Insert frustrated expletive here.) I went ahead and bought one skein of the navy in hopes of finding the red soon. I guess I’ll have to plan a stop at JoAnn Fabrics this week.

I had visions of posting a picture of all my new knitting stash and it would be something t0 be proud of. It’s not what I’d hoped, but here’s what I’ve got so far.

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All the patterns I found at Special Olympics were done on needles of size 8, 9 or 10. So when I saw this multi-pack with those sizes in it at Wal-Mart, I grabbed it. And here’s my one, lonely skein of yarn.

Hey, it’s a start, right!?!? I may have to modify a pattern until I get the red yarn, maybe half-and-half instead of stripes. We’ll see.

I’ll keep you posted. I’m excited about this project.

Happy crafting!

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