Girlfriends Knitting

Do you think through a project before you get started? Do you think about each step and the amount of time and effort those steps will take and whether or not you have that time or are even willing to put in that effort? Clearly, I am not one of those people who do those things, or I would not have picked not one, but TWO projects that had 5879 ends to weave in. But more on the second one in a minute. First up, the Frankenscarf that I designed and knit for the month of July. Before I complain too much about end-weaving, let me just say that I love this project and had a blast designing and knitting it. 5 out of 5 stars. However, it should come with a warning that the number of ends will grow rapidly. As it is designed for you to change yarn often, you will have two ends to weave it at each yarn change. For a scarf that ended up being 6 feet long, that equated to 2.5 hours of end-weaving. (Yes, I actually did time it.) If you are not familiar with how to change yarn in a project, I have...

*This article has affiliate links to the items I used on Amazon. Clicking on links is at no cost to you, but I may earn a small commission. After you are gifted a hand-knitted item, you should learn how to properly care for it. I had a wonderful time teaching Evie how to wash and care for her new socks. Of course, Mama will still do that for her for a while, but she can now help me. It was also a fun way to spend time together and bond over my love of knitting and her love of socks! If you haven't seen the video, here it is. @girlfriendsknitting Today I am teaching my daughter how to care for her new handknit socks. #knittersoftiktok #knittok #girlfriendsknitting ♬ original sound - Girlfriends Knitting In the video, I used my very own homemade hanger. However, there is a better way. Check out this sock blocker set with hangers that are even adjustable! Here is also a link to the assorted set of Soak wash that we used. This product is great because it does NOT require that...

Does knitting really help with stress and anxiety?  🤔 💭 💆‍♀️ #mentalhealth #selfcare #mindfulness #knittingtherapy #anxietyrelief #stressmanagement I sure hope so!! Today, as I dropped off my baby girl at school, I couldn't help but feel a wave of emotions. It's one of those moments when stress and anxiety overwhelm this mama's heart, and I get sucked under the flood. But guess what? We have a secret weapon in our hands that can help us find serenity amidst life's challenges—knitting. While it is certainly not a replacement for our faith or professional mental health care, it can help with stress and anxiety. It's incredible how those yarns and needles can create a cocoon of comfort, guiding us into a world of calmness and peace. Whether we're knitting intricate patterns or simple stitches, the rhythm of the needles has a unique way of soothing our souls and quieting our minds. Still skeptical? Actually, there is evidence to support the claim that knitting c...

What do you do when you post a simple video on TikTok and it blows up overnight? Why, you have a knit-a-long of course. (That would be a KAL for those of you not yet knowledgeable with knitter-speak.) Thus....drum roll please... on July 1 we will start a Knit-a-long!! It will be across multiple channels, with this being its main hub. It will be simple, accessible for all skill levels, and not require anything more than what you may already have. However, if you are looking for some more tools, check out these links below for some suggestions. The comments for the viral video included questions about how to get started (casting on), how to purl, and what supplies I might recommend. I did create those two videos, and they are on my TikTok page. I will update them on my podcast soon.  As for the supplies, well, I have yet to meet a knitting tool or yarn I did not like, but here are some of my favorites: #promotion In the video itself, I am stabbing away with these knitting needles ...

🔥Beginner Bliss Sock Pattern 🔥 When a knitting bestie texts you and wants a simple beginner sock pattern, you get to writing! Thus, here it is - Beginner Bliss Socks! It is a simple pattern that is knit from the toe-up with a short row heel so that you can learn the basic construction of socks. There are simple instructions and pictures. If you would like it, you can click the link below. Even better - use the email sign-up on the right side of the blog, and you will be sent the pattern for FREE! (I might even include another little gift just for signing up!) I get a commission through purchases made from links to this site.

I think I have an obsession with Julia Roberts. I based the name of my blog off of a statement she made about knitting. and of course, there is the fact that she KNITS! Third, I adore the movie Steel Magnolias for many reasons, Julia being one of them. But more on that in a minute... So why did I decide to name my blog "Girlfriends Knitting?"  During the filming of the movie  Larry Crown (she played a community college teacher! We have so many connections, I think we should be BFFs), Tom Hanks played a prank on Julia Roberts, who is known for knitting on the set. He had an assistant and the costume director prepare 50 skeins of yarn with a few rows of knitting, then passed out these knitting projects to 65 men in the crew. When Julia walked in, she began cracking up laughing, and immediately got into the spirit of the prank, talking about knitting with the guys. Here is a small excerpt of that from A ccess Hollywood , but the line I remember most came from anothe...

As I was reading the old posts, I came across the following Christmas wish list. (See  Dear Santa . It is still a great list for the knitters in your life if you ever need one.) #promotion Signature needles  (any size circular, with a long cable) - or the whole collection! (Haha, as if!) Wollmeise yarn  (I just bought my first skein....ooooh) Really, any wool blend yarn would make me happy, so check out all the gorgeous yarn on  Etsy  and pick me up a skein, or three. Doing that also supports local small businesses, which is nice. Those yarn blends make for some gorgeous socks, which I am in love with knitting right now. So any set of Wendy Johnson patterns, particularly her  Socks in a Box , would be awesome. With all that yarn, I will need to be making and blocking final projects, so there are also,  blocking wires  and  Sock Blockers (women's large). Blocking those new hand-knits requires wool wash, such as  Soak . For t...

Have you ever time-traveled? I have this week - back in time over ten years to when life for me was much different. Some of you have traveled with me, having seen my current TikTok videos under the same name and googling Girlfriends Knitting to find an old blog with over 80 posts about knitting, spinning, and life with a disabled spouse.  I perused the pages, watched some of the videos, cried a little, laughed a lot, and just reminisced. It is very odd seeing your life documented in front of the camera that way.  Your brain has what my dad liked to call revisionist memory. It will edit out the bad parts, blur some of the parts that sting a little too much in full color, and add embellishments to make stories better, funnier, sweeter. But not the camera. It shows everything. You can't say something didn't happen when it is right there in recorded history. Roll the tape! I have decided to revisit that time in my life, review the footage, learn and grow from my new vantage point ...

We went out and bought a lighting kit for the podcast (back in Feb.) and even bought a new camcorder (back in March). We made lists of things we wanted to discuss. Did we record? Obviously not. Why not? Well, because sometimes life happens. Here's what we have been up to: Spring Break, in which we did not accomplish anything, except watching the entire series (thus far) of Grimm. I do marathons...Netflix marathons! Carolyn's braces were tightened. Ouch! After several days of not being willing to talk, it hurts to eat. So not fun. Amy got the "crud" because her immune system sucks. And then felt the need to share the fun and passed it along to Carolyn. Two not-happy, very sick, campers. (We are over that now.) Travel, travel, and more travel for Carolyn (all business related) with no end in sight. But I get lots of knitting done this way, so I am happy. What about the alpaca?? I am SOO excited to say that our wonderful mill, New Era Fiber, was able to process...

(The following events may or may not have occurred in the creation and publication of my podcast. I refuse to say in order to protect the guilty.) You decide you want to do a knitting podcast. You have a webcam on your computer. You could just record on there, upload it (somewhere, you don't even think about the where really) and tell everyone about it. Done. This will be easy. Then you get started. You sit down to record and realize that you aren't even quite sure what you want to talk about. You look around frantically for your works in progress. But wait, are you really prepared to admit on camera you have 20 WIPs? Not even your knitting circle know this shameful secret. (Actually, you didn't even realize this until you started counting them.) What about yarn, didn't you buy some yarn this week that was really cool? Ok, grab it. Share that, too. Segments - should you have segments? The cool podcasters all have cute segment names that go with cute them...

I have been doing lots of spinning lately. It began because Amy wanted me to spin up some of the fiber she had dyed so she could see how it might look. I picked the purple Peruvian wool because I loved how it changes tones. I pulled out my beloved ladybug and spun it up as a simple two-ply, dividing the fiber down the middle and spinning each one on a separate bobbin. Very pretty if I do say so myself. I had so much fun with that project I decided to finish up a few things I already had on a bobbin. I pulled out this luscious grey 80% Merino 20%silk from Cute Bunny Farms that I purchased at Rhinebeck in 2012. (No, it had not been on the bobbin since then!) I spun it onto a single bobbin, then chain-plied it to create a 3-ply sport-weight yarn. Spinning was putting in me such a relaxed and zen-like state, I had to keep going. I pulled out some Merino in the "I'm a sexy squash" colorway from Knitters Nightmare . I had grabbed it up from Sadie at this past SSK in Nashville....

Amy here -  While Carolyn was busy spinning the fiber I dyed last week, we received a shipment of 80% merino 20% mohair fiber we had processed at the Wild West Fiber Mill in Colorado. The mohair is from the fleece Carolyn bought a while back - the cute goat Eloise. Dying this fiber was a challenge. The mohair content made it, well, hairier. In other words, there were colorful bits of hairy fiber all over me, the kitchen, and our dogs for a few days. Though this doesn't make for the most pleasant dying experience, it makes a beautifully haloed yarn when spun (which I had Carolyn do to a sample so I could see what it would look like.) I want to be able to produce a nice solid, as well as tonal colors, so I keep doing both. The Sun Yellow is a nice solid in a yellow that doesn't look like French's mustard (at least not when you see it in person. We really need to work on getting some lighting.) Carolyn likes the orange and named it Autumn Sunrise. (10 points for anyon...

We can't tell you how excited we are to be working toward offering beautiful alpaca roving and yarn in our store. We have been working diligently toward perfecting our processing, as we want you to have the absolute best quality product. At the mill this week are the fleece from these two charming young girls - Raven and Ripley. As you can probably guess from the name, Raven is the cute black alpaca in the front with the white specs on her nose. Her fleece is a deep true black and some of the softest stuff I have ever felt. Ripley is the sweet girl in the back that looks like she has been drinking chocolate milk! Her fleece is an extremely light beige/white, and we plan on dying it up into mounds of glorious color. Now off to process the next batch - Claire and Angel!

They are cute. They are funny. They are oh so soft! Alpacas, a cousin to the llama and camel, have fiber that is extremely soft and luxurious. The huacaya alpacas raised on Grace Farms and Alpacas of Center Hill are beautiful animals that are loved and tended carefully by Jon and Pat to produce beautiful, show-quality fiber that is great for the spinner or knitter. In fact, fiber from these animals has won competitions for its crimp, softness, overall quality, and great spinning qualities. The best part is that Girlfriends Knitting is teaming up with these wonderful farms to begin providing 100% alpaca fiber and yarn. The beautiful fleece will be on its way to the mill this week and we will keep you up-to-date on when it will be ready for purchase. Get those alpaca knitting patterns ready!

We are very excited to begin this joint venture. Our first vending experience was at the Arkansas Fiber Extravaganza in December 2013, and we had a blast. Thank you so much to everyone who helped make that first show so wonderful for us. If you signed up for our newsletter at that event, thank you. The newsletter will contain knitting tips and techniques, jewelry-making ideas, coupons, patterns, and more…but maybe not all in the same issue! If you have not yet signed up, the subscription link is on our Welcome page.

As you may have read on plurk or Ravelry, I am in Dallas with my family. My dad is still not doing well, so please continue to pray for him. So…instead of a regular episode this week, which I am not up for, I thought it would be fun if all my girlfriends (and guy friends too) played podcaster this week! I would love to see your videos of what you are up to! Just record a short video and upload it to the Ravelry thread. Funny pics would also be greatly appreciated. Warning! I have been crying all week so you better not make me cry or I will hunt you down!! Funny, people, funny! Much love, your knitting girlfriend Carolyn!

Well, I have finally done it! I wrote up the pattern for the Cat's in the Cradle hat that I created last year. I knit up this adorable little hat out of really soft mystery wool that I had leftover from some project or another. I knit another sample as I was writing up the pattern, to check for errors. I hope that I caught them all, but as I did not send it out to test knitters, there may be some. Since it wasn't test knit, and it is one of my first patterns, I have published it on Ravelry. I hope all who knit this little gem enjoy it as much as I do. And please email me any errors that you find, and I will post the errata ASAP. And here is some insider information - the gorgeous model is my niece, Elle. She is my brother's little girl, and I just want to eat her up she is so sweet! And I must say she is quite a talented hat model, too! Of course, she has grown considerably since she modeled my hat. Still just as beautiful as ever, but a total handful now that sh...

Well, the big surprise that I mentioned in the Ravelry group is that I am traveling this week, and had the opportunity to meet up with Aimee and Darren from the  Knitting in Circles podcast. We had lunch and even recorded a podcast or two. And of course, we knit! (Or is it knitted? That always sounds funny to me. Anyway...) It was too windy outside to film. (See my hair in the photo to the right!) And there weren't chairs in the gorgeous atrium, so we thought we would try to film in front of the view of the Gulf from my room. (See below.) Gorgeous, yes! Ideal for filming? No! So we had to settle. But in the end, it worked out great!  (See the photo below of Aimee and me with our knitting. Darren was there too, I promise. Who do you think we got to take the pictures?!? We voted him an "honorary girlfriend.")  And last but not least, Aimee made me some absolutely adorable stitch markers! Aren't they too cute? I will post the cross-o...

I have spent the last few days tweaking the layout and gadgets on my blog and I hope you find the changes worthwhile. Here is a description of some of the new things I have been able to do: I added a progress bar for the WIPs. It will show you what my progress is on each project, instead of just the names of what I am knitting. If you click on the name of the project, it links to my Ravelry page , where you can look at current pictures (if I have any) and details about the project. Yay, for more information! Boo, I will have to update more on Ravelry, especially with pictures. Updating takes up precious knitting time. I must really love you guys to give up that much of my knitting time just so you can keep tabs on me!! The list of Recent FOs is now also a list of links to the Ravelry pages for each project. Here you can again see pictures (if, again, I have some posted) and the details about the final project. I added a link to my Plurk timeline. Plurk is a social media site, sim...

What do you do when you are sick? What if you were sick more than you were well? That is me right now. For those of you that know me, you know that I have terrible problems with allergies, and as a result, my sinuses. I can usually count on one hand the number of days a month in which I do not feel like I have a terrible cold and cannot breathe. If I stayed home from work every day I was sick, I would have been fired years ago. Some times of the year are better than others, and from Thanksgiving to Christmas was pretty good. But starting a few days before Christmas, my sinuses became infected. (Well, more than usual anyway.) By the time I returned home from my trip to visit family, I was in full-blown 'pull the covers over my head and cry' mode. I was actually sick enough that I went several days without knitting! (I know, it was a shock to my loved ones as well. That's when they started paying attention to how sick I was and not dismissing it as my usual sinus attacks....