Knitting Dragonflies

I have a friend who wanted me to reproduce a crochet rug that she has. It was a wedding gift and was wearing out. She loves it and had someone reproduce it about 10 years ago. So I’m the 2nd person to remake it. Each rug lasts her about 10 years!  I told her OK, but don't consider myself an expert in crochet, by any means. so I held my breath with what I imagined the rug looked like. I was relieved when it turned out to look fairly simple! She wanted it duplicated, that was actually not so hard. It was hard not to tweak the pattern. I kept wanting to make it thicker or change the stitches, definitely change the fringe, I wanted more of it, thicker, denser. But no she wanted the same rug. New rug vs: Original rug, colors were picked out for me to use It was difficult for me to figure out what stitch this was, I tried a cluster (bobble) stitch, popcorn and finally found a video explaining the differences between them! I had never done the puff stitch. The difference between puff

I knitted a shrug pattern a bit ago, and it turned out very nicely, but I wasn’t happy with how it looked on me, or the functionality of it. The Shrug is often seen as a bridging item for beginning to intermediate knitters. An item for the “I’m tired of knitting scarves, hats and shawls etc.., but don’t feel like I’m up for a sweater yet”. It attracted me because I thought it would be easy mindless knitting for watching TV or visiting, and also a useful addition to my wardrobe. It was a lot of knitting. The pattern I picked was all stockinette stitch. Whew….really long and boring. I would recommend picking one with a simple pattern to keep it interesting. And while it looked nice, I didn’t find it to be very useful, for myself. My husband called it my buttwarmer, and that is a good description of it. It stayed open in the front, where I was cold, and bagged in the butt area, which I don't need to emphasize. I did like the shorter sleeves and  that it was large enough to put ove

I have a girlfriend whose Mom crochets this pattern. She has so many and loves them. I made a few and they quickly became a favorite! These are great to make for gifts! Pattern is fast and fun. I use any cotton yarn, even scraps. Due to diagonal nature of the pattern and the double thickness of the hot pads they lend themselves nicely to color changes. These hot pads are very effective and almost indestructible. Hot pad pattern link Thanks mielkesfiberarts.com !! The pattern calls to chain 26, but I have made all different sizes! Smallest = chain 15, Largest = chain 45. The size I found was most useful was chain 36 for a larger potholder. Experiment!