knitting kitchen

Yes, there has been knitting, but not things that I necessarily want to talk about.

I knit this lovely shawl with crazy-colored yarn because? I have no idea why. Nothing a bit of dyeing won’t fix.  You can’t see my incredible, show-stopping lace knitting. You’ll have to trust me that it’s there. I swear. The pattern called for a skein of zauberball sock. Most sane people did it in tonal stripes, not Tropical Fish (the color name). I knew it wasn’t a great idea when I started it, but I will say that having all those lovely colors fly through my fingers was a lot of fun and it is all about process for me anyway.

Then I started doing this:

so I could do this:

and this:

Once my hyper-ventilation stopped, I was able to do this:

While this is my first project on a 4-harness floor loom, I did have help. As a birthday present to myself, I hired my friend Kari to give me weaving lessons. I’d bought the loom 4 years ago and it’s been collecting dust ever since. I’ve threatened to sell it a number of times and M always talks me out of it. Now I’m really glad. I had no idea what I was doing when I bought this Nilus LeClerc 4-harness loom. I stumbled across it by accident and only started the conversation with the seller because I had the sneaking suspicion she was the mother of a friend’s wife (she was!).

On a recent cleaning spree (yes, they do happen from time to time), I hauled the thing out of the corner and began to clean it up. At the time, I couldn’t imagine what all these moving parts are for, and after all the warping and weaving that’s gone on, Nilus and I are much better acquainted.

The pattern that I’m weaving is Jonathan’s Blanket, a baby blanket I saw when I went to Webs in search of cotton for my warp. Kari is an amazing teacher, never discouraging me from having my first project be an overshot weave.

This has been so much fun, I’m ready to break out the Kromski rigid heddle loom!