A.C. Moore was my favorite craft store. Whenever I was in a bad mood, I would walk the half a mile or so there to look at all the yarn and other craft supplies. A.C. Moore calmed my soul because like my room, everything had its proper place; unlike my room, everything was organized to be aesthetically pleasing. Right before the pandemic they made the heart wrenching announcement that they would be closing. The only good thing that came out of all of this sorrow was the closing sale. It benefited me because I now have a lifetime supply of yarn, and it was good for the company because they made a lot of money off of me. When school was closed in march of 2020 for “two weeks” I went to A.C. Moore one afternoon for a much needed escape. To my chagrin, there was a sign on the door announcing that they were closed for a few days due to some mechanical problem. I went back a week or so later, and to my horror, the sign on the door said that they were closed for good!

What would I do now? Where would I go to regain sanity? I know that the closing was inevitable, but this soon? I trudged over to the Barnes and Noble bookstore that was a few paces away. I wandered around a bit and almost bought half the Agatha Christie mysteries when I stumbled upon the craft book section. I put the mystery books back and ended up walking home with several knitting and crocheting books. Let’s just say that over quarantine I built up my pattern book library through Barnes and Nobles and Amazon.

One of the books I acquired was Entrelac: The Essential Guide to Interlace Knitting. Interlace knitting is made to look like knitted strips that have been woven together, but in reality it is worked one segment at a time. This is my practice piece that I made into a potholder.

In my previous post I spoke about longing to make a beret, well folks, I finally did it. I made a beret to match one of my sweaters using the “Tweed Beret” pattern from Entrelac. The nice thing about interlace knitting is that when you mess up, it is easy to pull out a single section and begin again. The frustrating thing is when it is your second or fourth time tearing out a section because you tried to simultaneously have a conversation and count stitches. Below is a beret I made in purples to help you understand how the rounds work.

I had so much fun making this pattern! If you would like a beret, you can click on this picture.

Another pattern I enjoyed making was the leaf scarf from the “Scarf Set” pattern. This was a relatively easy pattern to master after I realized that I was miss reading the instructions. It was so easy that I was able to knit it while stuck in traffic on my way to the beach. Obviously I only had the needles in my hands when my foot was on the brake and the car was not moving. My least favorite part of any project is weaving in the ends. When I cast off the scarf, I decided to LEAF it alone for a couple days before I actually finished it.

Interlace knitting is not very complicated. If you are an intermediate knitter, I recommend trying it. For all the projects mentioned in this blog I used “Stitch Studio by Nicole” yarn which was an A.C. Moore brand, but “Red Heart super saver” and “Impeccable” are nice substitutes; both can be found at Michael's. Sadly, over the summer, the old A.C. Moore building and the Barnes and Nobles were torn down. I’m not sure what they are putting in there, but I hope it’s not a car dealership. They already replaced the bowling alley with one of those.