KAL: Lounging Top vol I

Oh my, y’all.  It’s been way too long since the last blog post.  These days just keep slipping through my fingers!

I’m desperately trying to stay ahead of all of our KAL-ers so I can help if someone has questions.  I have finished the back and front yokes and joined them together.  Before joining the yokes together (in the round), I highly recommend putting the sweater on to make sure the armscye fits.  If not, it’s no big deal to add a few more rows to the front and back yokes.  If you have to add rows, I recommend added them evenly to the front and back.  For example, if you need another inch, then add ½” to the front and 1/2” to the back. 

 Here are the other WIPs I have on the needles:

March Mystery Yarn Club

I did get the March Mystery Yarn club reveal video up for y’all.

I am making the Prairie Spring socks for my mom for mother’s day with the March yarn.  Here’s the progress I’ve made so far on them.  My mom loves blues and beachy tones so this yarn is absolutely perfect for her and she’ll enjoy the subtle design of the pattern. My mom is totally knit worthy and loves everything I make her.

Prairie Spring socks with de la Luna

Yes, I am STILL working on these socks!  Socks are so fast I can’t believe I haven’t finished them, or honestly, finished ANY project in weeks.  I have only started more WIPs.  *holds up hand* I swear I will not begin a new project until I have finished my two pairs of socks and the KAL sweater!

Scrap Blanket
I am so happy I started this project!  I try to add at least a few new squares every Sunday.  

Yarn Lockers

The last stop on the blog train today is a yarn storage project I did.  A few days ago on my local buy/sell page, a lady posted “toy storage” that she was giving away for free.  One of them was this amazing set of 4 lockers.  At the time, I had no idea what I would do with it, but I knew I absolutely had to have them. I briefly contemplated repainting them.  I do like the Robin Egg blue but it definitely doesn’t match my house and to be honest, I wanted to keep them for myself and not put them in one of my kid’s rooms. I put them in the garage so I could work on them.  Regardless if I decided to repaint, they needed cleaning and a few new bolts and nuts.  Plus, it has legs!  The little legs were cute, but plain wood so something needed to be done about that as well.  I went into my sewing/craft room to do something else and my cat comes in.  She is addicted to chewing on plastic.  She doesn’t eat it, but she loves the sound it makes when she chews it.  I had all of my yarn in ziplock bags in a big overflowing tub.  So my cat marches in and starts chewing on my yarn bags which drives me absolutely bonkers.  I’ve been thinking for months that I need a lid for the tub or really just better yarn storage in general.  That’s when the lightbulb went off!  4 lockers means each yarn weight can have their own (fingering, sport, DK, and worsted).  Freakin’ brilliant! My craft room is pretty stuffed as it is (it’s a small office space) and rearranging/organizing/cleaning was in order.  Since it would go in there, the fun blue is totally perfect.  For the legs, which aren’t visible, I stained a walnut brown.  Mostly because that’s what I had on hand! I also had gold spray paint, which could have been cool.  As much as I love sparkles on things, I don’t really dig it for me. Staining is fast, easy, pretty much mess free, and is done in minutes.  I stained the legs and let them rest while I cleaned the fool out of the lockers.  It took Windex, Clorox Wipes, Goo-gone, and a Magic Eraser to get them to shine like the man in the moon.  There were also a few dints I banged out with a mallet. One of the doors was missing the nuts and bolts for the handle and there were some bolts missing along the top and back.  Locker bolts are special because they are slit-less in order to be tamper-proof.  I definitely wanted the special fasteners to keep its authenticity and I did not want to replace all the hardware in order to keep it uniform.  I went to a few local hardware stores and no one carries them.  I looked online and I could find one place that I could purchase by 1s and not 100s.  However, they wanted $15 just for shipping and a $20 minimum purchase.  Fiddle sticks!
Dumb me, I remembered my mom’s husband owns a fastener supply store in Texas.  So I called her to see if he had something he could send to me. Of course, he doesn’t carry locker supplies either, lol, but gave me a few suggestions to solve my problem.  I ended up moving the slit-less bolts that were on the back of the lockers to the front and using basic slitted bolts on the back where it’s not visible.  The lockers are now in use and they sit under my sewing table.  I still keep my yarn in ziplock bags, but they are sorted into their appropriate cubby where they can’t be reached by my cat.  Plus, it’s so much prettier!

Until next time, happy crafting

brianne