What a crowd!

We had 18 crafters in attendance today all looking to get away from the gloomy, rainy day. We stayed warm and cozy while listening to soft jazz music, quiet conversation, and shared plans for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday. Some of us will welcome large families and some will have small quiet gatherings. Oh! And we welcomed a new Angel today. Sharon, wearing a tan shirt sitting next to Cinzia in the burnt orange shirt on the lower right, is a talented crocheter.

She started a child sized mitten using a warm burgundy colored wool fiber. The finished mitten will have heart appliques. The pattern was one from her personal magazine collection.

Sharon wore a pair of mittens she crocheted for herself using Lion Brand Wool Ease, a machine washable wool blend fiber. The tightly worked stitches make a dense fabric to keep the cold away.

Pat borrowed a book from the library called "Crochet One Skein Wonders" to make a popcorn stitch head band. But part of the way through she changed her mind and frogged it in favor of the Mobius Cowl, also in the same pattern book. In case I haven't mentioned it before, frogging a project is a term used for ripping out what you made...rip it, rip it, rip it.

I know, Dad joke! LOL!

Pam worked a little bit on her autumn colored scarf and a little bit on...

a pretty pastel variegated triangular shawl. She purchased the yarn from an online vendor from Denmark called Hobbii.

Karen is in between projects and took some time to browse through her pattern book, looking for inspiration. She is hoping to use the earth tone variegated ball of yarn in her hand to make a scarf.

Gerry is almost finished with a crocheted scarf she is making for her granddaughter who picked out this lovely yarn herself, a stunning variegated yarn of easy to care for acrylic. Gerry found a picture of elves she crocheted when she was 19 years old (yesterday, right Gerry?;) ) Anyway, she was trying to remember how she made the coiled legs when good old YouTube came to the rescue!

Cinzia knitted a washcloth using the Moss Stitch pattern which made a nice texture for a gentle face cloth.

I like to watch knitting videos on YouTube and so many of them are from designers from other countries. This pattern was either from a Turkish knitter or Hindi, I can't remember which but if you slow the video speed, you can learn the technique and write down the steps as you watch. This started out as a cowl but the twisted ribbing drew the fabric tightly making the circumference more suitable as a hat. So Plan B is it's a hat!

Edgar takes great care to make sure every row of his crocheted hat has the correct number of stitches. So many of us have trouble keeping the side edges straight so it helps to count the chains at the top of the row to maintain the right number of stitches.

Bob moved on to another new yarn color on another new blanket.

And Jim started crocheting around the outer edges of his baby blanket to expand the length and width.

Yvonne ran out of yarn before she completed her hat and had to join a new ball of yarn. Now if you use an animal fiber you can use the "Spit Splice" method which involves roughing up the ends to be joined, moistening them (usually with your own saliva which works best. It's going to be washed when you block it) then vigorously rubbing the two ends together in the palm of your hand until you feel heat and the ends felt together. However, if you use a synthetic fiber such as acrylic as Yvonne is using, it won't felt. So she is using the braided method which maintains the same gauge of the original strand of yarn. This is another technique found on YouTube.

Athena's blanket grows longer each week. It's slow going but she is persistent.

Mike has been playing golf and taking vacation so we haven't seen him in a while. But he was back today and picked up his wife's stole where he left off. The finished scarf is supposed to be 80+ inches long and he's approaching 70 inches. Then he has to pick up stitches all around the edges to knit the border! That will be a cup of tea and Netflix kind of project.

Ceil is approaching the home stretch on her Homestead Shawl. I don't think this picture does justice to the saturation of color in this yarn. It's like looking into a garnet! It's just gorgeous!

Rena is all set with those two huge balls of yarn to

embark on another basket weave baby blanket.

Tomasa is almost finished with Peggy's Cap by Yaya Loves to Knit. It's a free pattern on Ravelry. The yarn she's using for the crown of the hat is a ribbon tape type yarn which creates a lovely stitch definition.

Maria is almost finished with her Quaking Aspen Cowl for a friend. This pattern can be purchased on Ravelry. The yarn she is using is another with really nice stitch definition.

Gail worked on her KAL (knit-a-long project where friends knit the same item at the same time) socks. This is the heel after the flap is knitted but before...

the heel is completed. It looks more like a sock from this angle.

The Stitch Angels will be taking time off next week for the Thanksgiving holiday so we take this opportunity to send you all happy wishes and keep those needles clicking!