Saturday, June 17, 2006

Stitch Markers: A Treatise


Doing so much lace of late has required me to use a lot of stitch markers.

I've tried a number of different types, and each has its drawbacks. For some types, I'm still trying to identify the merits....

Little rubbery "cheerio" markers: have a tendency to bounce very far away and disappear forever when dropped.

Hard plastic markers: break.

"Split-ring" plastic markers: get tangled in the knitting.

Beautiful hand-crafted metal with beads: at $2+ each more complex lace designs require me to spend more on markers than I do on yarn.

Believe it or not, the markers I'm happiest with at the moment are the spare colour rings from our electric toothbrush. The heads for the toothbrush come with a couple of different coloured little plastic rings that you put around the bottom of the head to make sure you know whose is whose. You sadly can't get them off the head once they've been installed, but there's all those extras. And they make really great stitch markers.

1 comment:

Chelle said...

About the stitch markers, have you tried jewellery toggles? They are available at Walmart and other inexpensive craft stores for about $2 for 15 - 20 of them. They're great for when you are working on a project that requires lots of stitch markers!

http://www.mybeadyeye.com/images/toggle%20clasp1.jpg

These are silver and much nicer than the ones I use, but you get the idea.