Building inventory

Our co-op has an annual spring garage sale. We hadn't been living here long when the first one happened, but have signed up for a table this year. With the feedback I had during our Christmas Craft Sale last year, I decided to test the waters a bit and include some small crocheted items, plus a couple of bigger pieces.

Working on those has kept my hands nice and busy. :-D

Most of what I'm doing are quick, useful things like dishcloths, pot holders and can cozies in Handicrafter cotton. Here are some of the pieces I've got so for. There are a few others that I forgot about when I took the photos, but I'll do those another time.






The cloth is done in tunisian stitch. I started off doing single stitches, as I had been with the double ended hook technique, but found the fabric curled up quite a lot. I didn't want to have to block a dish cloth, so I switched to double stitches. I ended up blocking it anyway, as tunisian tends to slant to one side quite a lot.

So far, this is the only tawashi I've done, but will be doing more with multiple colours when my skeins of yarn start getting too small to do full sized items.




I started getting tired of doing simple squares and rectangles, so I did my first ever filet crochet, finding a heart motif in one of my craft books, and a star motif using only single crochet and chain stitches that I found in another of my books. I just made it bigger than the pattern in the book, then finished is with a single crochet edging, adding picots to the tips to make them ore defined.



This herringbone pattern is from working in the back loops only. It's a bit like working a single ripple of a ripple afghan, without reducing at the ends of the rows.

 

I'll be making more of these potholders with the double ended hook. I've made a variation of these that resulted in a MUCH thicker fabric that I'll be giving more info about in its own post.



Just some simple dishcloths using double crochet stitches.



The basketweave pattern makes this ideal for potholders, while still being flexible enough to be a nicely textured washcloth.



The texture on these was created by alternating sc and dc stitches all the way across, then working sc into the dc of the previous row and dc into the sc of the previous row.



More can cozies! I love these things. I've been experimenting with textures, which serve as extra grip when being held.

Here is a more intricate piece I want to try out; a Moebius shawl (also spelled Mobius and Möbius) in fingering weight yarn. Usually when joining a long chain into a loop, great care is taken to ensure there are no twists. Here, a single twist is deliberately introduced to create a one-sided form.




This is less than half the width it will be when it's done. I spent quite a bit of time flipping through my pattern books to find something that was lacy and open enough to wear in the summer, yet dense enough that it wouldn't be too fragile. It's meant to be worn with the twist in the front, around the shoulders as a shawl, or as a cowl or neckwarmer.