2022 Cindwood Zoomin' and Loomin' Masterclass Series Begins!

I am very happy to announce that this coming Saturday, April 2, 2022 will be the start of this year's Masterclass Series. 

The topics this year were chosen by my wonderful students from 2021. We had an end-of-year meet last November and came up with 5 great topics.

The class dates and topics are: 

April 2, 2022: Creating shapes on your loom with short row shaping; short rows, wraps, triangles, squares and circles. Class pattern: Leafing, a short row asymmetrical shawl with a short row lace flounce.

May 7, 2022: Basics of shifting stitches on your loom; loom knit lace, yarn overs, knit and purl togethers. Class pattern: Dandelion Shawlette, a wide crescent shaped shawlette with an open lace edging.

June 11, 2022: Special techniques for loom knitters; slipped stitches, lifted stitches and cables. Class will feature a number of stitch patterns for each technique.

September 10, 2022: Sequence knitting for loom knitters; a fun and easy technique to give you beautiful, reversible fabrics on your loom. Class pattern: Cake & Ice Cream Cowl; a cowl with an adjustable sequence to fit your peg count.

October 8, 2022: All about yarn for loom knitters; fibers, weight, texture and felting. Class pattern: Simple Felted Purses.

All classes will be presented live on Saturday at 9 am PST, 10 am MST, 11 am CST and 12 noon EST. Registration is $10.00. A recording will be made and sent to all registrants along with the class pattern and class materials (a mini-handbook on the class topic.) Register via Renee's etsy shop.

Classes are presented in accessible format for visually and hearing challenged loom knitters.

The 2021 Masterclass Series is also available in recorded form. 

Hope to see you on Saturday!

 

Indie Untangled, Rhinebeck, Accessibility and More!

 

Hello, and many apologies for not having a post in several months. I do have a lot to share today, so I'll try to make up for lost posts. In just a few weeks I will be giving a talk all about accessible resources for yarn crafters. I have been invited to be part of Indie Untangled at Rhinebeck, which has both in person and on-line activities. I will be live on-line Saturday, October 16, 2021, 3pm Eastern, 12 noon Pacific to talk all about accessibility and take questions, too. The tickets for Indie Untangled include all of the other wonderful presenters as well. I hope to see many of you at Indie Untangled!

October 23, 2021 will be the last of the 2021 Cindwood Zoomin' and Loomin' Masterclass series. 

The 10th class in this series is all about wonderful Brioche and Tuck stitches. This presentation focuses on introducing loom knitters to flat knit style Brioche and Tuck stitches (not to be confused with a different style of double knit colorwork, sometimes also called "brioche".) Due to the time constraints of a one hour class, we will not be looking at the more complex lace style Brioche in this first class. 

Brioche and Tuck stitches lend themselves very well to looms, and I am excited to share them with all of you. The class includes the live zoom presentation, class recording, class materials (a mini-handbook with all the class notes and stitch patterns) and a new pattern I am writing just for the class! 

You can register for the class in my etsy shop, $10 US

 

 

May Masterclass for Loom Knitters: Using Needle Knit Patterns on your Knitting Loom, Part One

 

This month's masterclass for loom knitters is a popular subject: Using Needle Knit Patterns on you Knitting Loom, Part One.

This will be a two part class, but each can be taken individually. Part one, on May 22, 2021 at 9 am PST, 12 pm EST, will cover the basics of evaluating a needle knit pattern for use on a knitting loom. The one hour live zoom class will include written class materials with everything covered in the class, a class recording, and my Triple Z pattern. Registration is $10 in my etsy store. 

Part two will be presented June 19, 2021, and will be a workshop on using needle patterns. This class will include the materials from class one, the class recording and my Teatime Washcloth pattern.

I hope you can join me for one or both of these classes! If you missed any of my earlier classes, you can still purchase the recordings and all the class materials in my etsy shop. 

Bulking Up Color Change Yarn

Long color change yarns are a delight to work with, but they do present a challenge for loom knitters who work with larger gauge looms. Very few of these yarns are made in bulky weights. The photo above shows JoJoland Rhythm which is a worsted weight yarn. But many of these lovely yarns are fingering weight. Doubling or tripling the strands is not an option, because the color changes are different in each skein. So what to do if you want a heavier yarn? 
My solution up to now has been to run a solid color yarn along side the color change yarn. This was not a perfect option, because the while the weight of the yarn was increased, the colors were washed out. This second photo shows an example of a Zauberball yarn doubled with a cream solid.

A better option is to use a technique of "weaving" your yarn as you loom with it. This technique is often called "Navajo Knitting" or "Navajo Plying", after a yarn spinning technique. The idea is to loosely weave your yarn into a big chain, which triples the thickness, and creates a bulky weight yarn. This is an excellent option for long color change yarns, because it preserves the clarity of the color changes. It does, however, shorten the length of the color changes, a problem to solve another day. Here is a link to an article describing the technique of "Navajo Knitting".

Blooming Loom: Colorful Patterns for Loom Knitters  e-book $12.00  
Copyright 2012 by Renee Van Hoy, Invisible Loom. All rights reserved.

In love with Garter

 It wasn't always this way, the passion for garter stitch. No, at first, like many new loom knitters, I resisted the ackward motion of the purl sitch, lifting the loop off the peg, and then replacing it. Especially since I could not see the peg, and was terrified of dropping the loop. Little by little, I came to understand that I needed  at least a little garter. It kept edges from rolling, and framed stockinette beautifully. It gave stretch to fabric, and helped work around some of the limits of 24 to 42 pegs on 4 plastic rings. Purl, I realized, let me shape things on the loom in ways that were no longer flat and dull. 

Still, it was not until I read about the Baktus and Karius forms, that I came to realize the beauty of garter. Both of these scarves, or small shawls, are perfect for loom knitters. They are worked from side to side, with the mid-point reached when half the yarn is used up. I made the Baktus first, and was dismayed when the stockinette edges curled over. A crochet edging was needed to pull them down. But the Karius - well, it was garter stitch. It laid flat, and stretched out wonderfully, wrapping around and around my neck in such a lovely way. By the end of the Karius, I could purl like a pro, and I had found my  "Purl Direction."  I purled best from right to left, and I knit best from left to right. I've never looked back. Garter has become the mainstay of my patterns, especially lace, where it offers a lovely background for loom knit lace work. The second photo shows a half-pi shawl for the pattern collection I'm working on," The Shapely Loom." The shawl's lace is worked in garter stitch, in an alpaca and silk fingering weight yarn from Lisa Souza. The color is Peach Melba. The first photo shows a round, ruffled facecloth, also from the collection, in good old garter and Lily Sugar & Cream, Country Stripes. It's love, all garter love, for me.

 Blooming Loom: Colorful Patterns for Loom Knitters ebook  $12.00 US 

Loom Knit Shawls: From Simple to Sublime ebook $12.00 US 

Putting Some Spine Into It

 You may not know it, but putting a spine into a loom knit shawl is not so easy. In a needle knit pattern, the spine down the center of a triangular shawl is created by working yarn-overs as the shawl is knit from the center, outward. There are two general needle knit shawl structures; one starts from the top center of the shawl, with just a few stitches. Stitches are "picked up" along the edges of a small section of garter stitch, and the shawl is worked outward, increasing both sides at once, until the bottom edge is reached. Try this on a loom....

The second needle knit shawl style starts at the bottom, with hundreds of stitches cast on, and the shawl created by working with an ever decreasing amount of stitches towards the center. Neither is a practical way of making a shawl on a loom, and you can tell this because there is not a pattern for the loom that makes a "top down" or "bottom up" shawl.  I tried to worked out shawl patterns that created the same look, by using the short rows to create the appearance of a center spine. In the first two photos, Peaceful Day Shawl and Sweet on Ruffles Shawlette , you  see the center spine created by the short rows, with both the shawls made on a hat loom using less than 66 pegs.

 In the third photo, the aqua shawl, the necessity of balancing the two different yarns and the color changes led to a different spine. In the Travel By Rail Shawl, color changes create a striped spine,  that defines the center of the shawl, without the appearance of yarn overs.

 In the fourth photo, the "Steamer Shawl" has an eyelet stripe down the center. This is a much larger, defined spine. For this shawl, I had planned to have the spine match the eyelet rows on either side, and have ribbons run through all of the eyelets. In the end, I left the ribbons out of the center.

 The next photo shows a spine with an entirely different purpose. For the American Paris Shawl, the spine is off center, and needed to both define a new section of the shawl, as well as coordinate with the eyelet sections of the stitching. A single row of eyelets was worked at a color change point to create this appearance.

The last photo, of a shawl still on the loom, shows the evolution to no spine at all. When blocked, this will be an seamless heart shaped lace shawl. Although it is worked in 4 distinct sections, it has the appearance of a full sized, one piece shawl. It is made on 58 pegs of a hat loom. So, the question remains for me, now that we loomers have looms with large numbers of pegs readily available, is it still important to worry about spines and shawls made within the confines of a hat loom? I think the answer is yes. It will not be practical to work on a 400 peg loom and manipulate hundreds of stitches for decrease/increase rows (within the row of stitches.) Short rows are a fabulous, easy solution for loom knitters to create shapes, in any stitch pattern, on a small number of pegs. And we have all the spines a needle knitter could ever want. 

Loom Knit Shawls: From Simple to Sublime  ebook $12.00 US 
Copyright 2012 by Invisible Loom, Renee Van Hoy. All Rights Reserved.