Yarn that Misbehaves, Soldering and Shop Update

I added a couple of bags and another crochet hook storage roll to my shop. Thanks for taking a look! I'm pr-ewashing more fabrics today. It seems my stash is heavy on the purples from my "better not be more blue" phase. Purple apparently was the breakout color. Perhaps some other goodies are hiding! I have rediscovered some vintage Hawaii print fabric and a few batiks. And, there be blues, too. It's like Christmas, I tell you!



This lovely brown Lamb's Pride Bulky is having so much trouble discovering what it wants to me. It was, The Hat That Fit No Human Head, and was painfully started as socks on size 6 needles, but has morphed into one incredibly thick and narrow mitten. E. Zimmerman is a genius! Never mind that I had 44 stitches, and she had 36. She said knit 20 rows for this, 4 rows of that, save 7 stitches for the thumb and a mitten appeared. Problem is of course, that unless more of this yarn is found in the stash, it will be a single mitten. I must figure out how to eliminate the dog ears on the ends of my Kitchener-ing.

After having so much fun fusing silver wire, I took the next class, Soldered Chain Bracelet. Soldering silver has the advantage of being able to use sterling silver, which as some copper added for strength, and is a bit cheaper then fine silver. The drawback is that there is the additional step of pickling which requires "strong" and vile chemicals which is scary, and soldering wire and flux are also needed. It is a bit more messy. The high heat oxidizes the impurities in the silver and they turn black. The pickle removes this black. The final bracelet was tossed into the magic tumbler and a magically sparkled up the hole project. It look very much like the fused chain bracelet, except for this one we used a commercial clasp. The teacher Katharine Rita at Bead It Kailua, was excellent.