Day One at CHA – Cool Glass and Stuff for Glass

Today I spent half a day at CHA. Did my demo of macramé to promote my book, Mod Knots and then wandered around about half the show. I had a pressing engagement and had to run early but I’m returning tomorrow to finish and search for more interesting items. there’s so uch cool stuff at CHA. Every craft and art supply company is there. But my focus was glass, of course. First cool thing I came across is a bead buddy and the queen of dichroic glass beads, Paula Radke. She had a booth with beads and other interesting goodies. She’s got a resin thing going on and she’s using some of her laser etched dichroic glass in resin bracelets. The benefits of glass with the durability of resin. Very interesting. She’s off to Tucson next…

The next cool booth I came across sells adhesives for the glass and craft industries. They are Streuter and they have adhesive for stained glass, mosaic, and fused glass. Tomorrow I’m hoping the piece one of the ladies was working on will be fused. She was using their glue with glass frit. I’ll give you an update tomorrow.

I also wandered over to the Amate Studios booth where they sell findings that are used quite a bit for resin jewelry but they’ve started making their little frames deeper and they would be perfect for fused glass cabs and even some beads. Fun stuff. I want some of these for some of my upcoming classes. More CHA news tomorrow!

For years now Berroco has been releasing a tiny set of Christmas ornament knitting patterns, often modeled on human-sized clothes, called Minutia. The ones for this year haven’t come out yet, but somehow I missed last year’s so I wanted to share them, as well as a fun little twist they offered.

The general 2025 Minutia patterns include a circular yoke sweater, a two-color stocking and a ribbed earflap hat. They’re super cute and perfect for using little (or should I say minute?) amounts of yarn left over from other projects. Make them in Christmas colors or whatever you have on hand. Even if you don’t have exactly the same yarn weight, you can still make these cute additions to your holiday decor.

But what really caught my eye while I was on the Berocco site was the Team Colors Minutia, which are actually different patterns so I’m not even sure when they were released, but they are definitely worth talking about.

These patterns include a little raglan sweater with stripes and a stocking cap with contrasting pom pom.

They call for sport weight yarn, but again you could use sock or DK if that’s what you have in the right colors. And here the right colors are important because you’re stitching your team colors.

Or anyone else’s team colors.

I immediately thought that this would be an amazing holiday gift for someone who you never know what to get but who also happens to like sports. Or has gone to a university that has colors.

Another option would be to leave off the stripes and add a number in duplicate stitch if you or the person you’re knitting for has a favorite player. Or stitch a letter or a tiny version of the team logo on the front. There are lots of options!

If you make these, I’d love to hear what you did with them!

[Photo: Berroco]

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