Updated ArtBeat Photos

Kathy posted some photos on the True Grounds knitting group web site of the goings-on at the booth we had at ArtBeat Saturday.

Teaching people to knit at ArtBeat was a lot of fun. I was surprised, because I thought for some reason it would be mostly kids coming to the booth, but actually there were more adults.

UPDATE, 9:49 P.M.: Kathy, who took the aforementioned photos, has posted about ArtBeat on her blog, too.

As mentioned in my previous post, one of the projects included making drop spindles out of dowels and old CDs. It worked out only so-so. We had to add paper shims to keep the CDs from being too wobbly, and it was hard to get both CDs into the little groove on the outside of the rubber grommet (look at the preceding link if you're interested in seeing what I'm talking about). I've seen a few variations of CD spindlemaking on the Internet. If anyone's made them and has advice to offer, please feel free to leave a comment.

UPDATE, JULY 26: In case anyone’s interested — here are some closeup photos of the wire bracelets we made.

In case anyone’s wondering, the “more ambitious things” I mentioned in my previous post included knitting with wire, ribbon, and beads. I say “ambitious” mostly because I had never knitted with wire until the night before and wasn't sure how it would turn out. I knitted a wire bracelet (click on the photo at right to see a closeup). It was my first attempt at knitting with wire, and I used three plies of a six-ply 18-gauge copper wire from Home Depot. It was hard to work with, and it also turned Ariel's wrist green. Sorta forgot about that little side effect of copper when I bought it. I was later told that could be avoided by painting the wire with clear nail polish or shellac.

Kristina ran over and got some 24- or 28-gauge (single-ply) craft wire and beads from Spark Craft Studios to make the bracelet at right, and that was much easier to work with. (Higher gauge = thinner wire.) And no green wrists, either.