Trend: Inchies – Craft Gossip

image by Ellen Hudson and Cindy Lyles

Have you heard of Inchies?? Well inchies are simply tiny pieces of art that measure only one inch square. The possibilities are endless, you can stamp them, collage them, whatever you like as long as they are only one inch. You can use them alone or in groups, maybe add a magnet on the back, add them to card fronts, gift tags, scrapbook pages etc. Save your cardstock and pattern paper scraps, they make perfect bases for inchies. It can be a really fun challenge to your creativity to see how much you can fit on one little square.

Ellen Hudson has a wonderful blog dedicated to inchies called Inchie Inklings, she’s shares lots of great ideas how to make and use inchies.

Join Shari Carroll from Hero Arts on Youtube for a great video on how to make a panel card with inchies.

Lisa Lee also has a terrific blog all about inchies called All in an Inch, I love the plant stakes she made!

image by All in an Inch

Below is an inchie pendant I made. I stamped the bee onto a one inch square of glass using Staz-On ink then I sandwiched a one inch square of yellow cardstock between the stamped glass and another one inch square of glass and soldered around them, adding a jump ring. Visit my blog for more info about my pendants and soldering.

image by Heather Holbrook

-Heather

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When I knit socks (which sadly I have not done in a while; need to get a new pair on the needles soon!) I generally stick to pretty simple designs and colorwork that isn’t all that detailed.

Don’t get me wrong, I love a fancy sock, I’m also just pretty lazy and I figure a project worked on size 0 or 1 US needles is going to take a long time even without the added work of intricate colorwork, so why make it more complicated?

But there are definitely socks out there I’d be willing to make an exception for, and I think Tangled Bliss by Annette Schleicher may just be one of them.

If you can’t tell from looking, this is decidedly an advanced knitting pattern. There’s brioche for the cuffs, complex looking colorwork done with the ladderback jacquard technique, multiple charts, and colors changing everywhere.

There are links to tutorials for all the special skills in the pattern, but still it would help to have a handle on these concepts before you get started.

The pattern uses three colors of light fingering weight yarn at a whopping 31 stitches per 4 inches/10 cm (that’s 7.75 stitches per inch/2.5 cm).

Would you believe me if I told you that this pattern was designed for a speed knitting contest? Speed would be the last thing on my mind.

But again, I think all the work for these fancy socks would be worth it. I love hoe the colorwork looks like an old tile floor, and think of the bragging rights when you tell people you made them yourself. (Though of course you did; have you ever seen store-bought socks that look anything like this?)

Best of all, this pattern is available for free on Ravelry, so there’s no reason not to give it a try if you’ve got the skills. If you do, I’d love to hear about it!

[Photo: Annette Schleicher]

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