Increases with a Purple Twist

This is where I am on the Baby Surprise jacket at the moment.


Here's a close up of the problem. The arrow is pointing at one of the holes created by the Elizabeth Zimmerman increase-which consists of making a backward loop around the needle on each side of the central stitch. Period. Easy to do, but not making me happy. Prone to holes.

Every row looked like that before I ripped them out. Just above the hole are a couple rows where I did the Lifted increases, also known as Make 1, right leaning on the right of the center stitch, left leaning on the left of the center stitch. Better, but still not quite what I had in mind.

Above that I tried the knitting into the front and back increases. I really like how that looks. Absolutely NO holes. Matches the decrease section perfectly. Exactly what I have in mind. So, now that I've figured that out I should be able to make some progress. Gotta frog the experimental rows first. No holes allowed where they don't belong!

I am to the heel on the second of Franks brown socks. I would have had it done last night (the heel, not the whole sock) but when I started it my mind went completely blank on how to do the Eye of Partridge heel. I could not remember where I put the instructions for said heel, so, I put it away and went to bed. Found my instructions this morning (on the coffee table, right in front of me-sigh).

The bead crochet class I taught Saturday went excellently. Not only did my students go home knowing how to do bead crochet, they went home addicted to it. Mwhaa haa haa haaaaaaa.... My evil plan is working...oh wait! I didn't say that last sentence.

My finished Purple Twist necklace.


It's 26 inches long, so I didn't put a clasp in it. I seamed the ends invisibly so it's one continuous ropey spiral. This is a 6-bead rope. Each round is 3 silver lined purple size 8 beads, 1 size 10 amethyst Charlotte, 1 size 8 matte tan a/b bead, and 1 size 10 amethyst Charlotte. I strung them on black size 12 perle cotton and crocheted with slip stitch, on a size 12 hook.



If I were to do it over again, I think I'd rethink using black thread. It is so darn hard for my 40+ year old eyes to see.

I am now officially done with my purple swap items. I've decided 4 is enough (we can do up to five). I was thinking about whipping up some Cellini earrings, but I'm wanting to bead with some other color besides purple.

I worked a bit on my book over the weekend. It's never gonna get done if I don't work on it, so I've told myself to quite fooling around and get to work. After I post this I'm heading to Spokane in search of size 1 bugle beads for the current design I'm writing up. I foolishly gave the original bag to my sister-in-law for Christmas (what was I thinking!) and now I don't have it to refer to, and I can't find the notes--assuming I even wrote any. So I have to reknit the whole thing from scratch.

Have a great day!