state welcome to as we start today i wanted to let you know about a new volunteer opportunity i know a lot of you enjoy charity knitting and it's come to my attention that something new is going to be in the area and it's an opportunity for all of us that knit or crochet to use our talents to help someone else out every summer there is what is called a work camp and it's in a different city across the united states every year and this here at happens to be coming to the cannon spark area and what happens is that teen volunteers come in from all over the country and they go to homes who may have low income families and they help renovate and paint and do some home improvements for those families that they might not otherwise be able to afford and the team that is putting this together this year decided that having comfort saul's which are sometimes also called prayer shawls might be a nice addition to this project that they are all doing as sort of like a lasting memento to these families when they leave you know they've renovated and painted and done some things to the home and then they will present them with a comfort show on their last day of working at these h so i got a phone call from a friend who happen to know that i stitched and happen to know that i also have the show and and have a lot of you who like to do some charity knitting and crocheting so i want to pass that information along to you the comfort shawls will be need to be ready by the end of june if you need details about this if you've not ever done a comfort show and you don't know where to get more information about it there are a couple of great websites where you can get free patterns for these and i can refer to refer you to us if you email me at sherry so cal ski at yahoo dot com i also want to thank those of you who came to the event that i did at the gallery that i work at that we called share the love and that was on valentine's day and some of you chose to join me and we sat around in that it's a gather i had a great time with that i hope those of you who came did as well it's one of the most fun things about having the show is connecting with all of you although sometimes that's mostly through email so every once in awhile like to do an event where i can see you face to face then i just want to thank those of you who came for being there and i hope you had a great time with it that day we stitched on some projects for afghans for afghans which we have a project in the second segment coming up that has to do with that and we also did some chemo caps which is something that we've featured repeatedly here on the show because i think it's a great cause and and unfortunately still a great need for chemo caps for patients that are undergoing chemo and losing their hair so those are things that we have ongoing so if you need any of that information you can also e mail me for those details as well in this first segment i promised you that we would do what i'm calling ordinary things and that is some of the things that i use and that i have found out that other knitters use that aren't necessarily knitting specific items but we like to keep them close by either in our knitting bags or in the area that we net and it helps make our knitting life just a little bit easier so i want to share some of those things with you today and some of these things i actually know about from knitters that have watched the show  and have e mailed me suggestions and some of these i also have learned about on blogs and websites i'm getting a little more computer savvy with finding knitting related things and that's something that will be featuring on the next episode of net on is how to to find some of those things on the internet that are knitting related but for today we're going to do ordinary things a couple of things that you might want to keep close at hand or you might already have close at hand and make measuring a little easier and sometimes one more knitting and we don't have a tape measure ruler with us we tend to sort of get wrapped up in the process of knitting and sometimes we don't want to put that all down and go look and what have you so if you don't happen to have a measuring device with you something that you probably have with you or nearby that helps to measure and these are just to get sort of a guesstimate as to your measurements i wouldn't use these if you're actually to the point of binding off and having it be a sweater that needs to fit but if you need a guesstimate as to your progress a dollar bill happens to be six inches long so if you measured along that long the stead you would know whether or not you were getting to the six six inch marks and of course if you fold it in half then you have three inches what have you so this is something that i found on someone's blog spot and they talked about having this always having a dollar bill always with their knitting supplies and using that to measure with just in case they had not put their  tape measure back where it belonged to what have you the other thing and this is something that i've used for a long time and i'm not even sure where i picked up on this and sometimes you know these things but until you know somebody else uses that this way you know you don't really think of it a sheet of a regular size copier paper or what have you is eight and a half across one side and eleven across the other so obviously there again if you fold that eight inch side or eight half inch side you have about four inches if you fold it into quarters you have two inches so that's a great way to use a piece of paper and just sort of get some some general estimates another thing that you can do as far as measuring that makes life a little bit easier is that a lot of us of course are pulling up some of the free instructions that are on the internet and what have you and of course you're going to print that is out on a regular sheet of paper if you know before hand what measurements you need to keep in mind for that pattern say for instance it's a sweater you need to have three inches of ribbing before you start the next step or whatever you can go ahead and mark those measurements down the side of the sheet of paper and have those all ready to go and then i'd have to look around for something another thing that i like to use and i think i've mentioned it plenty of times on here but maybe if you haven't seen those episodes this would be helpful to you is sticking because a lot of times when we're using directions we're going to have something that has a graph to it rather you're doing cables or lace or color work a lot of those things are going to be graft for you and then sure knitting it's sometimes hard because you're looking away from the graph looking away from the graph to come back to the right line so a sticky note is a great way to mark which line that you're going to be using and the way that i like to place this sticking out is to put it on so that it is above the line that i'm using and the reason that i do the line above is that in order to sort of double check my work then i can see the row below and i can know whether those stitches are following the way that they should for instance this one happens to be a pearl this black dot means that i should pearl on my right side and i know that that's going to sit above or pearl that was on the row below so if i had the sticky note going the opposite direction if i had that below my row i can't see where those stitches should sit in relationship to each other and that a lot of times is where your pattern you know comes then is how those stitches relate to each other each of those pearl stitches coming up across their kids in this particular pattern the effect of a stem on a leaf because those poor old stitches become recessed and that becomes the stem so that's something that's going to be important when you're working with this craft so try using that sticky note across the top of the row that you were using it see if that doesn't help you a little bit with working with these graphs another thing that seems like such a you know common sense sort of thing to use but sometimes we don't think of common sense things until somebody else suggests suggest them to us are is it locks we use the clocks for everything i don't know what we ever did before there was such a thing as the block i i'm sure even when i was a child i don't remember having that blocks but then they certainly make life a lot easier in a lot of regards but they come in so many different sizes now too that you can really accommodate whatever you need to put them this i would use for something like sock yarn it's great for storage because of course when use that you know then it's moisture free and insect free and a lot of times when you're working with wool fibers that's of concern to you the really tiny ones and sometimes these come with a product these happen to be stitched holders and i've just left them in the little tiny ziploc that they already came in and that's just a great way for me to store those and always know where they are in my knitting bag and in in your knitting bag and that sort of thing another thing that i like to use for some storage and these are always available in my house because some of you might know i'm married to james who also has a show here and he's an artist it's called let's paint and artists happen to use a lot of baby wipes especially when they're out on location it's a great thing to sort of get the paint off of their hands and what have you when there might not be running water and these are also great for storage in that they stack really easily now these are not going to be insect proof if you're using walls so you could zip lock it and then put it in here but it certainly makes storage very easily because of the way that they stack another way that you can use these and this i learned at a knitting group that i went to my gosh my kids were little tiny things back then so this had to have been fifteen or sixteen years ago but novelty yarns were just coming out about then and a lot of people using them and were finding that you know the ball was sort of falling apart and getting tangled and what have you and the ladies then that knitting group were using names because you can put the yarn in the container and then of course the top of  something that you can feed the yarn through so that that strand is coming up through sorry i'm telling this the long way that strand is going to come up through normally where your white feeds up through there so you can get them you know individually and then you can snap that lid back on there once you fed the yarn through there and it really does because it's contained in there it doesn't flop around this much and get tangled which is something that we find especially with the novelty or it's the eyelash in the ribbon and truculence tend to get very tangled when they are coming off of those couper that sort of cardboard core that they come off of sometimes they come off faster and become tangled so try that either as storage or for your specialty yarns that might get ten gold a great deal another thing that i have started using for storage and my kids think this is very funny because normally i'm not a big fan of cigars because i really hate the smell my my husband will tell you i just don't like the smell of them at all i don't like it when he's been out having a cigar with his friends or what have you but he had one of these and i thought what a great way and you can see if you look down in  have my double points in here so my sock needles which as you know i usually use ones and twos for my socks are in a cigar too great way to store them and it  keeps you know from getting lost in there they're stuck me there so tiny that sometimes they will get down into a knitting bag and you won't be able to find them very easily another thing that i like to keep down in that too is a relatively small crochet hook and now that seems like cheating because a crochet hook seems like you know something that you would keep with your knitting but even if you never never never crochet this is the very best way to pick up a dropped stitch  naturally a dropped stitch that is very small is a great deal harder to pick up then something that is on a size thirteen needle so especially if you're dealing with socks and the kinds of things that you would be using on a size one or two needle this is something that you really want to keep on hand so that you have that pretty close as we are using the internet more and more and more and like i said we'll be talking about that on the next show and you're getting lots of free patterns and other things from the internet and you're probably going to want to organize some for the longest time i was just sort of stashing them and not doing anything with them so a big box of page protectors and i know this seems again like common sense but sometimes we don't think  things to keep these and file is really great and it helps you become more organized and find the pattern that you know you have somewhere but of course when you're looking for it it's the one time that you can't quite see it in that stack of papers that you have pulled out of your copier for yourself and then of course getting a binder and sort of segregating where things are my smaller projects are to the back of my sweater patterns and larger projects or to the fore and keeping those things where i can find them the pockets i have some extra things like some newspaper articles and some things that i wanted to save as well but as far as patterns i keep those in the page protectors and keep those where i can find them so i have several of these on my bookshelf so that i can keep things organized and find them fairly easily another thing that  might seem a bit on an ordinary thing that is sometimes helpful if you've ever had the inclination to want to dye something yourself but really are a little afraid of the powders that are used and what have you because there's a great deal of a procedure to that goes along with those and sometimes they recommend wearing a dust mask and all these sorts of things so that you don't inhale the powders this is actually died with kool aid and there are a number of places that you can find the instructions for this on the internet as well as i used this book for the instructions this is a kid's name book that happens to be monet's and we've had it around forever it's also a really great project to do with kids because you don't have to be afraid of letting them play with it but while the yarn is still in the big tank which is you know just big loop of yarn you can put it in a glass dish mix up a couple of different colors this to be cherry and grape you can see a really really dark purple and then that cherry red and actually a little bit of vinegar goes in this to help set the colors and then it's actually microwave to entail the fiber has absorbed all the color out of the kool aid the fluids that are in the dish are completely clear and then of course you brits and there's a procedure to drying it and what have you but this was actually died with aid the one that doesn't have the sugar in it yet the little envelopes so i think that's a pretty cool thing ordinary thing that you can use in your knitting and the chief some really cool hand dyed you aren't and these are of course more effective walls than they're going to be on other fibers so that's something that you might want to keep in mind as well wall of course it's the easiest thing to hand by another couple of things i always keep on hand and something that you don't want to have to go and run and look for when you when you need them is especially with finer johansson some of the specialty yarns that we have snagging is always an issue and especially in these winter months here in pennsylvania your skin becomes dry and your nails sometimes have  little snags or what have you so these are two things to ward unary things that i always keep in mind that in a bag some hand cream and a double sided emery board and i like to use the smoothest one i can get because that really is going to give  the least amount of snags in your nails so that your nails aren't snagging on you're going there's nothing worse than working with something in it snagging on either your nails or your or some rough skin or what have you i have also heard of people i have not done this to be honest with you using an exceptionally smooth emery board on a bamboo or would need all that might have just a little bit of a catch in it as well and just taking that down so that they can work with it a little easier so those are some of the ordinary things that i keep around with my knitting i hope some of those suggestions are things that you feel make your life easier when we come back in the second segment i have a technique for you that goes right along with that charity meeting we were talking about earlier  something's happening to the polar bear polar bears are losing their homes their hunting grounds their lives as a parent i know one of the most important times to be with your children is when they are that's when the rubber comprende of the family is essential to a child's well being for many families is a place they can go to find the support they need ronald mcdonald house charities programs provide that support of the environment so families can be together while their children are feeling serious illnesses and undergoing treatment that's ahead of the way from home for families in need giving them more time for hugs kisses quiet moments together you can volunteer org welcome back i'd like to talk about socks and hats right now we've done socks so many times here on that on and sometimes when i run out run into you out and about some still telling me you're a little leery about doing socks i want to break that down for you a little bit because i think that if you've knitted a hatch you really can then progress and go ahead and do a sock the two parts of a sock that i think are the most intimidating are the heel because it's got some short rope shaping to it and grafting that so those are the two techniques i want to do with you today i use what is called a heel flap with some short row shaping there are some other heels that you might want to investigate and that's something as knitters that we always sort of find a comfort zone with and what have you you know the heel that i like the best might not be the heel but you like the best and i brought in one of my nit picks catalog because as i've said before on the show a nit picks always sort of does in their catalog a bit of a knitting lesson as well and in this one which is their march two thousand and nine issue they went through and sort of  gave a brief description of a few different kinds of heels and a few different kinds of as far as the construction of socks so if that's not something that you're already getting you might want to get on that mailing list because these catalogs really have a lot of great information in them as well as giving you some great fibers that you can mail order so what happens with a saw that makes it different than just knitting i had of course that is a tube and we've done lots of those here on the show and i've shown you how to work in the round a million times and most of you seem to be doing them but i have a baby had here this is something that's going to be going to afghans for afghans and you can see just worked in bridging in the round the same thing and i did this in a worsted weight in a larger size so it's a little bit easier to see here on camera but this is a knitted two but also in r and what i've done is half of those stitches then come down and create a rectangle that's going to be the back of that heel now that again you can do if you've been able to knit this to obviously you can do that little bit of a rectangle but the thing that's going to make this change direction and become soft to make that that turn that that then becomes the bottom of the foot is that we're going to do some short rows shaping now on this one i just did a ribbed heel sometimes you'll find a different pattern a slip stitch pattern or what have you for this particular one i did a ribbed so we are generally going to slip the first stitch on each row no matter what so will slip and i'm going to come across half of these stitches because if you think of that curving at the back of your heel you know that that needs to be at about that mid point so here we have two things two four six eight so there i am at the midpoint i'm going to go one stitch pas that because we want it to curve we don't want to be pointed if i started my shaping right at that midpoint we'd have more of a point so i'm going to go one past it and then i'm going to do a slip slip  and then knit one i'm not going to finish that row i'm going to leave those four stitches on my left hand needle and i'm going to turn and this is what is called a short rope meaning that you do not work the entire row i'm going to come back into it i'm going to slip that last one that i knitted and i'm going to come back across to one stitch past that midpoint again remember how we came one stitch past our midpoint so here we go and then i'm going to pearl two together and pearl one and i will turn now when i come back across here you're go i'll slip and then back across you're going to be creating there's going to be a little space between the ones that are knitted and the ones that have not already been added you can see there's a little bit of a space right here this one has been  this one has not been added that will be the two that i use for my slip slip knit and that's going to close up that little bit of an opening so that we don't have a hole in the bottom of that heel so there is slip slip in it and i net one and i turn now you will keep doing this until you've used up all the stitches and if you e mail me i will get you these directions i call these my half pint socks these are a toddler sized saw that are going to be going to afghanistan it's part of their drive this time for a health care facility that has a lot of children and they will be these out and the reason that i call it half point on with play sometimes we say half point when someone is smaller very young but it's also half of the normal number of stitches that i use when i do a sock i normally do sixty four of these are thirty two so i sort of sort of came up with the idea of half point and this is one of those finished it uses two stray ends of sock yarn on a size three needle so it's a little heavier sock then we've shown here on but of course with the conditions they're being so harsh heavier sock is is a great idea as i said the other thing that makes this a sock as opposed to just t is that we have some toes shaping and if you've done that shaping in the heel you know how to do an s s k in it two together you're going to be fine with that these directions you can get for me if you email but then when we come down we have two sets of live stitches here and the key to that is getting sort of a seamless connection there so that when this is worn inside of a shoe obviously we don't want to seem to rub against the toe or whatever some people seem to be a little put off by graph thing which is what we do with these two sets a lot of stitches it's really not that difficult i'm going to demonstrate it for you today and there again i'd be glad to email them for you so that you have them in print so that when you do your  socks you have them generally speaking we only have a few stitches though even if it's something that you don't really enjoy doing there's only a few stitches that need to be done anyway so what happens is we have those on the needles perpendicular to each other with the one that has the yarn coming up out of it toward the back we pull the needle in as though we're going to pearl and pull it all the way through and then the one on the back we go through as though we're going to net and that sort of sets us up for then the repeat which is then to go in as though we're going to net on that front one pop it off set up the next one by going in as though we're going to pearl it and stays on then we poor all put the needle in as they were going to pearl on the back flip it off then go in as they were going to knit and leave it on so i've just done as they were going to knit when i come back up i go in as though i'm going to knit on the front so there's sort of a repeating so that was net now we come back over here and put it in as though we're going to pearl and then pearl on the back and slipped it off net on the back leave it on i come back up to the front slip it through as though it's going to be a net so it's knit pearl on the front and then pearl net on the back so once you've done this a few times it really sort of becomes second nature so there's my net and you can see what i mean by that is that the needle is going in the same way i would be putting in and knitting needle if i were going to knit or if i was going to pearl so i think this really is the next natural progression as far as projects go if you've done the hat you're comfortable with working in the round especially on double pointed needles this is really the next thing that you might want to try so email me for these half pint sock and directions i'd love to get them for you and then we can mail them off for afghans for afghans until next time i am cherie so callous and i want you