And The Cobbler's Children Had No Shoes

clapotis 020710
Originally uploaded by magscrafts

I started the project pictured about a week ago. It called for 18 stitch markers. Now, in my lifetime, I have probably made at least 500 stitch markers, in two different styles, and infinite colors, which I usually sell in sets of 6. I sold a ton of these before I was ever even a knitter! I did not want to pull any out of my inventory, and I wanted to start this project NOW! So I grabbed my new box of pretty paperclips my husband gave me at Christmas (before you worry about HIM, you have to know that I was thrilled with these!) and started slipping them onto the needles. They marked my place, so they served the purpose, right?

Wrong! First of all, I got some serious laddering at each marker. For those non-knitting readers, laddering is when you get a space between the knitting stitches that shows the yarn between them like the rungs of a ladder. The ladders were caused by the fact that the paperclips are so large and cumbersome, and the yarn is very thin. In this case, I was thinking I would live with it, because the pattern called for me to drop those stitches anyway, so it would not show in the end product.

But then yesterday my friend Karen mentioned that she and her mom had gotten a chuckle out of the fact that I was using paperclips. Then I got a message from my knittting mentor, who also happens to be one of the owners of The Shops at Fabian House, where a nice assortment of my stitch markers are available for sale. I guess I was hoping she would not notice and I would just not take that project to the shop. Well, um, she noticed alright!

So this afternoon after I finished making some jewelry to fill orders, I made myself this large set of stitch markers. They are on sterling silver wire, and I made 8 each of three different shades of blue, which are also different shapes and sizes.