Sunday, May 08, 2016

May 2016 - Lucet and hairpin lace

The lighter evenings helped encourage a good turn-out.

Reminder that next month we have a guest speaker, Ms Linda Newington, the Head Librarian within Winchester School of Art at the University of Southampton. Linda will be discussing the 'In The Loop' conferences.

Also a reminder that the pattern for this year's club creative challenge has been emailed out to all our members. Please bring along your cardigan at the July meeting, or if you can't make it, please give to Liz (in a bag, so as to hide who made it) before then.

Show and Tell

A very colourful green dress had been hand-knit following a 1970's pattern for a sweater, but due to sizing issues, resulted in being a dress. Fabulous range of colour, and lots of details.



There is a bit of a blanket theme this month. Janet had been de-stashing by crocheting some lap blankets.



Carol hand-knit a plain white garter stitch blanket, and Rita hand-knit a pink blanket for a baby's car seat.


Lucet

Several people brought along lucets that they had purchased at shows, but very few had seen the light-of-day since. There were two main designs. One is a plastic lucet with a fork-style of design with a handle, that is produced by Ziggy who runs The Lucet Company. The other design is a wooden curved shape made by Flights of Fancy.

Lucets create a cord, similar to an i-cord/4-pin dolly cord, but on 2 prongs rather than 4. There are YouTube videos demonstrating how to use a lucet. The following photo shows was can be achieved in a couple of hours, experimenting with 2 different colours and tensions.


Hairpin Lace

Specific looms can be purchased for making hairpin lace, but they can also be made from two strips of wood with holes in them, and a pair of knitting needles. The important factors are that the two vertical poles must be parallel, and the top horizontal must be removable. There are various instructions on the internet on how to make looms, and to make lace. Here are a couple of examples:

How to make a hairpin lace loom using 2 knitting needles (Instructables)
How to hairpin lace (Youtube)


Sunday, May 01, 2016

What's happening in May?



It’s our May meeting on Tuesday (3rd May). 

On the programme for this meeting is “Hairpin Lace and Lucet”. 

Hairpin lace can be made on a knitting machine or on a special loom.  Here’s a couple of links to tutorials: http://bynumber19.com/2011/08/28/hairpin-lace-crochet-tutorial/   and http://www.lilirious.com/hairpin-lace-part-1/ There will be a knitting machine available to demonstrate how to knit it on the machine.

Here’s a bit of information about the Lucet: http://www.thelucet.co.uk/index.htm.  There is lots of other information on the web, and some videos too so try doing a search for more information.

So if you have either of these gadgets at home and don’t know how to use them bring them along and we will show you how.  If you do know how to use them then bring them along and show others!

Don’t forget to bring items you’ve completed recently for show at tell too.

See you on Tuesday, 8pm as usual.