June 13, 2011
me, knitting?
Well last week I would have told you that I don’t knit, have no interest in learning ect. Well I do not know what changed. I went with my mom to her knotting group just to get out of the house for a couple of hours, she said I could come even though I don’t knit.
Well I hung out for a while talked about knitting, which is interesting since I know very little about it. Looked at some of the baby hats they were making (this group knits a lot for charity). One of their projects is to knit baby hats for newborns at the hospital. The ladies said it was easy.
But, they all knit with the throwing method. And I have said to myself in the past that if I was going to learn it would be continental. Some of the ladies said they could do the knit stitch in continental but not the pearl. My mom (who knits) tried to knit continental and also had a lot of trouble with pearling. Well I decided to try to learn. And since I did not have anyone to show me I went to the internet and watched a video on youtube.
I looked around the studio to see if I had anything I could practice with, I found a couple of size 2 double points and a skein of mercerized cotton yarn. I watched the videos a couple of time and started to knit. It was not that hard, so after a while I thought ok now on to pearling. Well that was a little trickier but I did finally get it. Wow now I was knitting:) So I practiced a little longer and I remember someone saying that you started the little baby hats with ribbing. It seems they said ribbing was knit 2, pearls 2. So I tried that, it worked, I was well on my way. So I practiced a little more and then decided if I was going to knit I wanted to make something not just practice.
So Ii brought my sample to my moms to show her what I learned and ask if she thought I could make a baby hat. She comented on my sample saying that my needles were really to small for my yarn and that my yarn was not the easiest to work with but it seems I still did a good job as my stitches were fairly even. She said I pretty much knew enough to start a baby hat. She loaned me some size 4 needles (they were huge compares to what I practiced with) and some yarn.
I cast on the required amount of stitches and started to knit. After the ribbing was done she told me to just knit until the hat was about 5 inches tall. Well knowing that I pearl better than I knit I asked if I could pearl the hat, she sad it did not really matter. So I knit and I knit and I knit. This was supposed to be something that I only did while watching TV but I wanted to learn how to finish so I got to the point of decreasing and I had to stop. You see I do not know how to do that yet.
After work today I will go to my moms to close up and finish my first baby hat. While I have no intention of becoming an accomplished knitter, and I need another hobby like I need a hole in the head, I think i will enjoy knitting these little hats. It is pretty mindless, you do not need a lot of light so I can work on them at night in front of the TV, and as a bonus they are for charity.
Pictures to follow.
Jennifer
May 16, 2011
sunset srtipe scarves – part 2
So after the last somewhat solid scarves with the very cool varigated yarn, I got an idea for a set of striped scarves using the same yarn. First I did a warp wrapping around a piece of foam core to help me decide on the colors.
Once I did that I wound on a 24 yard warp 9 inches wide in the reed. It looked very promising once it was all threaded and set up.
I decided to weave the first 5 scarves using the colors from the warp.
They even look cool all wound up on the cloth beam.
I have to take them off after 6 scarves otherwise my knees will hit the cloth beam as I weave. I use the 2 dowel technique to cut off and re-tie on as it is faster and produces less loom waste.
Here are the 1st five scarves off the loom before they are wet finished. You will have to wait to see scarf number 6 as I need to find a model for it. I will show it when it has been wet finished.
May 14, 2011
Sunset stripe scarves – part 1
It all started with a cone of yarn.
I was really inspired by this yarn that I found, but it was a little on the thin side (finer than my usual 20/2 that my mother calls sewing thread, not yarn). So I decided to do a test warp and wound it doubled with a solid rayon and set it at 24 ends to the inch. I wound enough for 3 scarves and wove them up to get a feel for the yarn, check the sett, and test how it interacted with different colors. I really like the finished scarves. I used a light gold, red, and purple for the weft.
October 31, 2010
Ocala arts festival
This past weekend I participated in the Ocala arts festival. Overall it was a good show, it was still a bit warm but we are in Florida after all. I had decent sales and I won second place in jewelry which was a real honor because the overall quality of work at this festival was very good. This was my first show of the season, let’s hope it is a sign of positive things to come:)
September 12, 2010
9-12-10
Well I have been on a serious weaving kick lately. So much so that I think I might enter a few art shows as a weaver instead of a jeweler this year. Here are a few of my recent scarves. I have also ordered a bunch of yarn to make table linens; placemats, runners, and maybe napkins, and also towels. We will have to see how it goes.
jennifer wiles 