Continuous Strand Weaving

I was at the Albuquerque Fiber Arts Fiesta the other day and my kids discovered a really fun weaving/braiding activity. It is called Kumihimo or Japanese braiding. These are a great way to use up yarn scraps. Here are two results These were made by a nine year old. Even the lower braid is very easy. It is a lot of fun. You can make your loom using foam or very sturdy cardboard. My disc is 3.5 inches in diameter. The nicks are 3/8 inches apart. There are 32 of them. While the number is not important we found it helpful to stay on track. The upper braid is called fill the Fill The Gap. It is even easier. Here is a picture of the instructions  

Weaving with T shirt yarn was interesting. I ended up using every other loop on the tri loom. I also did not do the standard crochet bind off across the top. When I tried the crochet bind off my piece ended bunching up so it was easier not to do this and it looked better also. I played with a knitted on border around the entire piece... Here is what my test piece looked like: As you can see I got mixed up with my right side and wrong side. Which is why there is a stripe across the top... Since this was just a sample..I figure no big deal.  

I recently discovered t shirt yarns.. I am planning on testing them out on a triloom. Most likely I will swatch with them first. They are tons do fun to knit with... I think they will give triloom weaving an edgy look. You can of course make your own... If you have a lot of old t shirts at home it is something to consider.. There are lots of videos on the web about how to do it.   Tee Cakes by HiKoo Skacell Be Sweet T shirt yarn.    

I have been learning to spin and here are some examples. The wool is BFL also known as Blue Faced Leicester. It is along haired breed of sheep. I can't wait to work it into a project on my triloom.  

  Here is a mini shawl with a border knitted on perpendicular to the hypotenuse of the triangle. I used the method I described in the previous post.    

So far I have been picking up stitches along the 2 sides of the triangle in order to knit my borders for my shawls.    I would like to be able to knit them perpendicular to the triangle edge and join at the end of the row. I found this tutorial today and tried it out on some sample woven pieces: http://www.ehow.com/how_12093374_knit-mitered-edge-blanket.html First you need to knit a triangle..sort of a half miter. Then I knitted to the end of row 1 pattern. Then I picked up a stitch(stitch 11) and passed stitch 10 over stitch 11. This got my number of stitches back down to 10. Then I turned the work and knitted back the other way.   This way you are joining every other row.  For me this looked nicer than a k2tog. Also for the mitered part I wrapped my stitches using the short row techniques... I think it gives you a nicer look. I think when it comes time to use it on a design I might want to write out the short row part.. that way I can integrate part of the border into t

Well it did not take very long to do this. For me the shawl works better..here it is with a new border     I am trying to gather different border options. My biggest obstacle is my requirement that they be easy to memorize.. I have an active household where starting and stopping easily is important to be able to do. I found an interesting easy lace pattern in a magazine. In this pattern the lace increase is a typical yo but the decrease is knit three then slip the k1 over the k2 and k3. Basically the pattern is yo, k3, slip the first knitted of the three over the two. On the first row you have an increase of one, next row you knit across(in my version), the next row you start with a knit three then slip one over two with a yo. In this row you get a decrease of one. This row I follow with a knit row. The pattern needs to be a multiple of three stitches. It gives a really beautiful look.  

I finished this shawl in dec 2012. I wanted to see if I liked fringe.... I do not like the fringe. I don't like how it looks when I wear it or even on the hanger of this shawl. A friend of mine suggested I remove it ..so I am going to try that. This was woven on a six foot loom. Here is a picture of the shawl with the fringe: