Friday, June 22, 2007

Gadget woman strikes again, and more pics...

Look what I bought off Ebay...

It's a french knitter - you just wind a handle, and out comes i-cord! So cool, and so much faster than doing it by hand. I blame redpajamamama actually - I fell in love with those booties! I seem to be fascinated by knitting and cording machinery at the moment. Julie makes them with a lucet - I think the Cog's mum showed me that method, but she just used her fingers. And today, I've just found this - which just appears to be a plastic disc with slots, but how is it done? Enquiring minds want to know!

First attempt at tunisian stitch, front and rear view, Wednesday - I later discovered I was doing a kind of variation on the knit stitch. Haven't figured out how to get the right hand selvedge to come out straight, hence the point. Yes, it got photographed upside-down, what do you expect for 10.05pm when I'm half-asleep from my new gym workout being a lot harder?! :)

This was the second attempt - I still didn't get the stitches quite right, and the edge is still all wavy. I think I will have to split the difference and ignore the first stitch every other row - unless anyone's got any suggestions as to what I'm doing wrong?!


Two charity jumpers - the neon jumper of luridness, in all its glory. Loud, huh? The one on the right - done on the chunky with two strands of blues. I like the striped effect you get when the ends are not blended.
This is the lace after 5 repeats. I think I'm getting the hang of it now, but I still carry a photocopy of the pattern around, to be on the safe side!

Current mood: curious

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh, your progress looks so fine! Soon you'll be addicted to lace knitting.

Julie Spriddle said...

The disk with lots of slots in it are mentioned in my blog here - http://jspriddleuk.blogspot.com/2007/03/fun-filled-weekend.html. The braiding disk (also known as a marudai, which is Japanese for mirror) is an alternative traditional method of creating braid with the oriental method known as Kumihimo. In the traditional Japanese varient, it's a form of meditation and you have this complicated platform with the marudai sitting on top. Ideally, you have wieghts on the cord and working yarns which maintain the tension, whilst you lift the working yarn from one slot to another moving either clockwise or anti-clockwise depending on the pattern you're following.

I know the theory. I have at three braiding disks and a book of patterns... but I've never been able to get the tension right so it's on my list of things I need to get back to and have a proper go at.