loom knitting – Page 2 – The Sick Chick's Constantly Crafty

Early stuff: hats

Three Basic Hats

This is probably boring to most of you as it’s very basic hats like we all make when starting out with loom knitting. The purple one on the right is what I made the very first night I loom knit, it took me about three hours while watching tv in a hotel room in Virginia. Thats Red Heart Light & Lofty, which we’ll see more of soon as I’ve just done a more fun project with it. THe gray hat is the Bernat soft boucle that I hate, again the basic hat form with a brim, blahblah. This one’s for t, and has a scarf and fingerless mitts that go with it (but they’re not photographed yet). The teal one I made because I wanted something without a brim for sleeping in — Ifind the brim annoying under my neck. So I took some Moda Dea Metro (more of that to come, I like this one) and whipped up a hat quickly with a garter stitch border instead of a brim. Perfect for keeping the draft off my scalp.

This photo was taken at the end of the day but as these hats are pretty boring to me I didn’t feel it was worth taking the shot again another time. I’m a very lazy photographer, I am finding, which in some ways disturbs me as I’d love to have gorgeous, professional-looking shots like on other blogs, but just can’t manage to go into the other room, set up the lightbox and tripod and all the other faff that is involved. I think I will have to do all of that for my beadwork though, we’ll see.

The baby mohawk hat

(Sorry it’s a little blurry, I have a hard time holding steady..)

This has been all over, starting with a gorgeous Union flag mohawk hat in a punk knitting book and with variations all around the net. I just made a hat in 2×2 (k2p2) ribbing on the Knifty Knitter red round loom and then added the “hair” in the same way you’d add fringe to a scarf (lark’s head knots, I use a crochet hook to pull things through).

Yarn is Colinette Prism in Cherry for the body of the hat and Colinette Marshmallow in Lagoon for the mohawk.

Ponytail Hat

I call this the Ponytail Hat because, well it looks like the hat has a ponytail 🙂 Not suitable for wearing with actual ponytails, although I suppose you could modify it. It is youth sized (my head is 20 inches in circumference without hair which is very small for an adult, more like pre-teen sizing).

This hat was made on the Knifty Knitter long yellow loom knittiing in the round. I used a “ruffled” cast on (not that it looks very ruffled), then a K1P1 ribbing for six rows. Next was ten rows of e-wrap and then I started the decreasing: first just the end pegs and then four pegs per row until I had eight pegs left. I knitted the tube at eight pegs for about four inches, then decreased to six pegs for about five rows and then down to four pegs for the remainder of the ponytail. Add fringe and voila!

This used most of one skein of Colinette Marshmallow in the Lagoon colourway. To do an adult hat I’d go up to the green long loom and it would probably take one and half skeins. (It’s actually a little short for me as it is, if I were to do it again for myself I’d add 3-4 more rows of e-wrap but that would have put me over one skein and I didn’t have any more.)

The Awareness Scarf

This is what I am calling the Awareness Scarf, cince it looks so much to me like an Awareness Ribbon. It is a skinny keyhole scarf (one end goes through the other to hold it snug on the neck) made on the Knifty Knitter long looms. This one is made in Colinette Marshmallow yarn in the colourway Jay and was made for a friend who is an ovarian cancer survivor (which had nothing to do with my choice of colour, she just happens to like blue 🙂 ).

I’m thinking about making several of these to sell on Etsy for about US$20 plus shipping, with $2 from each scarf given to a charity relating to one of my diseases. I’d not really be charging anything for my time but I figure this is craft therapy time for me and the rest of the profit can go to more craft therapy for me. I found making this was very soothing to my anxiety levels, better than meds 😛 I’d always use Colinette Marshmallow as long as I can still get it and then Colinette Point Five after that, they have a wide range of wonderful colours to choose from.

What do you think? Is $20 a reasonable price? On the one hand it’s too little as it doesn’t pay me much at all for my time, on the other hand skinny scarves are very popular and going for much cheaper when mass produced so I think people will baulk at $20. All I really care about is the opportunity to raise some money and awareness of some of my diseases, but getting to knit more and more is a very big plus 🙂

Comments very welcome…

Photographic Stop-Gap

Well, we stil haven’t completed a light tent to my satisfaction, but t just got a new camera (out of his ten year service bonus) and it does muuuch better with colour than mine. So it will do for now with yarn type things.

But I am really tired, so for now I shall just leave you with this pic of a work in progres that was on my loom earlier today (now finished for Thing-a-Day).

On the Loom: A child’s afghan

I’m still trying to sort out taking photos in poor light: as you can see I’m not there yet as this is pretty horrid.

A children's afghan, on the loom

This is a children’s afghan that I am making for Tricot du Coeur that will go to a camp for disabled children in North Carolina. I’m not sure if I am going to block it or not: blocking means less work to get it to fit the guideline sizes, but if the kid’s mom isn’t going to block it will the kid wind up disappointed when their afghan suddenly “shrinks” in the wash?

I’m using the Alternating Rib Stitch from ProvoCrafts and the yarn is Sirdar Stampata Chunky that I got on deep discount right before the holidays. It’s part wool, part synthetic and is washable up to 40 degrees C (about 100 F).

We’re going to go back to working on the photo corner tonight as this was with a moderate amount of light coming in through the window and that’s a luxury I don’t usually have. I’m feeling a little bit vindicated though that a couple of lamps and a sheet does NOT cut it, despite what t says 😛 I want a proper lightbox/light tent and that means more lamps and some kind of structure!

“Sampler 6” Fingerless Gloves

I designed these gloves for two reasons: One, as a sampler of various stitch patterns that you can do on the round looms and Two, because I hadn’t seen any gloves done in the round, only flat panels that were seamed up.

I have a small hand and wrist, but I wanted to be able to wear these over my wrist braces. They stretch a fair bit. The pic below is NOT over braces. I also wanted the cuff to be loose so that it can go over a shirt sleeve or even the bottom of a coat sleeve as I hate how the wind can get in there! So this has a wider, gauntlet-like cuff then it narrows at the wrist. The whole pattern is a little roomy, if you want it tighter use the flat knit instead of the e-wrap.

Each set of stitches is done in 6 rows, hence the 6 in the name 🙂 The pattern goes as follows:

On the Knifty Knitter Round Blue Loom: 6 rows of garter stitch (e-wrap odd rows, purl even rows); 6 rows of e-wrap; 6 rows of K2P2 ribbing (knit two with the flat stitch, purl two, all the way around the loom), 6 rows of e-wrap, 6 rows of e-wrap as a flat panel (do not connect! turn around at the last peg and go back, this makes the hole for the thumb), 6 rows of garter stitch (as above), 6 rows of K2P2 ribbing (as above).

I’m sorry, but if you don’t know how to do any of the above steps, you need to look it up, I don’t have time to explain.

I used the horrible yarn that came with the Reader’s Digest loom set. Man, that stuff splits and frizzes badly. I probably won’t keep these gloves long as I don’t think the yarn will last!

Next I am going to make some fingerless gloves just in the K2P2 ribbing, which will be much tighter. I find K2P2 very tedious, but it does give a lot more “compression” than anything else I have tried thus far. I may do a sampler of various types of ribbing (K1P1, K3P1, etc.) to compare.

Sampler 6 Fingerless Gloves Modelled

Ragdoll Hat

Ragdoll Hat I created this hat in Mid-December. I was inspired by several Fraggle hats I have seen on the internet, but due to the thickness of the yarn it doesn’t really look like those. Instead, it reminds me of Raggedy Ann, and thus the name 🙂 It’s made of one skein (every last inch of it!) of Colinette Marshmallow in the Fiorentina colourway. I have a small head and no hair and thus the hat fits my 20″ head, but for an adult size you’d probably need more yarn if you want it to be double knit.I made a 12 inch/30 cm long rectangle by double knitting on the long pink Knifty Knitter loom with the figure 8 wrap. I used the lucet cast on. I then took the rest of the yarn and cut it into 6 inch/15 cm lengths and used those pieces to close up the sides, tying in square knots. If you wanted to make this for a larger head (most adults would need a larger size), I’d use the yellow loom and do more rows, but really you can make a long rectangle any way you fancy!It took an evening while watching TV, don’t know the exact timing. I’ve ordered three more skeins to make a matching scarf because I looooove this yarn! Ragdoll Hat Modeled

Happy Hollydaze

Not much crafty goodness to report over the holidays, but enough to warrant a wee post 🙂 I got two new rubber stamp inkpads on sale, in royal purple and peacock blue (two fave colours) on Boxing Day. On the 27th we hit the sales, and in that we went to Fenwick (didn’t like anything and didn’t notice anything on sale), John Lewis (where I bought 16 skeins, all half price) and the yarn stalls in Grainger Market (there are two, but they’re the same company, all very cheap but mostly acrylic). From a cheap skein from John Lewis I made a basic loomed hat that evening, but it was for my hostess so I didn’t get a photo of it as I gave it to her within minutes of it being done 🙂 It was very basic anyway, you’re not missing anything…

I’ve also finished the first of my experimental armwarmers, using the horrid yarn that came with the Reader’s Digest loom kit. It’s working out for my purposes, but I will alter the design for t’s armwarmers. Still, it is good to know that I can do them on the Knifty Knitter round blue loom rather than having to do them as flat panels. I will finish the other one of mine in the next few days, then move on to his. Then I will post patterns for both. I’m just making things up as I go along but since I hadn’t found any for that loom before I thought other people might be interested in seeing how I did it.

Other than that, not much crafting happened, but I need to seriously get cracking as I have a medieval tunic to make in the next week!