In the Meantime

I'm halfway through beaming a new warp on the David loom. I decided I like the teapot/teacup design from the taquete experiments the most, so I'm going to weave some tea towels.

In the meantime, I've been doing a bit of knitting. At the Unity Center a few weeks ago, they announced that a class of school kids was doing a recycling project. They were taking plastic grocery sacks and making "plarn" - aka plastic yarn, and their plan is to make at least 12 shopping bags to give to the school board members on Earth Day. They learned to crochet, but it was going slowly so they asked for help. I volunteered to make a bag.

When I got the plarn, the instructions said to use a size N crochet hook. The largest I have is a K, and using that seemed really hard on my hands. So.... I got out my size 15 knitting needles and decided to knit a bag instead. Much easier!!! I made a simple rectangle with 5 or 6 rows of garter stitch, a large rectangle of stockinette, about 10 rows of garter stitch for the bottom of the bag, another rectangle of stockinette, and then finishing with another 5 or 6 rows of garter for the top of the bag. I kept 2 stitches of garter on either side of the stockinette rectangles to keep it from curling too much. When the knitting was finished, I used a crochet hook to make the sides of the bag and handle. The sides are filet crochet and the handle is double crochet.

I'm glad I only volunteered to make one. It was fun, but weird.

I've also got another knitting project in the works - my mother loves turquoise and I bought some gorgeous turquoise alpaca yarn on ebay a while back. I'm knitting her a scarf since she frequently feels chilled. I saw a V shaped scarf in a library book, but modified it a bit. This is a simple pattern. For the first "leg" of the V, you alternate two rows. In row one, you knit front and back in the first stitch, then alternate purl 2, knit 2, and at the end of the row, when you have 3 stitches left, you knit 1 and then knit 2 together. Row two, coming back, you simply alternate purl 2 and knit 2. When you're ready to turn the corner of the V, you simply change Row one of the pattern. You K2tog at the beginning, and knit front and back in the last stitch. You can see from this photo that I've just recently turned the corner. I like the subtle rib that seems to make this warmer than you'd expect from a lightweight scarf.

Hopefully, I'll have tea towel progress to report soon, plus news on the big loom, which has been idle for too long.