:Yarn Love :

This “trend” started somewhere!

It started with the housewives, crafters, and home-makers trading secrets over tea or lemonade. Or sometimes preparing for a long winter with little to no resources. While rocking sleeping babies and keeping an eye on the mischievous munchkins. Through the fences, church groups and home economics classes. Do they even have those classes anymore?

All that trial and error, intuitiveness, secret sharing and creativity rolled down to give us the inspiration and the instructions that we, in these times, now embrace as knitters and crocheters. Heck, the same applies for every other creative/home-making endeavor.

With all the modern day trail-blazers, it’s hard sometimes to appreciate the foundation. But their work can be found and you don’t even have to look too hard. You’ll find it in your grammy’s old work-basket, your auntie’s bookshelf, at flea markets or in thrift stores and sometimes, you find their secrets for pennies.

In finding foundation for pennies — I lucked out recently. A friend’s thrifting got me this beauty for .75c! Yes … that’s .75c!!! Less than a dollar. It cost her more to ship it to me than it cost to purchase it but I’m glad she sent it.

She sent me this beauty: Better Homes & Gardens Treasury of NeedleCrafts. 480 pages of foundation.

My publication copy is from 1982. Even being dated 30 years, this beauty is packed with inspiration galore. It’s packed to the gills with knitting, applique, patchwork, crocheting, quilting, embroidery, rug making and needlepoint goodies. I’ve already found my first project — Grandmother’s Flower Garden Afghan.

image source

My W.I.P. this week is a practice flower motif. It’s my first go at clusters and I only did three rounds, but I’m ready!!!

My motif doesn’t look like much now but I’m gamed and ready! This afghan is going to be beautiful! I love the size, the texture and the opportunity to personalize. The hardest thing to do now is to choose my colour choice! With 271 motifs, it’s going to take me a while, but I can’t wait!

In addition to this new project, I’m still working on my granny square cushion. My goal is to complete it by the end of August.

So cheers to old skool inspiration!!! What are you all working on?

customizable banner from Free Pretty Things

Since I’m junk with timelines and challenges (except those I MUST do) let’s see how this works. 😛

The point — since I started seriously crafting — a whopping 35 days ago, I’ve gotten a lot of inspiration from other craft bloggers. It’s hard to bookmark every single one and “pinning” is so time consuming to me. I don’t know how the chronic pinners do it; they have my eternal gratitude. To that end, I’m adding my inspiration to this here craft diary. That way, I’ll spend less time with my absent-mindedness trying to track down what I’ve seen, loved, but didn’t save. My goal is to spend less time online, more time crafting and living.

Some things you’ll see — an inspiration picture (taken by me or some other source), a quote, a video, a tip, some links, a project, a blog — something that inspires … on Sunday … so you and I can have a head-start to our crafty week. How about it?

That’s rhetorical … you don’t HAVE TO answer …. 😛 But you can if you want to. 😀

This week’s goodies is for ALL you granny square loving, afghan making crafters out there ( yes Opal, I’m talking about you 😀 ). I got this list from Stix On The Beach: Tales from the Happiest Hooker On Earth: