Chain 344 - Ep 2 - Minnesota Yarn Shop Hop

Exciting news! Last week's episode finally got posted after about a jillion set backs. Watch it! Because we are doing a giveaway that you will want to be a part of. Amazing magical miracle yarn!! #unicorntears

Real fast: Some One of a Kind Project Bags

If you watched Chain 344's first episode last week you know that I had a crazy weekend this past weekend Minnesota Yarn Shop Hop'ing. It was insane, and sosososo fun. But I'm going to spare you the details until Ch344 Episode 2 goes live, because we'll pretty much break it all down on there for ya.

Today I'm spending the day recovering.

Doing laundry, dishes, and some odds and ends that seem to have gotten forgotten in the anticipation of the Shop Hop. One of those odds and ends: posting these lovely bags on Etsy!

I've been kind of addicted to making these project bags. No two are alike! They all feature weird, wild, funky, thrifted fabrics. Well, not all the fabric is thrifted, but both of these bags have thrifty stuffs making up their parts!

Just going to leave these here for you to oogle over while I dash away to switch the laundry and do my other "real life" stuff. Be prepared for more bags! They're a-coming!

You can purchase one of these at LastinLineShop on Etsy.

Happy Monday, home dogs!!

Chain 344: a New Weekly Podcast

Three days ago, my friend Kait messaged me on Facebook. We chat frequently, so this was not crazy. She mentioned that she had been watching a lot of knitting podcasts lately. She sent me a link to one she had been watching and I was kind of entranced. Watching some stranger talk about their projects for 45 minutes? I loved it. Why had I never watched a knitting podcast before???

"WE COULD MAKE ONE." I messaged Kait, enthralled in the moment.

Being the amazing go-getter she is, Kait was like, "DUDE YES."

So we did! After a bit of trial and error and some technical difficulty, here is the flagship episode of Chain 344, our knitting/crafting podcast.

What's the story with the name? Well. We had two names we decided we loved, and right before we started filming we did the super adult thing and flipped a coin and ended up with Chain 344. We live three hundred forty-four miles apart, so the distance between us is a chain of 344 miles. Of friendship and love. Cute and giggly.

So enjoy! Our first episode of Chain 344. Look for a fun update after our adventure at the Minnesota Yarn Shop Hop this weekend!!

Happy Monday!!

Frog it or Forget it?

We're asking the tough questions today.

A recent adventure in "Failure to Read the Pattern Closely" resulted in me being fifteen rows into Briquette by Two Little Plums and finding myself with a bunch more stitches than required. Not like, "Oh, I did one extra row of increases, oops!" No. This was more, "Oh. I increased eight more stitches than required each row for the last seven right-side rows." A major boo boo. One that there was no doubt that I had to frog and restart.

As I was pulling the work off my needles, I got to thinking about where I draw the line between frogging a mistake and just forgetting about it. (For those who don't know, frogging means ripping your work out. Because frogs go, "rip-it, rip-it." Yes I know. Puns. But still. That's what people call it.) For me, a project has to be pretty much nonredeemable to inspire me to frog. If I have up to four stitches too many/too few, I just adjust my work in the next round. Sometimes I can put up with a larger margin for error, depending on the project. I am not a Frogger, for the most part. I am a Forgetter.

I have two very crafty and meticulous Grandmothers who don't do things half way, an aunt whose sewing skills are magazine worthy, a sister who enjoys making photo-realistic paintings and doilies with sewing thread, and a mom whose recent major crafting achievement was making an evening gown out of 1" strips of silk from ties. Let's not even talk about my friends who craft. Suffice it to say, precision is all around me.

But for some reason, I ended up in the Forgetter camp. I ended up feeling alright with myself for pushing past imperfections in my work and just loving the finished object. I'm not saying it's wrong to want to "have it right." I'm just saying there are primarily two camps in the crafting world: People who Frog, and People who Forget.

When I look back at early work I've done, be it sewing, crocheting, painting, or knitting, the mistakes stare back at me blatantly. Sometimes, I see the mistakes nobody else sees. We are always our own worse critics. But, I kind of like the little errors.

Maybe it makes me weird, but I like to be reminded that I'm constantly learning. When I see the gap in the first lace I knit I think, "There's a mistake I now know how to avoid!" When I see the missed stitches on the first scarf I crochet I think, "Now I know how to make sure I'm at the end of the row!" Sometimes the mistakes irk me, but for the most part I like them.

I always think back to one statement someone made to me about twelve years ago. I took a beading class with my Girl Scout Troop and had messed up in the color pattern on my necklace. It was just a little goof up, and I was ready to rip the whole thing out. The instructor said, "I always leave my mistakes in. Nobody is perfect. If we were perfect, we'd be God."

Maybe I'm using it as an excuse to be a lazy crafter, but I think of that line every time my bias tape bundles up or I miss a ribbed stitch.

Unless of course, I have fifty six extra stitches. In that case, SO LONG YA NASTY MESSED UP SWEATER YOKE!!!


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Where do you draw the line between frogging and forgetting?