Bookmark Manic

Finally some pictures to illustrate what I've been doing and posting about for most of this month. Above you can see what I call a 'set' of the patterns and their variations done in two colors, solid or two-toned. In this case in Parakeet Blue and Golden Yellow. I started working the sets so I could increase the variety available in the various patterns. But I got so carried away pairing Parakeet aka bright turquoise with other colors I didn't notice how low it was getting. Now it is all but gone and the navy/turquoise and red/turquoise sets are each missing one or two pieces. There is probably enough on the tube to do one border and/or one set of tassels for one of the mini-scarves.

Is bright turquoise my favorite color or what.

Well I moved on to pairing orange with brown and black and pairing other earth tones in honor of fall and because I have a scarcity of earth tones in my collection.




Here you see all of the bookmarks made since late July. Except those dressed and given away immediately. The top two sections show the ones whose tails I tucked Sunday and Monday the bottom section shows those still needing tucked and blocked. Pretty much all of them need blocking. Only the Lizbeth Cordonet shown at bottom right holds its shape well and that even after being wadded up in the pouch I'd been keeping them in as they came off the hook. I hadn't tucked any tails since late July or early August and then only if the bookmark was designated for someone immediately.

There are eighty some altogether. I'd been estimating 100+. Note there are two tails for a single colored one and two tails for each stripe or other color change in the others. So an eleven stripe mini-scarf has 22 tails.



These are the clear plastic storage containers I'm keeping the undressed bookmarks in. I don't dress them anymore until they are designated for someone soon as they are too hard to store without rumpling them up again so that they need re-blocking and ribbons need ironing.

When I left for Longview in early July my entire set of undressed fit in that one container shown at top right. That container now holds all of the original pattern with the shell or granny square stitch. The four stacks left to right: black, white and earth tones; pastels; brights and darks; variegated. There are two of each color in my collection and I'm working on a third but only have a half dozen or so of them.

The larger box at left has the various two-toned short ones and the middle box at right has the multicolored long ones. The small box at bottom holds the miscellaneous threads and patterns--a few experimental pattens I've not repeated yet and threads in sizes bigger and smaller than 10. Before the Longview visit I had only a handful of such threads now I have over twenty I think but haven't counted them. If I started making sets with those threads like the one featured at top, this small box would overflow before the second set was complete. In fact it may fill up once I finish tucking tails as most of what you see in that wad in the middle picture is destined for this box. The box doesn't have a lid as it was nested inside the box on the left but will no longer fit in there. I guess I need to find a larger lidded box for them soon. Probably I need to find a bigger box for the shell pattern ones and move the misc into that one for now.

I'm sending for the crochet stitch bible from the library again soon to find a few new patterns to add to my repertoire. Soon after that there will need to be yet another box. :)

Today I switched back to working on the blue shawl for several hours, using over half of one of the two skeins we picked up at Michael's yesterday. You can see what it looked like before I started working on it today here. I didn't get a new picture of it as it is getting too long to get it all into a shot which I can light adequately. Unless I took it outside in the sun.