Just a quickie
01 Feb 2011 Leave a Comment
in Crafting, Flower Loom, Knitting Loom, Stick Weaving
More for my own record really I guess. Crafting has been almost non-existent lately as I finish off draft two of the dissertation. Now that’s back with my tutor it’s time to turn attention back to crafting and think about what I’m wanting to do. I didn’t think I had any projects on the go, but when piling stuff on a chair I realised I did.
The “Breast Bag” is still part way through and I want to get some more bag sides knitted so I can practise making handles, it’s really not worked out, but meh, that’s not important. It will probably end up being a wool holding bag or something like that.
My stick woven scarf is getting ever longer, full of lovely random lengths of wool and will be the Longest Scarf in the World when finished. Maybe 10 foot long or something stupid like that?
I also started a scarf on the small knitting loom as I wanted to practise knitting a flat panel on it, this allows different textures of scarves to be made, this one is a simple garter stitch, but I could now think of ribbed scarves and other such lovelies. This might end up beinga Pay It Forward gift depending on how it turns out.
What I really want to do over the next couple of weeks is use my flower loom and make a number of square edged flower shapes and then see how they look when stitched together. It’s an eventual plan to make a throw from them, it’s also a way of using up odd scraps of wool. It’s a lot trickier and fiddlier than it would suggest so I’ve often found my dexterity and patience wearing thin.
Future projects - I have my Pay It Forward People to craft for and have decided to take a project I want to try and use the Pay It Forward as the motivation for making it. So what’s on the list?
Hot water bottle covers
Mitten
Slipper socks
oven gloves
pouches/bags
something for a baby
cabled mug-hugs (mainly as I just love the name of them and it gives me an excuse to learn how to cable)
This week will just be stick weaving as it’s relaxing and comforting and so far I’ve had a “bit of a week”, next week I have a mini holiday and am planning much crafting for it.
Work in Progress
21 Jan 2011 1 Comment
in Crafting, Flower Loom, Knitting Loom, Stick Weaving
I’ve had this post perculating for over a week, so it keeps getting out of date! Finally tonight I get round to loading up the photos for it.
Legwarmers – completed both now, see it being modelled and yes that’s my leg, control yourselves. It is extraordinarily unsexy in the extreme (the legwarmer, not my leg I hope!), but it is also warm and can be hidden under trousers and I’ve never been a form over function girl anyway. I wore them to work one rainy cold day, and they were lovely and warm. Result!!
Finishing the legwarmer meant I had to learn how to cast off, and the method I learnt involves:
Once you’ve got one loop on each peg and working the same direction as you have been, move the loop from peg two onto peg one. Slip the bottom loop off as per normal. Put the loop back onto loop 2. You will now have no loop on peg 1, and one loop on each other peg. You just repeat this all the way round, moving the neighbouring loop onto it’s neighbour, knitting off then moving it back. Makes a plain straight end to the project.
Bag – I realised last night that I’ve basically woven a large multi-coloured breast…. with this in mind I reccommend NOT using dark pink for the base of your bag!! Learn from my embarrasment!
I’m using two strands of stripey wool at a time to make a stronger knit but its still looser than I ideally wanted, but this is an experiment that I’m mostly making up myself, so it’s all teaching me good things.
Namely it’s teaching me to make the next one differently…
Have also now taught myself the purl stitch, and by default that means I know the garter stitch as that is simply a row of simple knit then a row of purl. I’ve been experimenting with these stitches in the bag so the sides are a mix of different stitch styles, but it doesn’t seem to matter whether I knit or purl or garter (see me use the lingo!). Because of this, I’ve gone back to simple knit stitch as that’s quicker.
The BreastBag is very stretchy with loose sides, so it might need to be lined to stop stuff getting caught, or I might try and have it as a static container. Still have to figure out handles, but there’s a bangle bag pattern I’ve found, so if I get hold of two large round bangles/plastic hoops, then I should be able to knit those into the pattern for handles. There are other ideas out there too.
The next bag will be from a pattern! I’ve seen a few, been collecting patterns from the web like a crazy person and am ready to start a proper pattern soon. This might be the reason why I’ve started another weaving stick project… more on that later.
Flower Afghan – Trying a border around the flower in the hope it will make it easier to sew the flowers together, again, all experimental, and a lot harder on a flower loom as it doesn’t have the groove to put the hook in making it harder to get and loop the wool over. I’m not convinced about the border, I was hoping to find a way without having to crochet one which is what the various patterns I’ve seen suggest. No pictures as it’s too small to make sense of.
Scarf – This might be the first scarf that I’m making for me from the outset. Usually I make for others. Often I keep for myself the projects that are practises or don’t match up with friends. Sometimes I fall in love with something when it’s done and keep it. This time I’ve planned it from the start. It makes it feel very special. It was inspired by a friend who wanted a long thin scarf, but got one for xmas after I’d gone a but mad buying wool (which wasn’t his fault!). So I’m making myself one, all my favourite scraps of wool will be in it, the bits that aren’t long enough for other projects. It won’t be symmetrical or a pattern like the others, just stripes of pretty soft wools I like.
Stick Weaving – Photos
02 Jan 2011 Leave a Comment
Now that scarves have been given out, I can show what I’ve spent most of the last 4 months doing.
Claire asked for a black sparkly scarf, and luckily I found a second ball of black sparkly wool in a charity shop. Matching that with plain black mohair for texture and this lovely scarf was born. It remains one of my favourites and hopefully will escape the claws of Luigi the cat!
Marion pretty much had the worst 2010 possible, so I wanted to make something to remind her of soft sparkly fluffy times whenever things got too much. Pink and purple were the colours chosen and the scarf just had to have fluffy tassles to play with at the end too. Much stroking of scarf ensued when it was revealed.
The Flower Garden scarf has brown and green wool for the earth and grass, and flowers made on a flower loom with a pin sewn to the bottom so they can be used to fasten the scarf for more snuggliness. I made another one like this for my sister in law, this one might go to my aunt, or I might keep it!
This was for my Mum. She loves autumn and the crispness that comes with the first autumn frosts, so when i saw these wools I knew this had to be for her. A thinner scarf, it was made with two different sizes of sticks which give a ridged effect to the finished scarf.
Last photo, and this was for my mother in law. I wanted something to show off her bright colourful personality, and she liked the pinker wools I had. The tassles are the same wool as the middle section of the scarf.
I still have a few to finish off and can’t see me giving up stick weaving, but there are only so many scarves that can be made and given to people! If I end up making anymore nice ones that don’t have a person to go to, they may end up on Etsy.
Stick Weaving – Starting off
01 Jan 2011 1 Comment
The crafting success of 2010 was undoubtedly stick weaving.
I saw a fellow LRPer doing this at an August event and immediately fell in love with it. The end result was quickly seen and perhaps most importantly, it looked incredibly simple!
Having bought my own set from eBay, I was disappointed at how small they were when they arrived. I used them, and after weaving several strips about the width of a guitar strap, I grew discontent. This wasn’t what I wanted! So I enlisted the help of a male friend (who wanted an excuse to be manly and buy a workbench and tools) and we made a much larger set of sticks. Slightly too large for most of the wool available to me I discovered – perfect for the lovely big super chunky wools, but they are often out of my budget. So on a very rainy day, full of enthusiasm, I headed to Homebase and bought two sizes of dowel rod, a hacksaw, sandpaper and a drill bit (already having a handdrill from an ill-judged shell craft experiment)
That day I made my own set. It’s really easy, as long as you have access to things that cut and make holes in wood. And either a clamp of a friendly strong person to hold things in place!! Trust me, get a clamp.
Get a length of dowel rod, mark it into equal length pieces, ideally about 6inches, don’t worry about being exact as this is quite a forgiving craft.
Cut dowel into pieces. Drill a hole in one end of each stick (not too big, just needs to be able to get a length of wool through it and you can use a threader which you can make by taping a paperclip to another bit of stick)
Use sandpaper to taper the end with the hole and round off the end without the hole and generally make the sticks nice and smooth so you don’t snag the wool on it.
To use, decide how long you want your weaving to be, add a foot (as it always ends up seeming shorter than planned!), double it and thread it through the stick. You’ll end up with the stick at the centre point of the wool with two lengths hanging down (which is why you need to double the length of wool).
Do this for as many sticks as you want (you don’t have to use all the sticks you made, depends how wide you want your weaving).
I tend to lay the sticks on a table with a weight (heavy book) weighing down the threaded ends and the other end hanging over the table. Tie a loose knot around the stick at the end (right or left, your call) about an inch or so down and then start weaving in a figure of eight pattern.
This is the trickiest bit, the sticks will keep moving about, but just keep going and gently pushing the wool down or pulling the sticks up so you always have about an inch of space at the top.
When your weaving covers almost all the stick, it will be stable enough to pick up and this is where the fun begins (if you’re a sad crafting geek like me!). You can now stick weave anywhere! I’ve been known to hypnotise entire train carriages on my way to and from work and have had fabulous conversations with complete strangers who want to know what I’m doing (even once had a sexy Italian student ask to “feel my weaving” f’nar f’nar!)
The weaving will keep the sticks together and stable so you can just keep weaving. Try and pull the sticks up rather than pushing the weaving down as it keeps the tension more even, if the weaving is getting too thick, you can gently pull the weaving further down the warp threads to spread it out. Keep going till it’s long enough or you run out of warp (the wool threaded through the sticks)
To finish, you tie the warp threads together, there are two threads for each stick like this (for 4 sticks):
A1A2 B1B2 C1C2 D1D2
Ignore the first one, A1, for now. Tie A2 to B1. Tie B2 to C1 and so on.
Then start on the next row of knots, starting with A1 and tie to the thread next to it. Keep going for as long as you want this fringe bit to be (or as long as the threads let you!)
You can add tassles to the fringe if you like. Depending on the wool, up to 30 lengths of wool the same length, threaded through one of the holes in the fringe then secured with another length of the same wool. It will be up to you to judge length and fluffiness of tassles for your weaving!
I now have 6 different sets of weaving sticks, 4 hand made. And pretty much everyone I knew got scarves… fortunately most people can use another scarf, and these can be customised for any occasion.
Now its time to stop procrastinating and get on with some essay writing, so photos of stick weaving will wait until later.
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