It's been damn cold recently, which has prompted a knitting and felting frenzy.
And here is the knitting machine, all set to go. All those yarns are ones that I inherited when Thomas's school relocated and the art teacher, whose specialities include ceramics, photography and sculpture but NOT fiber arts, gave me hundreds and hundreds of pounds of yarn. I couldn't bear to give them up but I also couldn't figure out what to so with them. My mother in law came to visit and the felting bug has bitten her and she suggested that I make up a big sheet of fabric to felt.
Here is the first attempt. I used a dark blue and a medium blue and for reasons I don't quite understand the colors alternated sides so that there are random stripes of the two colors.
And here is something that I didn't know was possible: plating. You can load two yarns into the knitting machine, one in the middle feeder and one on the side, and it would knit them so that one always stayed in the front (and knitted it) and the other would be on the back (purled). And it worked! And here it is! I have felted it since and will supply photos as soon as I get the energy.
And here is my eldest, Thomas, modeling my latest production. He requested a 1 up mushroom and I managed to do intarsia IN THE ROUND!!!!!! I was very pleased to have invented a system that worked and then, of course, I discovered that a varient of MY SYSTEM has existed forever and I could have saved myself a LOT of bother if I had done a bit more research. Oh well, you can't beat the pleasure that comes from inventing something that works well.
And here is the knitting machine, all set to go. All those yarns are ones that I inherited when Thomas's school relocated and the art teacher, whose specialities include ceramics, photography and sculpture but NOT fiber arts, gave me hundreds and hundreds of pounds of yarn. I couldn't bear to give them up but I also couldn't figure out what to so with them. My mother in law came to visit and the felting bug has bitten her and she suggested that I make up a big sheet of fabric to felt.
Here is the first attempt. I used a dark blue and a medium blue and for reasons I don't quite understand the colors alternated sides so that there are random stripes of the two colors.
And here is something that I didn't know was possible: plating. You can load two yarns into the knitting machine, one in the middle feeder and one on the side, and it would knit them so that one always stayed in the front (and knitted it) and the other would be on the back (purled). And it worked! And here it is! I have felted it since and will supply photos as soon as I get the energy.
And here is my eldest, Thomas, modeling my latest production. He requested a 1 up mushroom and I managed to do intarsia IN THE ROUND!!!!!! I was very pleased to have invented a system that worked and then, of course, I discovered that a varient of MY SYSTEM has existed forever and I could have saved myself a LOT of bother if I had done a bit more research. Oh well, you can't beat the pleasure that comes from inventing something that works well.
