photo by Noreen Crone-Findlay copyright

Arts & Crafts Examiner
Do you need some holiday gift ideas for your favorite crafty kid?
Great-holiday-gifts-for-crafty-kids

Gadabout Media DIY
Use glass beads and wire to make a charming little snowman charm bracelet or pendant.
tutorial-snowman-charm-bracelet

This week, I have 2 links from Hankering for Yarn for you, as I had to do my tutorial in two parts :

Hankering for yarn
One of my fave Christmas traditions is to make little comfort bears for the women’s shelter or other charities. This year, I designed little bears to be made on the vintage Mattel knitter (or other crank machines). Here’s the link to part one of the tutorial:
mattel-knitter-amigurumi-teddy-1/

Hankering for yarn part 2

And, here is the link to the second half of the Amigurumi Teddy Bear tutorial:
mattel-knitter-amigurumi-teddy-bear-2/

Jewelry & Beading
Cyndi is sharing a series of Gift Guides for handmade jewelry lovers!
jewelry-gifts/

The Artful Crafter
Whatever the holiday, make cute pop-up place cards to organize the dinner table and delight guests of all ages.
place cards

Creative Dreamer
Ramblings on patience, car repair, and some cute holiday house ornaments
creative dreamer

Post from: Hankering for Yarn

photo by Noreen Crone-Findlay copyright

The questioner had just gotten a fab deal on 24 gauge copper wire and snapped it up.

When she experimented with crocheting it, she found it to be not very pleasant to work with.  24 gauge is pretty energized, and fairly stiff.

Crocheting with it is mighty tough on the tendons.

She had seen that someone else had asked me to make them sturdy spool knitters for spool knitting wire and wondered if  the 24 gauge could be spool knitted.

Why would you spool knit wire?

Because you can make absolutely gorgeous jewelry with it!  Scrumptious!

I tend to use mostly 26 gauge wire for crochet and spool knitting, so I figured I had better give 24 gauge wire a try.

I tried it on the spool knitters that I had already made, and yes, it worked. BUT…. it seemed to me that it would work better with a different configuration on the spool knitter. One size doesn’t always fit all with spool knitters. In fact, it’s really helpful to have a selection of spool knitters in different sizes and shapes, with different numbers of pegs or nails.

By the way…. don’t try to spool knit wire on a plastic spool knitter, or on one with wooden pegs.

You’ll regret it…. plink, plink, plink…. the sound of breaking pegs…

I went out to the workshop and started working on a spool knitter that would work better for the 24 gauge wire.

photo by Noreen Crone-Findlay copyright

I used  some wonderful old wood that we had inherited from my husband’s Dad (Earth friendly… it’s an upcycled very very old handle that had parted company from it’s original tool. I have no idea how old it is, but it’s O L D and incredibly hard wood!)

Anyhow, I made her a different configuration spool knitter, with a larger hole and the pegs spread further out, and it works a fair treat with the 24 gauge wire!

It’s slow going to work with such heavy wire, but worth it.

I decided that I had better make a video tutorial about spool knitting with wire, because it’s a whole other kettle of fish than spool knitting with yarn.

But, I had also been working on getting the soundtrack re-recorded and edited on a couple of other videos that I have just made, and ran into frustrating techno glitches (grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr).  So… it’s way late, now, and when I tried shooting the spool knitting wire video under artificial light, it looked baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad.

I need to wait for daylight to shoot it.

Some things are worth waiting for…. and sunlight is one of them.

So is a tutorial sharing secrets of spool knitting with wire, so stay tuned!

Post from: Hankering for Yarn

This red color cord is  Kreinik’s 3/8″ Trim with wire embellishment cord.

You can make all kinds of wonderful jewelry and other crafts with it. I love it and am so pleased that the lovely folks at Kreinik gave this to me for the contest!

Michelle, who was #23 in the comments  won this prize

Congratulations!

The contest is now over……

Image Source: Noreen Crone-Findlay copyright

I am no longer writing hankering for yarn. You can catch up with me at www.tottietalkscrafts.com

Post from: Hankering for Yarn

This gold color cord is  Kreinik’s 3/8″ Trim with wire embellishment cord.

You can make all kinds of wonderful jewelry and other crafts with it. I love it and am so pleased that the lovely folks at Kreinik have given this to me to  give to you!

Jenna, who was #31 in the comments  won this prize

Congratulations!

The contest is now over……

Image Source: Noreen Crone-Findlay copyright

I am no longer writing hankering for yarn. You can catch up with me at www.tottietalkscrafts.com

Post from: Hankering for Yarn

This silver color cord is  Kreinik’s 3/8″ Trim with wire embellishment cord.

You can make all kinds of wonderful jewelry and other crafts with it. I love it and am so pleased that the lovely folks at Kreinik have given this to me to  give to you!

It was one of the  prizes in this week’s Bloggy giveaway carnival.

Mannequin #42 in the comments  won this prize Congratulations!

The contest is now over……

Image Source: Noreen Crone-Findlay copyright

I am no longer writing hankering for yarn. You can catch up with me at www.tottietalkscrafts.com

Post from: Hankering for Yarn

making a tatting shuttle that broke.

And, so I recycled it and made it into a necklace:

And, now, I am debating about the cord for the necklace.

I know I am going to use Lion Brand Lamé in the oilslick version, but I am waffling about how I am going to make it.

I know that the Cordelia cordmaker on the left, works soooooooooooo beautifully for making square cords.

But…. since the necklace began it’s life as a tatting shuttle, it would make sense to tat the cord….

So, that’s what I have done!

Here’s the link to the finished cord: Tatted necklace

Image source: Noreen Crone-Findlay (c)

Post from: Hankering for Yarn

The Three Doors Down project on the Lifestyles Channel is under way! I am really enjoying this! (click on the link for an explanation)

My first ‘neighbour’, three doors down on the list of fellow Lifestyles bloggers at b5 is Cyndi at Jewelry & Beading.

Cyndi does a great job of finding really useful info on the web, as well as writing absolutely terrific tutorials. You’ll want to subscribe to this blog if jewelry making and beads are a passion of yours!

I sent Cyndi a list of questions about Jewelry & Beading, and here is her response:

“I love making stuff and I love writing about it, so being the writer of a
couple of arts and food oriented blogs is heaven to me! I have never
minded the “create on demand” aspect of this type of art career, but there
are times when I have so many projects going that I feel like I need a
personal assistant to follow along behind me and help me keep organized.

Jewelry and Beading is a mixture of projects, inspiration, and industry
news. I love to share my own projects with readers, as well as share the
work and techniques that they send me. I also love to find wonderful new
artwork that needs to be seen and to share that with everyone. And I
think it’s important that people who are working hard to improve their
skills have the information about new books, contests, calls for
submissions, and workshops that will stretch their current repertoire.

One of my favorite types of posts to share are the in-depth “Artist
Profiles”. Often I meet people online who just have amazing stories to
tell about the path their career has taken or about their own creative
process. It’s great to be able to share more than just a paragraph and a
couple of pictures from these amazingly creative people.”

I LOVE Cyndi’s blogs, including Layers upon Layers, which is one of my faves. I subscribe to it, and you should, too!

Image source: Noreen Crone-Findlay (copyright) 

Post from: Hankering for Yarn