eNewsletter
November 2009

Useful Tips

This month I will be talking about a few tips I have learned through the years to help me with my knitting and crochet work. If you have any tips that you think might help others, please send them to me and I will add them to future newsletters for everyone to use, and give you credit for it.

• Knitting, crocheting, or any other craft is supposed to be fun and a stress reliever. As a result, any of these activities should not be painful. I have found that if I place a pillow under my arm, my shoulders are not fatigued after a long period of knitting/crocheting.
  
  
• Wearing craft gloves has helped me a lot with pain in my fingers while I work. I have yet to try knitted fingerless gloves to see if they have the same effect! Some people love their magnetic wristbands, but I have not been able to find any scientific basis for these claims. Another wonderful idea is to get up and do something else for a few minutes, then go back to what you were doing, or give your hands and wrists a massage.
  
  
• I never liked washing my sweaters in winter as they take a long time to dry. Now I have found a way to reduce the drying time. After hand washing the sweater, I place it in a mesh sweater bag and run it through the spin cycle of my washing machine. The sweater is damp when it comes out. I lay it flat in on a clean surface in a low-traffic area and it dries quickly.
  
  
• When storing sweaters for summer, place a dryer sheet or two in the drawer to have them smell fresh when you take them out. Some people claim that dryer sheets keep ants and mosquitoes away, and if that is true, they should work on moths too.