Very Charming
Hello lovelies! I've gotten a lot of mail asking where the "hand made" charm came from and how I made the cord I put around the socks.
My sockapalooza pal sent my socks with a similar setup, and I liked it so much I stole it. :) Hi Nynke! I found the charms online here and ordered 2 bags of 50. With shipping it came out to right around $18, shipping was prompt and I now own two little bags of lovely 'hand made' charms.
For the cord, here's what I did: Make a length of yarn about twice as long as you want the final cord, and split it into two pieces by separating the plies. For me this was about a yard.
Fold the length of yarn in half and knot the two open ends together. Get your big toe ready by doing some stretches, and sit down if you're not already.
Hold the knot in your left hand and put your right index finger in the loop on the other end so you have stretched out the folded piece of yarn between your hands. Now with the right, twist-twist-twist the yarn until it's wound up real tight (I twisted mine until the loop around my finger pretty much closed up). Stop before your finger falls off or something hurts. It will look WAYYY too tight but this is what you want. Keep the length of yarn stretched out while you do this.
Stretch that big toe again, then (keeping the yarn stretched!) lay it down on the floor and put your big toe smack in the middle. What you want to do is, in one motion touch your big toe to the yarn so it will bend in half, release the tension on the yarn, and get your toe out of the way. (It won't hurt it, just do the whole thing quickly.) If you don't use your toe, it will bend in half pretty much at will. I wanted mine to bend exactly in half, because I am crazy.
The yarn will double back on itself in a nice neat twist. Some of the twist will come out. Let it, and coax it into even twistiness. Knot the end where it bends back.
Smooth it again, and knot the other end again (I did this to make mine more neat). Trim loose ends.
Then I used one of the yarn plies to make a little loop for my charm. Charming!
I tried to work all this out on my own the first night, but then decided I needed help and looked around. This page has excellent illustrations - so much so that because of it I decided not to take pictures. However, it does involve a pin and I still am not quite sure what you do instead of using your toe. So I used it as a guideline.
My sockapalooza pal sent my socks with a similar setup, and I liked it so much I stole it. :) Hi Nynke! I found the charms online here and ordered 2 bags of 50. With shipping it came out to right around $18, shipping was prompt and I now own two little bags of lovely 'hand made' charms.
For the cord, here's what I did: Make a length of yarn about twice as long as you want the final cord, and split it into two pieces by separating the plies. For me this was about a yard.
Fold the length of yarn in half and knot the two open ends together. Get your big toe ready by doing some stretches, and sit down if you're not already.
Hold the knot in your left hand and put your right index finger in the loop on the other end so you have stretched out the folded piece of yarn between your hands. Now with the right, twist-twist-twist the yarn until it's wound up real tight (I twisted mine until the loop around my finger pretty much closed up). Stop before your finger falls off or something hurts. It will look WAYYY too tight but this is what you want. Keep the length of yarn stretched out while you do this.
Stretch that big toe again, then (keeping the yarn stretched!) lay it down on the floor and put your big toe smack in the middle. What you want to do is, in one motion touch your big toe to the yarn so it will bend in half, release the tension on the yarn, and get your toe out of the way. (It won't hurt it, just do the whole thing quickly.) If you don't use your toe, it will bend in half pretty much at will. I wanted mine to bend exactly in half, because I am crazy.
The yarn will double back on itself in a nice neat twist. Some of the twist will come out. Let it, and coax it into even twistiness. Knot the end where it bends back.
Smooth it again, and knot the other end again (I did this to make mine more neat). Trim loose ends.
Then I used one of the yarn plies to make a little loop for my charm. Charming!
I tried to work all this out on my own the first night, but then decided I needed help and looked around. This page has excellent illustrations - so much so that because of it I decided not to take pictures. However, it does involve a pin and I still am not quite sure what you do instead of using your toe. So I used it as a guideline.
posted by Jen at 6:37 AM
3 Comments:
That -is- a cool idea! Thanks for the cord tutorial.
Fabulous! Thanks for the resources.
I can no longer resist! I just ordered some charms too.
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