Yarn Bits

With 12 colours of yarn, changing almost every round, a lot of yarn bits get trimmed from my Persian Tiles blanket. These are about half of the ones I've trimmed. I thought they were quite photogenic.

I find yarn bits all over the house as they stick to my clothing and when I get up to do something they fall off. I like to think that bending over to pick up the yarn bits is good exercise.

I want to crochet another Persian Tiles blanket with the same Eastern Jewels colourway. I have to order the yarn again from England so did some Googling to find a shop that could fulfill my order. The first two shops didn't have all the colours in stock. Then I happened upon the Woolwearhouse and discovered they sell the complete kit including the colourway instructions. The actual Persian Tiles pattern is a separate purchase. I ordered a kit, quick like a bunny (as my mother would say) plus a couple of extra balls of yarn that I'd like to use for the border of the first one. If I hadn't done 30 octagons, there would have been more than enough yarn for the original border around 16 of them but there was no way I have enough yarn after cutting things so close. As it is, I ran right out of Storm Blue.

Woolwearhouse has over 50 of the kits made up and in stock if anyone is interested in ordering from them. The kit is £34 and shipping via Royal Mail is only £4.99. With the extra balls of yarn my total is £43.69 or about $82CAD.  Without the extra yarn it's about $73CAD. There's no way I'd be able to source the 100g balls of yarn here for that price -  even Loops & Threads yarn from Michaels. Last time I ordered from the UK, the parcel arrived in a week.

We're getting excited about our upcoming Elim stitching retreat. Barb and I are carpooling up there early on Thursday. I'll take food for a couple of lunches and breakfast on Friday morning as food service for our group doesn't start until Friday suppertime. We'll probably head to Jessie's Thursday evening for supper - it's always busy there on Thursdays as it's cheap pizza night. 

At stitching today, Barb alerted us to the fact that Michaels is now carrying some fabrics. I beetled over there after stitching this morning and verified her observation. (Aisle 40 at the north Oshawa Michaels)

It is sold by the metre and one has to track down an associate to do the cutting but it's only $13/m for 100% cotton. It's not high end quilter's fabric but since the only Fabricland that is still open in Durham Region is in Pickering, it's good to know one can find some things there in a pinch.

Last night I finished the 6th extra octagon and all 5 big granny squares. For these, I just grabbed random colours rather than try to match one of the existing 16 octagons. 

On the Persian Tiles Facebook page, someone didn't like how the 'x' didn't lie flat before blocking so she is doing a quadruple crochet for them. That is wrapping the yarn around the hook three times and going through two at a time 4 times. I may try that on my next one.

This would be such a great stash-busting project to use up a bunch of random colours of yarn. I loved the seeming randomness of this colourway - not trying to be matchy-matchy at all. Basically any of the palette colours will work together.

Now to crochet a couple more big triangles (for the sides and top) and the 4 corner triangles. I'll start sewing it all together tonight. Am taking it to Elim to show it off even without the border completed.

• I watched countless episodes of Harlan Coban's 'Stay Close'. I have decided I don't like more than a few 'red herrings' and this one had a complete twist in the concluding episode. Will search for limited series with only about 5 or 6 episodes from here on.
• Then I watched the movie, 'Operation Mincemeat' with Colin Firth and Penelope Wilton (Mrs Crawley from Downton Abbey). It is based on the actual historic WWII deception that saved tens of thousands of lives. Anything with Colin Firth is OK by me.
• To get my David Tennant fix, I also watched a 4-episode thriller drama, 'Inside Man'.