June Blogs – Kween's Krafts

Some of the best things in life are discards. That’s the reason behind the popular phrase:

“One man’s trash, is another man’s treasure”

As the child of a hippy I was ingrained with the principles of reduce, reuse, & recycle and I saw it in play at my great grandmother’s house everyday. She was a teenager during the Great Depression and that immensely shaped her way of life. It was the reason that even when she moved to a city she always grew a small vegetable garden. It was the reason she repurposed old card board boxes, and saved scraps of old fabric.

You never know when hard times will hit and your capacity to see the possibilities in different objects can be the difference between having what you need and having nothing.

When I started my garden this year I bought tomato cages for my tomatoes and also for my cucumbers because I experimented with vertically growing them last year and loved it! I was looking for large tomato cages and was only able to find regular sized ones.

I was super bummed. But as luck would have it a neighbor was wanting to get rid 2 super large tomato cages. These tomato cages are amazing! They are as tall as me, and are easily 20 years old, with these large stakes that you have to pound into the ground to keep them in place.

The holes are big enough to fit my hands through and easily pick the tasty cucumbers, even the biggest ones! The only problem they had were that they were rusted from years of use. But I knew exactly how to solve that problem!

So off I went to favorite home improvement store for some metal sandpaper (Yes, the sandpaper you use on metal is different from the sandpaper you use on wood. If you didn’t know this before, file it away for future use because it’s important!). While there I also bought a couple of cans of Rust-oleum spray paint, and I found a beautiful sage green color!

After about 2.5 hours of good old fashioned elbow grease and all the sandpaper I bought, I had some rust-free tomato cages, sorely in need of a pretty coat of paint. Add another roughly 30 minutes for spray painting and then overnight drying, just to make sure all the paint was set properly, and I had a wonderful climbing trellis for cucumbers!

I did the math on my project vs. the tomato cages I originally bought for the cucumbers. I spend about $15 on 2 tomato cages, that were not what I really wanted, while the other cage project cost me about $15 in sandpaper and paint, and 3 hours of labor, but were more perfect for my purpose than anything I could find to buy. I find that a very worthwhile investment because now I have have them and they are rustproof for years to come!

I know my grandparents would be very proud of me for not giving up on my vision and not shying away from the little bit of hard work that stood in my way. I also know that they would very happy with the pickles I plan to make from my crop of cucumbers this year!

Now I just need to wait for the cucumbers…

… I’ll try to be patient.

As a knitter of many years, there are times when doing the same thing is more detrimental to my goals than I realize. Sometimes the only thing to do is change it up.

Sample Eyelet Baby Blanket I have a favorite baby blanket pattern. I have knit the same pattern in different colors, sizes and with different twists. My recent favorite was for an awesome friend who likes colorful and unique things, so her blanket got a bunch of different colored stripes in variegated sizes! I still love the pattern and find it’s classic beauty just wonderful. I also like that it has eyelets because babies are notoriously warm and no one wants to give a baby heatstroke while they sleep.

So when I found out another friend was pregnant I knew I had to make a baby blanket for her. For this one I wanted the blanket to have more earth tones, but to still be vibrant for their baby girl. I spent a lot of time searching for the perfect yarn for this project. I knew I wanted it to be cotton, so they could easily wash it when it got messy. I also knew that the yarn needed to have lots of greens. I was so focused on the yarn, that I just assumed I would make the blanket, the pattern was never in question.

I was so happy starting the project. I cast on and my needles were flying. About 4 inches into the first blanket, I realized I made a mistake when altering the pattern for the finished size I wanted. I had 2 stitches too few. Oh well, no big deal. I just pulled it all out and started anew with the correct number of stitches cast on this time.

I made it to about 3 inches this time when I realized I messed up again. I took out 2 rows, but still could not find the mistake. I pulled out another row and a half, sure that I could fix it and be back on my happy road to completion. No such luck, I was at a loss. Not only could I not find the mistake, but when I tried to knit the pattern I kept making the same mistakes.

About 2 hours later, I was ready to set the small blanket start on fire. Nothing I did was making a difference and I was wondering if I had completely lost the skill needed to knit anything. The pattern is very easy, a simple yarn over eyelet on a basic stockinette stitch, how could it possibly be this hard?!

I decided to try a different pattern, something still easy, but different from what I as using. I pulled out an old pattern book that I’ve had for over a decade and browsed the patterns, looking for a pattern that had holes for air flow, but wasn’t too crazy. Something that would be timeless and fun. I decided on this Chalice pattern.

Chalice Pattern Start

The new pattern challenged me. It was new and I had to pay attention to my needles and the pattern. And as I worked the blanket I found I liked the subtle texture that it gave the blanket. Working with the yarn I was unsure how the variegation would look in the pattern, but the more of the blanket I knitted, the more I liked everything about it. And the more I liked it, the faster my needles flew through the rows.

I realized 1 very important thing, just because you have done something a certain way with great success for a long time, doesn’t mean that nothing needs to change. Change is not necessarily scary or something you do because you have to. It can also be an opportunity, an opportunity to learn, and to grow. To challenge yourself to be better than you were before.

You never know what you can accomplish if you don’t push yourself outside of your comfort zone every now and then.

Change can be frightening, and the temptation is often to resist it. But change almost always provides opportunities – to learn new things, to rethink tired processes, and to improve the way we work. – Klaus Schwab

This is the blanket at about 75% completion
Chalice Baby Blanket

Category: June Blogs

A Little Hard Work Goes a Long Way

Changing It Up