Untangled

In my post on the third of June, whilst explaining the general lack of posts/completed challenges, I wrote that I was making good progress on the learning a craft challenge and that I hoped to have some photos of my finished handiwork – well on schedule I have completed challenge no. 4!

Back on New Years Eve 2013/2014 Ann suggested that I could complete challenge 4 by making friendship bracelets for the adjudicating panel. I have had a go at this (I’ve finished 3 so far – see crafty blog post from February). But I did think at the time that this was wimping out a bit, I can make a friendship bracelet relatively easily and this wasn’t exactly out of the comfort zone. I wanted to upscale things a bit. It occurred to me that knitting might fit the bill – I remember knitting being a nightmare of knots, frayed bits and frustration during home economics classes when I was at school. Plus this has the advantage of bucking a bit of gender stereotyping. It is now many years since I was at high school and the few things I could remember about how to do it I’d long since forgotten – perfect!

To start off I got some supplies from John Lewis and was given some slightly bemused advice from a helpful sales assistant. Her main tip was “use thick wool and big needles” and “check that the wool is all from the same batch”, she then advised me that there were lots of knitting for beginners videos on you tube and a scarf would be the best thing to begin with. I had thought wool would be quite cheap, but 5 balls of wool and two very chunky knitting needles cost me, well……… more money than I expected anyway.

I found a suitable you tube video (they all seemed to be American) and set to work knitting a scarf – casting on was easy but then the first couple of lines of actual knitting were less so - I kept missing bits or doing too many knots on the same loop – the first attempt had to be unpicked and I started again. This time the knitting came a bit easier but after using up the first ball of wool I realised that this would be the widest and shortest scarf in history. So attempt no.2 was unpicked and I started yet again.

The third attempt was a little narrower but then I ran in to a new problem – this scarf was going to be fish shaped – I just couldn't keep the width constant. So with a sigh attempt 3 was unpicked and I began once more.

The beginnings of attempt 2- the scarf would have been a foot wide! 

The mark 4 scarf began well – but for various reasons there were some interruptions in getting in finished. The knitting itself, once I got past the first ball of wall ,was quite easy (actually it's quite a relaxing thing to do if you want to clear your head – a little bit zen) – this had me worrying it was now too easy and not really in compliance with the spirit of the challenges.

I had hoped to have the scarf ready for in time to give it to Laura (de facto head of the adjudicating panel) for her birthday at the end of June but it just wasn't quite done. But this did provide an opportunity to go a little deeper into the challenge. Seven of us went for a weekend on the welsh borders to celebrate Laura’s birthday and whilst we were there we stopped by a little village fete (sorry Laura, I can’t remember the name of the village). There were various craft demonstrations on show (including a cocktail mixing master class – not something I’d associated with that part of the world but very entertaining/tasty) – another of the demos was wool spinning. Needing little encouragement I sidled up and asked if I could have a go on the spinning wheel – the woman doing the demo was more than happy to oblige and showed me which bits to turn, pull, step on, keep my fingers away from. It’s really quite tricky, a bit like trying to tap your head and rub your stomach at different tempos but after five minutes or so I did manage to make some reasonable wool thread. My instructor was trying to line me up to enrol in her spinning class and disappointed when I explained that it would be a bit of commute from the north east.

"this is bloody difficult"

in the zone

 

This gave me the impetus I needed to finish the job off and you can see the result in the photo below. Yet another challenge I’ve enjoyed doing and may do some more of – and again one that started out quite tricky and became surprisingly quite fun J

the finished article!