arm knitting

A couple of weeks back I took the bus to Brighton and purchased myself some amazing super chunky wool from Tiger. I couldn't resist it - I've never seen any wool so massive and fluffy and soft (and a good price too)

I bought just a couple of balls thinking a warm winter woollen would be a good project for me. The wool suggested using 20mm needles which I managed to find, but I was not very pleased with this suggestion. I tried a scarf in stocking stitch and then tried another in garter stitch, but the fabrics produced were so tight and dense and stiff, it would have been a bit of a heavy scarf really.



Then a little inspiration hit me. I had seen a video a little while back from Wool and the Gang (I really like this) about Arm knitting (click here and see for yourself). Yes, this is exactly as it sounds - your arms are the needles! At first I was a little put off as found it quite tricky to tune my eyes into what was going on in the video as the casting on was slightly tricky (but not tricky once you've worked it out) But I watched a few times and soon worked it out and managed to cast on 8 stitches like this.



And I was so pleased I did get past the cast on row, because the actual knitting rows are so super super simple. Super super super simple. If you have never tried knitting before, or have tried but found it tricky, I really recommend setting yourself a little arm knitting project - it was so easy peasy, and grew so fast it was a really satisfying one evening pastime.


And the arm knitting was just the thing for my super soft and fluffy and chunky massive wool as the fabric is really loose and soft and not rigid and dense anymore, and because it was loose, my scarf was quite a good length too, much longer than my needle knitting versions.


My pattern was - cast on 8 stitches and arm knit until you run out of wool. (or until you nearly run out of wool so you have enough for your cast off row) Then weave in your ends and voila! You could perhaps use 6 stitches for a slightly thinner and longer scarf - I might yet unpick again and try that. The beauty of this is it's so super fast that you don't mind trying again.



So if you have bought some of Tiger's magnificent wool with no clue what to do - do this. And tell me about it if you do. Or tell me more about Wool and the Gang.

wicker and wool

Last week I was mainly making pom poms - I love them so much, and their bright woolly fluffiness. I saw Lucy's lovely baskets and after that couldn't look at our wicker washing basket in the same way again.



Poor plain basket (poor dirty mirror) (poor mum lots of laundry!)

I loved the look of Lucy's Pom poms, a sort of salt and pepper effect, so made my Pom poms with a coloured wool and a cream wool together to achieve that grand look. I used four different colours, a hot pink, sky blue, pistachio green and golden yellow.

I counted the upright sticks on the basket to work out my spacing and how many pom poms to make. I had 39 sticks so that divided nicely by 3 so decided to space them at every third stick - (I like logical). This meant 13 pom poms, which didn't divide so well between my colour scheme so I currently have a bit of a gap in my pom poms. Rich helpfully pointed out that this side could just face the wall so that's my current solution!



(Much better! Clean mirror too. And laundry done. A happy day!)

My pom poms are a bit more spaced out than Lucy's which wasn't intentional, and I need to go back to trim them a little more evenly I think, but really I am very pleased with my little pom pom basket now. That wasn't such a hard job but look at the transformation my little fluffy puffs made. It has really brightened up this corner of our bedroom too. Although I am not sure how long Rose will resist trying to pull them off... so far she doesn't seem to have noticed (dare I say it?)

Lucy also made tassel baskets, you really should have a look.