Bramble Blanket and a New Room

Do you remember me raving about King Cole's Bramble yarn a little while ago? It's a lovely, variegated DK weight yarn that I've been working with a lot recently. As well as knitting and crocheting with it, I've found that it's also lovely to weave with.

As I have all the shades of this yarn (of course I do), I decided to use six of them and weave 6" squares on one  of my pin looms for yet another blanket. I wove eight squares with each colourway to give me a blanket roughly 3' x 4', not counting the border. For the crochet edging and the border I used my trusty Stylecraft Special DK in one of their newer colours, A Hint of Silver. This is the palest grey and complemented all the colours beautifully; I shall definitely be using it again.

Now I'm not very good at random; I do like to have a bit of order when planning my colours. So, when it came to arranging the finished squares, I started off by trying to work out an ordered system ... then another one ... and then another ... until I finally gave in and just kept changing the squares round until it looked all right.

Not a very good picture but at least you can see all the squares.

I slip stitched the squares together, working through the back loops of the crochet edges with the squares held wrong sides together (try it and see) which gave me a nice flat join on the right side.

The 'wrong' side looks nice too I think.

As ever, working the border took ages - why do I always end up doing this sort of thing in a heatwave? - but I was pleased with it. I often finish blankets with a simple line of holes like this and end with a round of crab stitch.

I love my new blanket. The woven squares make it nice and light and I just love all those colours.

I have trouble finding homes in the house for all the blankets I love to make. At the moment this one is flung over the back of a random chair as I can't bear to pack it away but it's not exactly blanket weather.

My house is even more chaotic than normal at the moment as I'm in the middle of a major re-organisation which involves building work, re-decoration and an awful lot of putting things in boxes. Basically, the things still in the two bedrooms on the top floor of my three storey house (which were the children's rooms) are going to be stored in one of the other rooms in the house so that I can turn one into my new bedroom and the other into a craft room. This is a logistic nightmare as we try to make enough space in one room so that I can paint it, meaning that everywhere else is crammed with stuff.

First on the list (obviously) is what is going to be my craft room. I am so excited about this one. This is what it looks like at the moment.

It may look cluttered but you should have seen it a few months ago.

It's a big room but, as you can see, it's also painted red. It's a lovely colour but my craft room needs to be light and bright so it's got to be re-painted.

There's just space in the room next door to squeeze in those big bookcases and the camp bed; the pile of Christmas decorations boxes in the corner are going up in the attic now that I have a proper new hatch and ladder.

That door is the door of what will be the craft room.

Any guesses on just how long it's going to take someone with Long Covid to paint a room this size? I shall work on it a little at a time; the joy is that I can just shut the door on it in between sessions. As the door has been kept shut on that room for years, the cats aren't entirely sure that it exists. They're going to be so excited when a whole new room suddenly appears on top of the house.

The idea is to assemble all my different crafts and their tools and supplies in this one room, rather than dotting them all over the rest of the house. It's going to be wonderful, even if the thought of planning it is a bit daunting. So far I've decided on white storage - IKEA Kallax of course - and several tables. I'm also considering buying a new backdrop for my photography, one of those portable screens that roll up. I think I shall have to move things gradually, deciding on furniture as I go along.

Just think - a whole craft room full of all the most exciting things I own. I may never come downstairs again.

Little Looms Magazine

I've been reading Easy Weaving With Little Looms magazine ever since the first issue in 2016. The mixture of small looms catered for, from pin looms to inkle to rigid heddle really appeals to me. Having said that, I haven't actually felt the need to make any of the projects in the magazines yet - there are only so many scarves you can weave and I didn't feel that most of the patterns offered me anything new.

This has all changed with the latest issue which came out towards the end of last week. I have a digital subscription which is very good value, as well as giving you access to all past issues of the magazine online. It also means that you get the new issue (as a pdf) as soon as it's published. As soon as I saw the cover, I knew this one was going to be good.

Now pin looms are sometimes seen as a bit of a poor relation in the family of weaving looms - I have no idea why as they're incredibly versatile, portable and all round wonderful. Anyway, with the Cathedral Window blanket by Gabi van Tassell of Turtle Looms on the cover, I think it's safe to say that these little looms are here to stay.

I've written about my love for pin looms several times on this blog; if you click on 'weaving' in the word cloud on the right, you can read all about my growing collection of these little looms. As well as my turtle looms, I'm also a big fan of Hazel Rose's looms, both the weavette style ones and those where you weave on the bias. At the moment I'm enjoying weaving a baby blanket with my new, fine sett tiny weaver looms. And then both Hazel and Gabi keep bringing out new looms and I want them all! Well, the fine sett ones anyway.

To get back to the blanket on the cover of the magazine ... I was immediately inspired by all the different ways you could use these particular looms. Lucy Boston's Patchwork of the Crosses immediately sprang to mind but you could fit them together in all sorts of ways. Then I started thinking of combining other shapes like this, edged with black ... where's my graph paper? Stained glass and little looms seem to me like a perfect combination.

As I read through the magazine I found that this issue was full of ideas and projects that, while exciting in themselves, also sparked lots of ideas for future weaving. Instead of 'inwards facing' projects where it's easy to be put off because you don't like the colours chosen or don't have the size of loom used, everything in this magazine faced 'outwards' - yes, giving you a project but also featuring little tricks and techniques that you could use in all sorts of other ways too. By the time I was half way through, I couldn't wait to get my looms out and play.

Before I show you what I've done so far, here are the projects in the magazine ...

... all sorts of looms and all sorts of things to make, from wearables to things for the home or toys. Best of all, each project uses interesting and often new techniques.  You can see some better pictures of the projects here. I particularly liked the catenpile technique of adding surface decoration to your weaving, developed by Jessica Lambert; I really want to try that.

The project that got me crafting straight away though was this one ...

Alison Irwin's 'Not so plain after all' bag is described as an inkle loom project but, really, it's more of a 'look how many techniques I used to make one little bag'  article. That rainbow band across the top is inkle woven but there's also plain weave, pattern darning effects and braids. It was the rainbow braids that caught my eye - lots of different patterns all using black and one bright colour. This I had to try.

The originals were woven with embroidery threads and finished with little beaded rings but I just grabbed some DK weight yarn and went to look for my Kumihimo book.

This book by Helen Deighan is a wonderful introduction to braid weaving; all you need is a foam disc and some yarn and you're ready to go. You can even try the technique with a card loom you can make yourself. Search online to find templates (or buy the book, it's really good). 

I found the page on sixteen thread braids and realised that all eight of the braids pictured in the article were woven in exactly the same way, it's only the original set up of the colours that changes. How exciting is that? Here are my eight little braids which I'm going to keep as reference samples so that I know how to create each of the colour patterns.

I particularly like the squares and diamonds (green and yellow) and the one that looks like a spiral zip (orange). Aren't they fun?

I really liked the rainbow inkle band in this project too and, luckily, I've finally worked out how inkle looms work so I might actually be able to buy one. I bought Anne Dixon's Inkle Pattern Directory years ago and, after poring over all the colourful patterns, got completely put off by failing to grasp the basics of inkle weaving in the introduction. On one of my recent wakeful nights (one of the many joys of Long Covid) I fished out the book and set myself to read and re-read the few paragraphs until it finally clicked - I can even follow the weaving drafts now. Also, I'd like to have a go at tablet weaving and an inkle loom would be ideal for that ...

Anyway, enough about that. The other project that I had to make straight away was this one ...

A pin loom llama, designed by Margaret Stump who specialises in making all sorts of wonderful creatures out of a few simple looms. Have a look at her blog Pin Loom Weaving and you'll see what I mean. To make this llama you only need 2" and 4" square looms (there are some 2 x 4" rectangles but you can just join two smaller squares to make those). So, off I went and, several days later, I had my own llama.

I used two strands of grey alpaca DK weight yarn held together for his body parts and random colours of DK yarn used single for his clothes. As you can see, I knitted him a colourful blanket too. Having decided I wanted him to have arms but having nearly run out of the alpaca yarn, I combined it with a light grey acrylic which was a good match - it just means his arms are a bit less soft than the rest of him.

I learnt a lot making this lovely animal, mostly about how to turn squares and rectangles into whatever shape you want. it's actually much the same sort of idea as I use in some of my knitting patterns; I often turn little rough squares into circles with a bit of tucking and gathering. I'm very tempted to make some other animals of my own now which I think is always the sign of a good design, not only does it work on its own but it shows you how to use it as a starting point for your own ideas.

I think the next thing on my list will be some tapestry weaving, inspired by this article on weaving angled shapes. 

I hope I've inspired you to have a look at this exciting magazine; the things I've shown you are just a small part of the whole thing. It's one of a collection of really good magazines from Long Thread Media, including the classic Piecework which I also subscribe to. I've been working through the back catalogue of their podcast recently too and am thoroughly enjoying it. Are any of you little loom fans like me? If not and you're intrigued, a good place to find out more is the Looms to Go group on ravlery - see you there!