Let the making commence

First off a disclaimer...

I like to make my Christmas present, I am well aware that makes me slightly crazy, and if you choose not to make your presents that does not mean I think any less of you as a person, in fact if anything I admire your sanity and strength of character. 

That being said, the present making has started.

I hate knitting scarves, it takes forever, is boring, and leaves me wanting to poke my own eyes out with the needles. Why they're a beginner project I'll never know...

Weaving them however, now that's fun. In 2 evenings (probably around 3 hours each night), I can warp, and weave a full size scarf using fingering weight yarn. Perfect Christmas crafting. If you don't have a loom I can thoroughly recomend that a simple rigid heddle should be top of your Christmas list. It's great for using up odds and ends in one project in a way that doesn't look like you're using oddments. The next scarf that's on the loom currently has a warp using the leftover stripy yarn from this cardigan, and this hat, add in some of the mountains of mystery soft white wool I spun during last years Tour de Fleece and this years and it's another scarf.



Just to spice it up a bit there will be other presents going on. At Stitch Solihull at the end of October I sat down with a spool of wire, purchased from the handy garden centre where the shop is located, and made some corespun wire yarn.

Just so you know, this stuff is addictive, and leaves you feeling immensely proud of yourself. It's soft and fluffy, and you can bend it in to shapes... like pipe cleaners for grown ups!

However, I don't do yarns that look pretty for the sake of looking pretty, so I fiddled about with it trying to decide how I could use it to make something. 

I tried knitting, but it was fiddly, and wasn't flowing, but when you pick up a crochet hook....

No pattern, just chain a few stitches then single crochet in a spiral adding increases when seemed like a good idea. And what's even better,  you can change it's shape, don't want a flat bowl, and instead want something more vase like, just give the wore a squish and a pull and Bob's your uncle.

I'd still got half a skein left, so went and did a bit of a until around Ravelry to see what anyone else had done with this sort of yarn and came across a woven bracelet. After a quick hunt for a tutorial I came up with this.

It's light as a feather, and warm feeling in a way that metal never is. 

And because spinning this stuff is addictive, there are a few skeins (though that's the wrong word as you can't skein this stuff) in the shop. I've also pinned a few different bracelet tutorials on to one of my Pinterest boards. Next up I'm going to try doing the same technique with silk... if it works it will be beautiful.