Scarves, Scarves, Everywhere Scarves - Part 1

My sister showed us how to knit these cute frilly scarves over the holidays. We decided to make one for each of the drill team members. We knew we had to hurry so we could have them made before the competitions so we could give them as a "good luck" gift.

We tried to buy the color we wanted online and they had none available. We then called all the craft stores around the larger cities in the state. We were unable to find more than three anywhere. 

We called and had them look up how many would be on the next trucks and at 9 a.m. the next morning, the truck would be unloaded and on the shelves. I had to spend three hours driving around town to buy enough of the one color to have enough to make the scarves for the team.

They have some really cute colors and we thought we could have Princess number 4 sell some around the neighborhood as a fund raiser for her Thailand Service Mission trip. My sisters and their kids, along with several of my Princesses, all helped make them. Luckily, my older sister had just purchased a bunch of knitting needles. She bought 2 sided bamboo. When my sister from out of state was returning home, we purchased some fun colors so her kids could each make one for themselves on the long drive home. 

I didn't want to spend the money on knitting needles as we had some at home and she didn't want to spend money on buying some just for the trip home as she had some at home already as well.

With that, I brainstormed what we could use that was cheap instead of knitting needles. I thought of bar-b-cue wooden skewers but they are too thin. I thought of wooden spoon handles but we would have to sharpen one end and they are longer and still not cheap. Someone my sister knows said they used chop sticks. They still cost and splinter. So, I said a prayer and headed to the dollar store. I looked at the cooking isle and found nothing.

I did the electronic isle, still nothing. I then thought of colored pencils and thought that perhaps I could use them on the dark colors so they lead wouldn't stain light colors. Pens would leak ink. Then, I had the perfect thought. Mechanical pencils are perfect. 

My sister used bamboo double ended knitting needles and we kept losing stitches off both ends so she used rubber bands to keep the knitting on. The mechanical pencils have the little clip that holds it onto a pocket and it is perfect to hold the stitches on when you aren't working on it so they don't fall off. Since using them, we have had far less problems dropping a stitch. Tomorrow, I will show how to make the scarves. Instead of a few dollars for each set of knitting needles, it was less than $.25 for a pair of pencils. 

The girls were fighting over the leads in the pencils for their favorite mechanical pencils and we still had the pencils to use for knitting. In my opinion, they are better than knitting needles as they hold the stitch and are small enough to fit in my purse. The needles are slick, the stitches fall off and they are longer so they keep getting stuck into the finished scarf where as the small pencils have the rubber eraser and don't tend to get caught and keep the stitches on.

I am still sick and have been in bed most of the last two days. Making scarves has been about what I could handle. I haven't been this sick forever. Can't seem to shake the sinus and lung issues. Crazy stuff going around. Even with all my knowledge of health and healing, this is a hard flu... I am sad for babies and elderly with this thing out there.

Making Pirate Scarves, Headbands, Hats - Camp Fun

For girls camp this year, we did a pirate theme for our hike. We also dressed the Jr Leaders up as Pirates for the hike. Here is a link to a post about the bag of stuff we gave each of them.


I wish I had done a video of how Princess Five cut and tied off the fronts of the t-shirt. She cut the bottom hem off the t-shirt and then cut holes at the neck edge and then she laced the hem / ribbon through like a shoe gets laced so that the neck "ties" like a shoe or draw string. 


You can't really see it well in the pictures in this post but then we told each girl to cut up or decorate her t-shirt as much as she wanted. You can see in the pictures that each girl did what they wanted with the shirts. 


I made the scarf out of an Aeropostle scarf that I found for $2 at a second hand store. I was looking for a linen type fabric that I could cut into pirate scarves and was THRILLED to see this one that had skulls on it. 


It was PERFECT for what we wanted and it was linen and "frayed" looking which was exactly what I wanted for the scarf / pirate hats. 

I made a video of how I did it just for ease but figured I would show the details as well. It was a large square scarf which I folded on the diagonal and then folded on the diagonal again and again until I had it down to the size of a bandana half. I cut on the diagonals making 8 scarves.  

I used red bandanas for our pirate costumes for years so I knew how to tie off the scarf to make it look like a pirate skull cap. 
 
When tying the scarves off, you need to make sure that the top point of the triangle is tucked down into the bottom two pieces of the triangle when tying the base knot so that you can pull the top of the scarf tight.

I made Princess Five try them on for me so I could demonstrate how to leave the ends out and frayed so it looks more like a pirate scarf. 

After pulling the top corner into the knot, leave the longer ends out which makes it looks like a pirate scarf. 

Princess Five was really cute saying that she thought the hat was really cute and if I had an extra one, she wouldn't mind having one. I figure if a teen wants it, it must be cool! 

It worked well for the hike and many of the girls said it was their favorite event of camp.

Braided Scarves for Chairty

My friend Julie made a bunch of scarves for charity. Over the years, she has made LOTS of things for charity. She experiments with different patterns and methods and she came up with these hand crocheted scarves that she can make in just a few minutes. 
 
She takes many strands of the same color of different textures of yarn and makes a slip knot on one end. She then just uses her hand to start pulling the yarns all together through the slip knot just enough to make another loop. 

She continues hand crocheting them until they are the length that she wants them. They look a little thin hanging down but these are to wrap around the neck a few times and with that, they are then warm and thick. 

They are perfect for the homeless as they can use them as a belt or to tie up their belongings when the don't need them as a scarf. They are multipurpose scarves. 

I tried to take a close up picture showing how she uses bulky yarn to make them thicker and have texture.

She uses the yarns that she only has parts of skeins. When she gets lots of colors in the same tones, she puts them together and then just makes as many as she can with those colors. 

It is a great way to use the smaller skeins of bulky or texture yarn that you don't have enough of to do another project.

Making a Scarf Holder

Princess Five asked me several months ago to make her a "scarf holder" to take to college. 

She showed me one she had found online and we talked about the best way to make it. 

I got some plastic canvas and we started cutting it out and measured sizes. We figured she could use different sizes for thinner and thicker scarves and also some slots for leggings, nylons and other similar items. 

I got busy with cutting trees, getting new gutters, being in a play, fighting parasites, family reunions etc and didn't work on it for over a month. 

If you want to do a holder using the plastic canvas, I am sure it would work great but I am super busy and each hole needs to be wrapped. You would need to wrap every side of the inner hole cuts with plastic canvas yarn. 

I did one entire sheet. We were going to stitch it on the plastic coated wire hanger and then we were going to stitch one canvas to the bottom of the first and hang three different sheets with different holes. 

Being busy, I didn't want to finish that so when I found a bag of these wooden curtain rod rings. I thought it would be more simple to just hang these rings from the hanger and make a scarf hanger this way.

The rings already had eyelet hooks screwed into them and it was super easy to bend them just enough to fit the hanger. I laced some plastic canvas yarn around the two hooks on the edges and around the hanger so that they would stay in place.

I then tied the rings together with string and had the metal rings hanging off the bottom. You could actually just screw eyelet hooks into the bottom and top of the rings to attach them to each other. 

Or you wouldn't need to use the metal rings at all. You could just tie the rings onto the hanger with yarn and then tie each of the rings together with yarn and it would still work. Thinking about it, maybe I should have done that. 

You can add rings onto the hanger if you get more scarves and it is super fast and easy. I wish I had figured out how to just tie them on at the beginning as I think if I had used black yarn to tie them on the hanger and tied them all together using the black, it could look cute and would have probably been more secure in the end. Maybe I will redo it before she leaves. 

Princess Five was happy with the hanger and loved having something new to take her scarves to college. We have a hook to hand on the back of her closet door to put the hanger on. It is fun to see her getting excited about heading to school. 

Have a BLESSED Day!

Crocheting a Curly Scarf versus Knitting one

 I had a friend offer to help me make some curly scarfs. I didn't ask if she was going to knit or crochet them. It didn't occur to me. 

She brought back three scarfs in no time and I asked her how she made them so quickly. She told me she crocheted them. Crocheting takes only half the time that knitting does. I thought that was a great idea. I hadn't however, looked at the scarves she made yet. 


She showed me how to crochet them. I crochet but even if I didn't, it is so easy that anyone can do it. 

But, as I looked at the finished product, I noticed something. The crochet scarf is thinner, less curly and has a line going down it. When it is worn, the hangs flatter and not as curly as the knitted ones. They are also a bit longer than the knit scarves. 

As you can see from the picture at the top, the blue scarf has a line you can follow all the way through it because it hangs down from that line whereas the knit one, you can't find a line. It is curly all the way around and  very full looking.

To crochet a scarf, open the yarn, the same sashay red heart brand you use for knitting the scarves. Fold it back on itself a little once you open it up as you can see in the top photo. Then, weave the crochet needle through it starting from the decorative edge toward the working edge.  Three or four weaves is ok. Then, pull the last weave, through all the other weaves so you only have one stitch on the needle. You will have two together since you were folding it over on itself but it will go when you start down to just the one thickness.

 
You can see in this picture how you capture the stitch under the hook and then pull it all the way through. Look at the picture below that as well and you can see that now you are down to that one.

Look closely at the next picture where you start picking up the little threads. Once you open the yarn, you see two little lines followed by a bit of open, then two more little lines. You weave the needle in and out of those two lines. You DON'T go in-between those two little lines.
You only go in and out the larger spaced holes. Never between the two little lines or they will tear. Once you have picked up four or five of the little double lines on the crochet needle, you pick up one more and pull that one through all the others that you picked up and then you will just have the one stitch on the needle. You continue weaving the needle in and out of the double lined larger holes until you have finished crocheting the entire skein of yarn. 
 
To end it, you just pull the entire end piece of yarn, not just the little two strings, but the entire end of the yarn through and out. Then, tie the end into a knot. 

As you can see by the last two pictures, the scarf is thinner and longer than the knitted but you can't beat how quickly it works up. 
 
I didn't like the look as much of the crochet ones so I continue to knit ours as we are selling them, we want them to look as good as possible. 

So, if you like the thinner look with a line, that hangs flatter, go with crochet. If not, go with the knitting. It is all preference. 

Another Day of 111 - Must be Needing Them

 I told you a week or two ago (I think) that the Dr. said I have low iron. I also know my thyroid is having issues but the past week with company etc, I have forgotten to take my iron pills. 

I am so tired I think the last few weeks with Prom and Easter along with lots of house guests really took it out of me. I can't tell you how many loads of laundry I have done. Camping and sick visitors and sheets along with bedding have made for some long days of laundry. I have officially finished washing the blankets and bedding as of last night. I had to call the repair man as my dryer will not shut off unless the door is left open. The timer is going. I think it is as tired as I am doing all that laundry. :-)

It feels very good to have that done. I have knitted a few scarves this week but that for the most part is winding down as the weather gets better. However with snow yesterday and everyone freezing in the house tonight so much that I turned up the heat, there still may be a few days left for selling. 

Princess four still has a few things left to pay for coming up and friends have been so generous in buying her scarves and donating to help Princess four get to Thailand. She has a meeting this weekend where we will drive there and back in the same day which will make for a long day. We will be leaving about six a.m. and we have a special event where they are honoring my mother we found out about today so we won't be getting back until after midnight so I am not looking forward to that long day.

But, there are some graces in my life that keep me going even when I do feel extremely tired. I turned on the computer which had been acting up all day. Nothing worked. I rebooted and guess what time it was.... 1:11. If you don't know about my seeing 111 click on this link here for details. For the other 20 posts about 111, type 111 in the search box at the bottom of the page and you will five about 20 more posts where I share my 111 stories.

Yes, the funnier thing is, that I was going to post today about the night when I opened my blog pages to see the stats for the day and check on comments, the views on my blog were 91,111. I thought that was funny but then as I opened the page Princess two had opened and left for me to view on a new cell phone plan, I couldn't believe the time on the picture they have displaying the phone on their site. Yes, it is 11:11. It only got better when I was scanning some tax papers and noticed that on two of my tax papers, the number has a 111 in it. 

When I finished scanning those, I finished things up for the night and each night I write in a journal and put the days total in so I can keep track of my views daily. Sometimes the counter on my blog resets etc. I looked and there was the total as 91,115. 

The other day, I looked at the clock twice at 11:11 and 1:11. Princess four was with me both times. I think someone is giving me a reminder that "this too shall pass" being tired all the time. I talked with a friend and he suggested that I take "Yellow Doc Root" as it is widely known as one of the richest iron sources. So, the other day I went and bought it and with my horrible headaches the past few days, I haven't been taking anything. When I don't feel well due to storm pressures, I don't like taking anything as my liver has to deal with Tylenol and Psudaphed and I don't like to take things when I feel nauseous which storm headaches do if I don't take something early. So, I will let you know how it makes me feel when I start taking it and lets hope it does something for my lack of energy.

Knitting, Knitting, Scarf, Yarn....

I calculated how much I spent in yarn this past month and it was $500. So in the past few days, we finally broke even on the buying of the yarn. Now, anything Princess 4 sells, will be profit. 

The problem I see with this, is that Princess four is SO busy that she has no time to knit. Princess two is continually selling things on our "Indoor Yard sale" and Princess 5 has had a large project due which has taken most of her time. 

We have been out of town almost every weekend for the past two months and that leaves me to make ALL the scarves. With that, I still have all the crazy every day stuff going on driving kids around and parent teacher meetings etc.

So, by the time I finish up with all the things that need to be done during business hours, then, going through all the closets, drawers, storage stuff that Princess two needs me to sort so she can sell it on the "Yard sale", that leaves me knitting in the middle of the night. :-(

So, as you can see by my late posts the past week or so, I am exhausted. Last night, I fell asleep on the couch with the lights and TV on and the recliner out but I slept folded over in the recliner loveseat. 

I was so tired, I didn't hear the tv going off or the lights going off and when Princess two was leaving town for the day, I still didn't make myself comfortable. I got up and had to face the day with aches and pains from sleeping in a VERY bad position. 

All the activities that Princess two and three have going on this month took my entire income to pay so I will continue knitting the scarves to get those paid off so I can start living (and sleeping) again. 

Good news, I only have about 50 more skeins of yarn to go! lol Actually, I am teaching knitting classes and they go much quicker that way as I can do that in about an hour. I don't make as much per skein of yarn but make more per hour so it kind of evens out. 

Today was the first day I haven't blogged at least during the day and  I think this past week takes the cake for records of late posts times four. I know things will get back to normal but what mother wouldn't sacrifice for their child to have such wonderful opportunities. I know it will shape and make her even more amazing than she already is (if that is possible.) 

I pray that I can get myself together and finish off these projects and get my home and life back into a bit more normal routine.

"FUD" Raiser for Humanitarian Service Missions

Today we had a very busy day. I was getting ready for the day when Princess Two called me and needed me to meet her somewhere. I never got back home. I wish I had taken that few extra minutes but it worked out ok in the end. 

After that, I raced to get Princess five to dance after she had the day off for Parent Teacher meetings. I then took Princess four to her McDonald fund raiser. Four kids from our local area are doing service missions with the same group that Princess four is going with and Princess three went with two years ago. (see one of the many posts about that here)

They set up a service fund raiser for the kids to work at McDonalds and we tell everyone we know to go in and eat there on a specific night from 5-8 p.m. 

There were supposed to be a few more kids but they didn't show up so Princess two and I decided to chip in as well as Princess four and the friend she got to "help" her. 

I literally didn't go in my house after leaving it this morning so I had no coat, gloves anything. I ended up being the person at the drive through to get people to eat inside. I am not sure why they would only give half of the proceeds from inside purchases and nothing on drive through traffic. So, I got to stand in the cold pointing people to go inside. I think a few people thought the drive through was broken but most just opened their windows and let me explain that if they went inside and purchased their food, we would get half of the purchase towards the kids service Humanitarian Missions. 

Most people were great and went inside and the few that couldn't due to children or injury made donations. In the 1 1/2 hours I stood outside, I made almost $50 in donations and got more than half the cars going through the drive up to go inside to purchase their meals. 

Princess Two got to stand on the street shaking a pink sign trying to bring in business along with my sister whose daughter is going to Cambodia.

Funny story. My sister was chalking the windows of her suburban to park on the street for people to see when they drove past. She was in such a hurry that she wrote the sign and some people went in to restock "Red box" and as I went in, they came up to me discretely and said, "We didn't want to offend the lady outside but she miss-spelled fundraiser and wrote, "Fud" raiser." I laughed and said, "I guess it would have worked if she had put in the N and taken out the D and had "Fun" raiser." When I told my sister, she just laughed and went out to fix it.

Princess four got to serve drinks and make Chocolate and latte drinks. She said, "Working there has got to be the easiest job ever." However, she did complain saying her lower back and feet hurt from standing on the cement and tiles that entire time. 

I was FREEZING with a short sleeve silky shirt on and ended up wearing Princess fours Micky Mouse sweat shirt (much too small) and my nephews BMX jacket (He is 12 and rather small) so I looked rather silly at the drive through with my breath showing in a jacket 10 sizes to small. All in all, we earned $200 for each person going on a service mission. 

I rushed home and taught Knitting classes  to seven women, showing them how to make the beautiful scarves that are so popular at the moment. Here is a link to my post about making those. That money also is going to the service mission payments. We also sold three more scarves to friends and participants of the class.

One blessing is that someone I really needed to talk with drove through the drive through and I got to converse with him about important matters as he has been too busy to return my calls. It seems like every time I think I am doing a favor for someone, Heavenly Father blesses me in the end.

I then went to buy groceries and found $21 as I was checking out. Once again, as I stress and rush to try and make up these payments for my daughter to have a wonderful service opportunity that is once in a lifetime, Heavenly Father reminds me to "trust Him" in so many ways. Here is a link to my "In God we Trust" post. 

So today, all in all, was a great day. We are so blessed.  Thanks McDonalds for your support of this great thing the kids are doing. Thanks to all of you who have and continue to support my girls in all they choose to do. They may have trials in some areas of life but you all make up for it by being so wonderful to support them in so many ways. Thank you! 

I hope you all have a wonderful Valentines Day!