What in Yarnation!

This past weekend I had the pleasure of taking a trip to Minnesota to visit a fellow hump day hooker who lives outside the Milwaukee area. It was a great weekend filled with consignment shops, wine tasting and a cute little yarn store called 'What in Yarnation!' Being a hooker who gets all my yarn from either Michaels or Jo-ann's I was immediately impressed upon entering and actually exclaimed, 'wow!' One of the six or so ladies knitting in the corner responded by saying, 'wow is right,' after all shouldn't that be everyone's immediate reaction after walking into a store for their favorite hobby?

This store was awesome! There were many different kinds of yarn, some that I've seen before, but most that I haven't. There were complete finished products to show off their patterns and the yarn, much more than the little swatches that most stores have. They were helpful and knowledgeable. They even had a wooden yarn ball winder... I have never seen one of these before, and I enjoyed watching them wind my friend's skein. But overall, my favorite part of the store was a small corner where ladies were chatting and knitting (crocheters are welcomed too!). I would love to find a store like that by us, and I intend on scoping out some places!!

I loved this store, and especially the sign they had out in front!

In fact, here's a list of places I'd like to go:

Knitch (Delafield) - They also appear to have a knitting/crocheting corner (http://www.knitch.net/index.html)

Yarn House (Elm Grove) - While they don't have a website, the reviews on Google look good.

River Boutique and Yarn (Brookfield) - They also seem to have a knitting/crocheting corner (http://www.riverboutiqueyarn.com/)

If you're ever in Cannon Falls, I highly suggest visiting What in Yarnation!

Fun Fact!!

Last year I took a trip to San Francisco where I finally had the pleasure to go to Alcatraz island and visit the prison. I found the different rooms and aisles of cells fascinating. While walking down one of the aisles and listening to our guide we found out that one inmate learned to crochet and taught some of the other inmates how to as well! Looking at the picture that I took below, looks like he had a very nice stitch, although I'm really not sure why he'd make a pink baby blanket??

Even prisoners think crocheting is cool!

Our HDH Christmas Presents

Merry Christmas from Hump Day Hookers! HC and myself got together one hump day and opted to use our spare yarn to make some cute little snowman ornaments, it was a great way to use left over yarn. The people I gave it to this year, absolutely loved it.

What you need to make your own:

Styrofoam Balls

White Yarn

Orange Felt and thread

Fabric Glue

Little balls

Green yarn to crochet the bow.

I think you can figure out how to assemble this and I don't really feel like blogging about it, so if you have any questions on the steps just comment below.

Hope this gives you some good ideas for next years' gifts. Next blog post - 2011!

A Lovely Christmas Gift

Last night I was at my parents baking Christmas cookies when my mom was reminded that she 'needed' to show me a gift that she received a few days ago (picture below).

A family friend of ours also loves to crochet and she had made this special snowman for my mom and dad as a Christmas/Thank you gift. I wish I would have taken a closer picture of the snowman's hat as it looked real cute close up. What Christmas gifts did you make for your family members this year??? STAY TUNED to see what the members of HDH made!

Dear Crocheting, You're So Last Summer?

I normally get quite annoyed when the differences between knitting and crocheting are brought up. It probably has something to do with the reason knitting is so much more mainstream, and THAT got me thinking about other things I hate that are mainstream. While I do enjoy some mainstream pop/rock music, I prefer stuff that isn't heard on the radio. One of my favorite bands from college was Taking Back Sunday, and one day while listening to the radio on a run I heard one of their songs. I was taken back, how could THIS SONG be on the radio! What a bunch of sellouts! (same thing happened with NFG and the Plain White T's.) I got so annoyed that I changed my ringtone from Taking Back Sunday to something different, I didn't want to be like everyone else. Then a few months later that song and band were long forgotten and that song was their number 1 or 2 hit wonder on the radio waves. That's when I re-professed my love of all things Taking Back Sunday. So long story short, this gets me wondering, will I one day be upset when I get old and all my old-lady friends are crocheting? Will I embrace them and show them how it's done? Will I finally be able to accept that knitting really isn't a "bad cousin" to crocheting? Probably not, but hopefully many years from now I will remember that if I ever give up on the norm that is crocheting, that I'll come back to it when all my friends have arthritis in their hands or just forget to crochet, because they can't remember what they like to do, due to dementia!

Happy Hands

At our monthly meeting last night it was brough up that maybe we should incorporate some "warm up" exercises before we start crocheting. We're all aware that we're not getting younger, many of us have a future of arthritis to look forward to and it only makes sense to do some excercises to help strengthen the hand muscles we don't use while crocheting and stretch our hands out a bit from the repetitive motion. In my research on hand exercises I found two helpful sites for some crochet specific and arthritis exercises.

The first site is http://www.crochetsoiree.com this site is full of interesting crochet information. According to Crochet Soiree, crocheting can put you at risk for carpal tunnel syndrom due to the repetitive motion with your hands clentched. Crochet Soiree's solution to that is to stretch your hands and build up the muscles used for opening your hand. The full article and exercise instructions can be found here: http://www.crochetsoiree.com/tips-n-hints/view/5220-avoiding-carpal-tunnel-syndrome/

The second site I looked at is the world renownd Mayo Clinic for some athritis exercises.
This article can be found at http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/arthritis/AR00030
I found this to be particularly helpful since it incorporates a series of pictures with the description of the hand excercises.

Halloween Costume Idea

While, the following picture is clearly a knitters Halloween Costume. I like where she's going with it, and think this would make for the perfect costume for a crocheter, if you just added hooks instead!

Click here to read about her if you want