Knitting can be hazardous to your health

As you may have noticed knitting has been at the top of my activity list. Especially with beads. While at the Olympia fair I chatted with a knitter who was working on pieces for a patchwork blanket. The pieces were knitted over 2 needles effectively knitting the main part and the lining at the same time, but casting on and off as one. I really should have asked her how the casting on was done, but I forgot. Anyway, I thought about this and got the idea that it would be a good way of knitting a bag - naturally with beads. So I cast on twice as many stitches as I wanted and on the first row I knitted one and then slipped one on to another needle and when I got to the end I knitted the slipped stitches - now I was knitting in the round. I did after a while decide it was easier to divide the stitches over 4 needles. Now you may be wondering what is hazardous about that? Well, I knocked my knitting off it's perch without noticing when I got up to get something and as I wasn't looking down on returning to my chair I stepped on the knitting. (I am always bare foot in the house) So I had the dubious pleasure of extracting a needle from my foot. Yes, it did hurt. It's not to be recommended. But it had the effect that I hurried to finish the knitting. And below is the finished article, though it will need to be steamed

The colour hasn't come out very well. It's a random dyed blue sock wool with pale pink seed beads and will be auctioned off this month on ebid.net  from the 24th to the 28th April 2012

Knitting Nancy or French Knitting

We are still in April so I am catching up. Some of you will know that I found an old Nancy recently and had to ask for help on how to use it. Thank you very much to all that did. Shortly afterwards the craft show at Olympia had a workshop on French Knitting with beads. I signed up for it and , oh boy, am I hooked. It's such an easy thing to do while watching TV, so I am not getting anything else done. In the workshop we learned 3 different ways of using beads: 2 where the beads are threaded on the yarn before use and one where the beads are added after. Now you cannot complete 3 projects in an hour long workshop, so we only made samples which I turned yesterday into keyrings: 

The first has a small bead between every stitch

The second has  large beads inserted into the finished knitted tube with pony beads in between 

and the third has one largish bead between the first and second stitch

Now with the fast approaching YDC charity auctions on ebid.net I thought I might try and raise some pennies with knitted jewellery (I like to try and offer something unique if I can) So this is what I have produced to date

This is knitted in black lurex with a crystal bead every four rows

Black lurex again with 3 green seed beads between each stitch every other row. I have made earrings to go with this, but I haven't received the findings yet

This is the insertion method. Black lurex, dark wooden beads and sparkly clear pony beads

This was the first one made from green DK yarn and square glass beads

this is red lurex yarn with the inserted wooden beads and pony beads

I have one more finished necklace and matching bracelet. This time it is the black lurex and the green seed beads again , but a single bead between each stitch every other row. The effect is quite different. (sorry, no photo yet) I have a few ideas on how to vary the spacing and type of beads to use, but right now I have run out of beads!

more workshops

We are now in April and I seem to have missed the month of March. So let's go back to the workshops. No 2 was hosted by a lady calling herself and her business The Stitchwitch. She deals mainly with patchwork and quilting, so this is reflected in her workshops. This time we did something, that wasn't new to me, although I didn't know it at the time of booking. For the life of me I cannot remember what she called this, but in German it is known as Artischockentechnik. (artichoke technique) I learned to do this with pieces of ribbon, but here we worked with squares of folded fabric. I have been trying to find the finished item to remind myself of how it was done (it differed from the way I learned it) but can't find it. But here is a photo I took much earlier

The folded fabric pieces are pinned to a polystyrene shape (in this case an egg) which can be hung or used as table decoration. And you can see from the picture that it resembles somewhat an artichoke

The last workshop on this day was bead embroidery. But that I haven't touched yet, so that is something I need to finish in the next few days. And of course I have been to another craft fair last month. This time at Olympia and managed to get 3 workshops in: card making run by Debbie Moore, Hardanger for the terrified (I wasn't) and French knitting with beads. I have also knitted an orange and a purple wig, and auctioned off a quilted wall hanging for charity.

excuse the model for the hair