My First Knitting Thrum

I could show off my unfinished weaving from my tapestry workshop this weekend but I'll wait until it is finished to take a picture. The workshop itself was great...the only improvement would have been some background music. There was a great deal of tension in the air from the concentration of 15 tapestry weavers warping their looms and weaving. I think some Hawaiian slack key guitar in the background would have been perfection.

After warping looms, we created our own design with some squares at the beginning so we could practice joins and and we were to include a triangle and a circle. I took a celestial view for my piece. And on Sunday I started weaving. I am about half done with mine and hope to finish this week. I've never had a class in basic tapestry weaving so it was quite interesting. When you learn from reading a book, you run into things not discussed so you kinda fudge it. It is comforting to hear that some of those fudges are typical techniques of tapestry artits.

So how is the knitting? ...my knitting friends ask...

I finished my first knitting scarf with just a small amount of yarn left. It took close to 250 yards of yarn. Sure sounds like a lot for such a light scarf. I guess if I easily carry a weaving with 12 miles of sewing thread weft I should be able to comprehend 250 yards of yarn in a scarf...

I saw a fringe I liked in Knitting on the Edge by Nicky Epstein and thought I would turn it into a scarf with that orange wiggly yarn I bought. The seed stitch was easy to knit; I could even knit watching TV and listening to a lecture at my Guild meeting. However, I didn't try to knit during the slide show...too dark. I cast on 21 stitches, did seed stitch for a couple of yards and cast off all but three stitches. I tied off the 4th stitch and unraveled the remaining three. This created a nice fringe on one side which I tied off in square knots. I was planning on adding beads but the fringe with the wiggly yarn seemed quite enough...no need for additional embellishment. Overall, I like how it turned out. I don't care too much for the feel of the yarn. It's acrylic - which would probably be OK if the scarf was heavier. It is so light you don't even notice you are wearing it. Perhaps beads would have added the necessary weight. I think I may try this again but in a different yarn.

I really like the Knitting on the Edge book. I am intrigued by the ruffles, lace and fringe. All have lots of possibilities in my mind for inclusion in future projects. The colors of the pictures make the pieces just pop out of the page. It's as if you can see into the crevices of all the stitches. Each chapter uses a different color in the photos, so its easy to find a new chapter. This book may end up in my knitting library.