Hook Happy

It's nice to have good tools to use for your craft.

We carry a variety of crochet hooks, and I'm going to give you a quick tour of what we have in our Store!

Everyone has their own preference of size and material, and there are a few choices.  We carry both wood and metal crochet hooks. Let me break it down for you.

Our hooks, ranging from smallest to largest, metal to wood/plastic

1. Drops Small Steel Hook:  These steel hooks are the smallest we carry and run for only $1.90 each.  We have 0.75 mm to 1.75 mm in the steel hooks made by Drops, and they are 5" long.  These hooks are great for doilies or very small crochet details. They can also be used to thread yarn through buttons or for picking up dropped stitches.

2. Prym Comfort Grip Hook: These metal hooks from brand Prym are great because they have a soft grip! Especially with the smaller hooks, it is great to have something more substantial to hold onto and a nice comfy surface for your fingers.  These hooks start at $2.45 and come in sizes from 2.5mm (B) to 6.0mm (J)

3. Prym Metal Hook: We only carry this hook in one size, 6.5mm (K), and it does not come with a comfort grip style.  It's still a great sturdy metal hook, and is only $2.45. Just a basic hook if you prefer simplicity.

4. Drops Metal Hook: Drops Metal Crochet Hooks are our most affordable option at only $1.90 each! They range in size from 2 mm (B) to 5 mm (H) and are made with lightweight Aluminum.  This is a great go to hook, and you can get yourself the whole range of sizes for under $15 !!

5. Drops Wood Hook: Drops Hooks are made in Bamboo for their smaller hook sizes.  Their bamboo hooks range from 4.5 mm to 12 mm and start at $4.50.


6. Knitter's Pride Wood Hook: These wooden hooks are great because they come in fun colors! Including yellow, pink, blue, green  and purple, these hooks definitely are the most stylish from our group.  They're a little pricier, ranging from $5.25 to $7.75 with increasing sizes from 3.5 mm (E) to 8 mm (L).  The hooks are a little deeper on Knitters Pride Hooks than the Drops or Prym hooks, so the extra dollars can be worth it. The Knitters Pride Hooks also come in a set of 8 hooks, either with single ended hooks or Tunisian Crochet interchangeable hooks if you want more than one size.

7. Drops Bigger Wooden Hooks: The larger Drops hooks are made in Birch and run from 6 mm to 10 mm. They're just a simple hook, priced from $3.65.



8. Drops Plastic Glitter Hook: This hook is just fun.  It only comes in 9mm and 10mm, so its for your chunkier yarns.  The gold glitter is suspended in the plastic, and its just a cool hook to have. At only $4.40, why not add one to your hook collection?






 If you're looking for some new crochet patterns to go with your favorite crochet hook, check out www.garnstudio.com for thousands of free patterns!

You can find all our hooks to purchase in our Webstore! 

Happy Hooking,

XO

Arm Knitting - Stylish Scarf

Most knitters know how to knit using all types of needles, whether it be straight or circular needles, long or short, small or large. But did you know you can knit with your ARMS?!

When you find yourself lacking a pair needles you can still make awesome creations using just some chunky yarn and your body.

We're going to show you how to knit this awesome scarf using arm knitting! By substituting other yarns you can get a chunkier scarf, different color combinations, and even other projects such as rugs, blankets, or pillowcases...The possibilities are endless.

Lots of colorful Delight

For this project we used one strand of a bulky yarn (DROPS Andes) held together with THREE strands of DROPS Delight. The color changes in this scarf  from red to purple to blue are from the Delight, but you could stick with two solid colors for a more tweed-y looking scarf. This is a fun scarf to experiment with.
The bulkier your yarn is the less "loose" the stitches are going to look, and you'll wind up with a denser piece.   Try holding three strands of Andes, Three strands of Eskimo, or a bunch of strands of a thinner yarn.  It could look neat with different colors of Fabel. Let your imagination run wild.

Arm knitted stitches

You can find all of our yarns in our Webstore to make your own arm knitted scarf.

 How To Knit with your arms:
(and make this scarf)

1: Make a slip knot with a long tail and put over your right arm. Tighten, but keep it a bit loose so it is easy to slide on your arm.

Slip Knot to start with

2: You will now cast on stitches in the same way you would long tail cast stitches onto a needle.  Pretend your arm is the needle in this instance. 
If you need more help casting on, watch this video and envision your arm as the needle. The video is a bit easier to see than these pictures.

Casting on...

3: Cast on Ten stitches

Ten stitches cast onto your arm.

4: To knit your first stitch, hold the yarn that is attached to your ball in your right hand (the arm that has all of the stitches on it)

Grab the yarn with your right hand and pull the first stitch on your arm over your hand while pulling the yarn you are holding through the stitch.
This will make what looks like a loop.

5: Now put your left hand through this loop and tighten the stitch onto your left arm by pulling the working yarn.

The arrow indicates the loop to put your hand through

6: Hold the yarn in your right hand again, and repeat the process. Grab the yarn with your right hand and pull the next stitch on your right arm over your right hand.
Put the loop you've just formed over your left hand and tighten onto your left arm.

Hold working yarn in hand

Pull stitch on your arm over your hand

Place loop/stitch that is formed onto your left hand

7: Continue this with the rest of the stitches until they are all on your left arm. You have just arm knitted one row!

Knitted one row, now onto the second

8: Now reverse the process.  Hold the working yarn in your LEFT hand and pull the stitch over, forming the loop that you place your right hand through.
Continue to do this until the end of the row.

9: Knit as many rows as you want to obtain the correct length for your scarf. We continued until the scarf would wrap around your neck twice, but it can be made shorter or longer, depending on the look you want! It is easy to judge the length as you go and adjust the length.

Once your piece starts to make progress...

10: Bind off the same way you would on needles. Knit two stitches and then pull the first stitch you made over the second stitch and off of your hand.  Knit another stitch (so there are two on the your arm again) and pull the previous stitch over the new stitch and your hand.  Watch this video if you need more help binding off. 

11: Once you've bound off, take the cast on edge and bind off edge of your arm scarf and place them together.  Seam them together by weaving yarn into each stitch across the row loosely and tying off at end.

12: Voila! An arm-knitted scarf. You can do this with chunkier yarn or with more stitches to make rugs or blankets with a tighter weave. This scarf wraps around your neck twice, but it can be made shorter or longer, depending on the look you want!

Finished product! We love it.

Post whatever arm knitted projects you come up with or your finished versions of this scarf to our Facebook Page!! We want to see them.

Happy Arm Knitting

XO,

Colorful Cotton Headwrap

One really simple way to change your look everyday is to have a plethora of hair accessories to give that extra pizazz to your outfits.
We showed you our crochet flowers to add to headbands and accessories, so now...

Here's the headband!

You can make this in a variety of thicknesses. Make a thick version for those days when your hair is just not lookin' tip top and you want to throw a cover up on.  Make a thin version to decorate with a group of crocheted flowers or to just add a pop of color to your hair-do when you don't want a heavy duty headband.

This is such an easy pattern, it is a absolutely perfect for beginners, or a great project to whip up for gifts!

You will need: 

• 1 skein of Drops Paris for the base color
• 1 skein of Drops Paris in a complementing color, or some scrap yarn
• Size US 8/ 5mm needle (straight or circular, whichever you prefer)

To make the band:
Cast on approx. 24 stitches (depending on the width of the band you want, add stitches to get a band wider than pictured, and less stitches to get a band skinnier than pictured)
Knit all rows until the band will fit tightly around your head. It will stretch a little with wear, so you want the initial measuring to fit tight.
Bind off when you have desired size and seam the two ends together.
Wrap contrasting color yarn over the seam to hide it.
Voila! An easy peasy knitted hairband!




We used our cotton Paris yarn for this, which means there are so many color combinations to choose from.




Even better, all of our cotton yarns are on sale for the month of July! That means you can grab Paris for only $2.20/ skein right now, so don't miss this opportunity to get your headband on.

Find all the bold and beautiful Paris colors in our Webstore.

This can really be made with any yarns by just adjusting the needle size to fit the yarn you pick.  I would also check out our Muskat Soft yarn, a fun color changing cotton that would look so awesome as a headband! 

Find Muskat Soft in our Webstore

Happy Knitting!
XO,

Floral Fancy

Flower bring a lot of joy.

They smell good, they're bright and colorful.

They're also easy to crochet! 

A flower made with Drops Delight. Crochet this flower using this pattern.

There are endless possibilities for designing your own flowers with different color combinations, yarn combinations, and petal combinations.

All of the flowers in our blog banner were crocheted with DROPS patterns and various yarns, and we're giving you a little insight to make your own field of crochet flowers.
Some of our favorite flower patterns are included in this post, but you can find the whole selection here.

These make great gifts, great additions to projects such as headbands, bags, or hair clips, and are just fun and simple to make.  Once you make one you won't be able to put your hook down.

This Safran flower can be made with this pattern.

We recommend Safran as your flower yarn of choice, but Delight is also a great choice for its color changes.  Both can be found in our Webstore.

Even better, our cotton yarns are on sale for 35% off for the month of July, so you can grab some various weights and colors for just a few dollars!

The leaves you see can be made using this pattern, and we love the flowers included in the pattern as well.

These are made with bulky yarn Drops Eskimo. The pattern is shown in this tutorial video, so it is great for beginners!

Find all the flower patterns by Drops Design here.
and if you need any new crochet hooks for your flowers, find our whole selection here.

Please share what you come up with! We love these little beauties and would love to post a collage of all the flowers our fans make :)

Find our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/nordicmart.

Happy Crocheting :)

XO,

Sweater Weather

Drop Stitch Sweater, Drops Design Number 146-18

Well, it's not quite sweater weather in our neck of the woods yet, but we know that cold weather will roll around again, and we have the perfect sweater for it. 

We made this sweater at Nordic Mart from a Garnstudio pattern.  You can find the original pattern here. We made it a little differently than the original, and want to share our project with you! It's a drop stitch sweater made with some BIG needles and three super awesome yarns held together. The big needles make this project go fast, and it is a great project for beginners! This was the first sweater ever knit by the knitter.

Let me just lay out this yarn yumminess for you....

1 strand of super soft Merino Symphony

1 strand of comfy and warm Alpaca Boucle

1 strand of shiny Cotton Viscose

 Combine these three and you have a soft, elegant, luxurious, wonderful sweater!

We changed the colors of yarn used for this project.  As you can see, the pattern was made in a creamy off white color. We also changed the length a little bit. Instead of knitting the back piece to be a little bit longer than the front, we kept them both the same length, just out of personal preference. Never be afraid to alter a pattern a to fit your tastes!

While the creamy white colors look more summery and beach-ready, the dark steel grays in our version look more wintery and city-ready.
Check out the color card on our Webstore for
Symphony
Alpaca Boucle
and Cotton Viscose
and don't be afraid to show us what you come up with! We would love to see a cuddly cozy army of drop stitch sweater wearers in all different colors :)

BEWARE, you may never want to take this sweater off...
It is seriously the SOFTEST sweater you've probably ever felt.

Happy Knitting!
XO,

Welcome and Hello! 

Some of you may be familiar with DROPS Design or Garnstudio and their database of free knitting and crochet patterns on www.garnstudio.com. At Nordic Mart, we carry all of DROPS yarn, needles and hooks, buttons and pattern books.  If you are unfamiliar with these resources, you will learn about them here!

We love having the database at Garnstudio to fuel our creativity, and we love seeing how other people interpret DROPS ideas and use DROPS yarns.

This blog is our adventure into sharing our yarn culture with you.  We will post tutorials, info about our yarns, DROPS patterns we have made ourselves, and anything that inspires us to be crafty with our yarn.

So again, welcome to our community, we hope you stay and share with us your own craft culture.

XO,