Okay, I promise I won’t miss 4 straight days of posting ever again – promise. I have been busier than normal with my other life and haven’t been able to finish the color work posts I have been working on. I will be able to get them done in the next two days though, and will announce the contest in a rare Saturday post – make sure you check it out. As for today, yup, it’s time for Tuesday’s tips, so here we go …<\/p>\n
Butterfly your thumb<\/strong> – We’ve been talking about doing intarsia as a means of introducing color to our work. Ironically, a lot of the experts agree that bobbins are a pain in the butt when doing intarsia – especially when you have a lot of them. A generally agreed on solution is short sections of each color. A great way to wind these is using the butterfly technique around your thumb and index finger. This keeps your balls neat (they’re more like little bow ties than balls) and allows you to pull each from the center! How cool is that?<\/p>\n Take a picture<\/strong> – it lasts longer. Keeping track of all your projects can be a little daunting as the list of friends that you give gifts to grows. Nowadays, it’s a lot easier with the availability of digital photography. Cameras take incredible pictures in the 10+ megapixel range and mobile phones now come in 5-8 megapixels. You can even insist that someone takes a picture and either email or text it to you so you have an idea of what it looks like while being used\/worn. Keep these pictures in a digital scrapbook that you can share with your friends and family online.<\/p>\n Try before you buy<\/strong> – I’ll shortly be doing a posting on interchangeable needles, and you’ll be very surprised at how many there are out there. Not just interchangeable ones, regular needles too. My suggestion is to try them before you buy them. It’s even more important now with all the variety at our disposal. Go to your local yarn shop (LYS) when you have the time, and sit with a ball of yarn that you use often and try the different kinds to see how they feel. Also be sure to check the transition points for the circular needles (regular and interchangeable) to see about possible problems later. Also, check to see if there is a refund policy or warranty for the needles. They can be a hefty investment so you want to make sure you know your options.<\/p>\n Improvise when necessary<\/strong> – I recently made a pair of gloves (they’re gone as they were a test and didn’t fit) and discovered that an unbent paper clip make a pretty good stitch holder in a pinch. I usually used contrast yarn but didn’t have any on me at the time.Someone else had a paper clip though and I tried it. Not ideal, but works in a pinch.<\/p>\n Projects on the go – <\/strong> – For larger than average projects (adult sweaters and blankets) you can use Zip-Loc storage bags or the bags that the bed-in-a-bag kits come in to store your work and knit it as it grows at the same time. The larger Zip-Loc bags can be bought at a variety of places and you can usually pick up one of the bed-in-a-bag bags at a bedding store for free. Just ask them if they have any extras that are not being used.<\/p>\n Storage Solutions<\/strong> – I was recently in Michael’s as they were unpacking a shipment of yarn. To my delight, I discovered that they get their yarn in these fantastic rectangular cardboard boxes perfect for storing yarn.\u00a0 They were more than happy to give me as many as I wanted for free! Since they’re cardboard and you can’t see in, you may want to either take a picture of the contents or post an inventory listing so you now what’s in what box.<\/p>\n That’s the tips for this week. Finishing color tomorrow – see you then!<\/p>\n Hugzzz \ud83d\ude0e<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Okay, I promise I won’t miss 4 straight days of posting ever again – promise. I have been busier than normal with my other life and haven’t been able to finish the color work posts I have been working on. I will be able to get them done in the next two days though, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[382],"tags":[25,969,971,563,977],"class_list":{"0":"post-1580","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-tips-2","7":"tag-intarsia","8":"tag-knitting","9":"tag-needles","10":"tag-storage","11":"tag-yarn","12":"pmpro-has-access","13":"czr-hentry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pNDS0-pu","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ittakesballstoknit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ittakesballstoknit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ittakesballstoknit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ittakesballstoknit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ittakesballstoknit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1580"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ittakesballstoknit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1582,"href":"https:\/\/ittakesballstoknit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1580\/revisions\/1582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ittakesballstoknit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ittakesballstoknit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ittakesballstoknit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}