A lot has happened this month....I've been quilling a lot in the beginning of it but later found a new love. And that new love is French knitting! Who knew that I would be knitting one day! I never knew I could! But I can now, haha! It's all about learning new things guys!!
Well, I've never heard of French knitting before, but it just so happens that a good friend of mine, Kak Sharifah was doing it on Facebook one day and I couldn't help but feel so curious and intrigued at the same time about it. Once I Googled and saw tutorials about it on YouTube, I was addicted like mad! I just couldn't stop doing it everyday.
I didn't have the knitting loom at hand to do it but luckily a few kind people on YouTube made tutorials on how to make your own knitting loom using tissue rolls with Popsicle sticks and also using mineral bottles and chopsticks as well. So, seeing all that was a great relief for me since I'm very much into recycling and DIY, so it was perfect!! I immediately made a few of them, experimented on which type suits me best. It was like a great adventure! I had lots of fun experimenting on it everyday.
I first started experimenting making the loom using the tissue rolls and Popsicle sticks. That seems like the easiest one for me to do. I had lots of tissue rolls at home and also some Popsicle sticks (I bought long ago to make bookmarks with quilling flowers). When it comes to yarns, I didn't have a lot to choose from. Since it's my first time doing this, I decided to use the free yarn that I got from China long ago. After trying out knitting with it for a few inches, I realised that this type of yarn is not suitable for what I was aiming for. It didn't give me the shape I wanted. It couldn't because the yarn is too small and fragile. So I had to change the yarn! The loom itself had about 8 broad sticks, thus making the knit quite big.
This time around, I decided to search for a thicker yarn for my experiment. Unfortunately when I was searching for yarns in my craft room, I was only able to find some Lily yarns. Lots of them!! The worst part is that, a lot of them are all tangled up from previous projects. Actually I bought the Lily yarns for my hand-bound books project years ago. I have them in a variety of colours. Too bad they are still not that thick enough and they only come in single colours. I knew I might get bored knitting a single colour at a time, so I combined two colours, and this made the knit very thick especially since the loom has 8 broad sticks on it. I planned to use this blue black cord as a handle for a knitted bag. I haven't made the bag yet, but at least I have the handle already done! hahaha!
This is my third try at making a loom. I wanted to make cords that are smaller in size and at this time I really wanted to try knitting with wool yarns. This purple wool yarn is the only wool yarn I have at hand. If I am not mistaken, my aunt gave it to me years ago when I was learning how to crochet from her. That didn't work out that well since my crochet skills were pretty bad hahaha.
So I figured, in order to get smaller cords, I needed to have the sticks smaller in size. Immediately I thought of the bamboo chopsticks I have at home. I cut off the top part of the chopsticks and use them as pegs for knitting. I glued them on the tissue roll that I had cut as well to make the size smaller. This method worked and I finally achieved getting the shape and size of knit that I wanted. Success! The only problem was, although it got me the results, the handling of the loom was not that comfortable. So off I went to do another experiment! Haha!
This is my forth loom! My favourite so far!! This is when I thought of using the mineral bottle instead. The only reason why I used the mineral bottle is because, the opening of the bottle is pretty small which is great for making small cords and the bottle itself is transparent, which makes it easy for me to view the cord inside the bottle as I am knitting it. If you are a beginner or and advance knitter, you would understand why I want to be able to view the knit inside before it's long enough to come out of the bottle. The excitement to see how it looks can be so thrilling. I just couldn't wait to see how it looks!! You won't get that if you use the tissue roll as the body of the loom.
Anyways....I'm so glad I finally get to make the looms myself. To buy all the looms for different types of knitting can be very expensive nowadays, so if it's not that hard, then I'll try my best to make them on myself. It sure does feel good to be able to recycle and produce some pretty things with them.
I am not supposed to buy any new yarns until I've finished using up all the Lily yarns that I have now.....well at least finish 90% of them so that I will have some space for new supplies. I'm aiming to buy those multi-coloured cotton wool yarns. Those are so much fun to play with! :) There's just so many things that I can make with those Lily yarns. Like those heart shapes which I can use for embellishments, I can also make chains for necklaces, bracelets and many more! Hope to blog more about it when they're done. :)
