Shrinky Sunday

This Sunday I had the knitting girls come over to my house to share in my new obsession - making shrinky dink stitch markers.  I had not played with shrinky dinks since I was a little kid, and had forgotten how cool they are.  They popped back into my consciousness this past winter when I was visiting a friend in Portland and was shopping for fun jewelry.  We found several different shops that had collections of shrinky dink earings and pendants.  I thought, "Heeey, I can make that!"  So I brought home some shrinky dink plastic from the toystore a couple weeks ago and started experimenting.  That's when I figured out that they would also make really cool stitch markers, and knitters always need more of those, right?  

Now, I can't draw to save my life, so I figured out that you can use stamps on the plastic and just make it look like you have artistic ability.  So we broke out all the stamps, inks, colored pencils, hole punches, and scissors, and went to town!  

Check out how cool this stuff is - here is a shot of a cookie sheet full of cut-out pieces before going into the oven...

...and a shot of the same cookie sheet four minutes later!  It's magic!  We were all huddled around the oven door watching through the window going "Oh! Oh!  There're curling up!  Now there're flattening out again!  There're little - it worked!"  We were all completely amazed by a children's toy that has been around for years and years.  We're dorks.

Then all you have to do is add jump rings in a good size for the knitting needles you want to use, and TaDah!  Stitch markers!  

We all plan on making so many of these that we will have more than we will ever need.  It's kind of addictive.