The other day, one of our church staff contacted me for a health and safety assessment for my netting class. And I had to laugh, because I actually had just managed to injure myself doing netting. Not seriously, and it isn't anything the class is going to be
It's my birthday on Wednesday. I shall be 61. I think I'm going to take a day off for it, so your next entry won't be till Friday. And I also think this would be a very good time to go into a bit
I'm very pleased to say that I have almost finished the grey socks, as you see in the photo. Note that there is no actual green in the grey; that's just the camera being weird again, as it so frequently does. It's simply a
In my last post I touched very briefly on the perils of living in Victorian England, and, in particular, the ubiquity of poisonous heavy metals. Today I'd like to go into that in a little more depth, because dyes are obviously an important part of the history of
I have written before about the perils of fitting corsets, or anything else with any boning. But let me get one thing absolutely straight: a properly fitting corset is, in fact, very comfortable. Naturally there are limits to how tightly one can sensibly lace, but these do depend very much
I caved recently and joined the Cashmerette Club. Well, they had a generous discount on it. If they supplied paper patterns as a matter of course I'd have joined ages ago, because it really is excellent if you sew and you have curves; but they don't.
I have probably mentioned before that my sister is fond of saying that anyone can knit, but what makes a real knitter is the ability to fix mistakes. That goes for any craft; and netting is no exception. There are really only two major things you can do wrong in
I really want to get my Easter class excited about netting and what can be done with it; so I plan to bring a few samples to show them. There will, obviously, be a string bag. There will be the stole (I'm not going to link any particular
I have previously touched on the redemption of acrylic as a knitting yarn, from being that stuff you didn't knit with unless you were too poor to afford anything else to becoming a really good (but still cheap) option. I've also mentioned acrylic-based sock yarn, something
I mentioned not so long ago that I'm going to be doing a netting class on Holy Saturday. Let me talk a bit about how that's currently going. My original idea was to have up to nine people, preferably not too many of them children, and
Last week I reviewed the one book you need to buy if you can already knit and you want to understand it in depth and take things further. Today I'm going to review the book to buy if you can't yet knit but you wish you
That King Cole Footsie yarn I mentioned in an earlier post looked as if it had everything going for it. The colours are lovely; it's a quarter the price of the Tencel blend I used for the yellow-mix socks, but it's still vegan; it's
You know I said last time that nobody ever talks about "4-ply" meaning two different things on opposite sides of the Atlantic? Well, this time I've got something even more fundamental to do with knitting that nobody ever talks about, and it's this. How
Have I done a craft book review here yet? I don't think I have. This seems like a good time to do it, because although I'm still crafting like billy-o, it's all stuff you already know about. There's another baby hat on
...that is the question. Well, it was. It didn't take very long to answer it. I finished netting the shawl on Wednesday night (and, yes, the script is edited! Go me! I expect it'll still need editing again, but at least everyone's happy for
Well, here they finally are; at least, here's one of them, because it's just easier to do it that way when you have balance issues. After all, they're both the same, and my feet are (within reasonable limits) the same size, so if you&
I think I've explained about square mesh netting before, but here is a quick reminder: it's worked diagonally, just like any other kind of netting, but you start from one corner and work across to the opposite corner. If you're doing a rectangle, then
Remember Harry the Cape? My very first post here, I believe? Well, I'm still wild about Harry; he gets worn all the time. He's not just useful over drapey things, but even if I'm wearing a jumper or knitted jacket underneath, he's
No, I didn't knit this. Although I'm tempted to do it at some point (I know several people who'd love one of these as a gift). It's more a sort of visual joke; the point being that if you're a
There has been a lot going on over here - there always is; but I've still been working away at those socks in odd moments. Socks are always a slower job than you think they're going to be, or, at least, than I think they'
It turns out that this is my 100th post; that came round quickly! It also happens to be St Valentine's Day, as if anyone could forget that fact, given the deluge of commercial e-mails that one gets. I have one company that's decided I am a
Excuse the knickers. I did very nearly crop them off, but in the end I thought I'd let you see how the suspender belt works, because I strongly suspect it's like one of mine... and if our Alice is about my size, she'll be
So, now, thanks to the excellent (and probably late) Mr Holdgate, I'm not only a competent netter again, but also a far better netter than I originally was; and I'm delighted. There is just that little wrinkle of trying to find something suitable to use as
So I have finally got to the point in Mr Holdgate's book that I wanted it for in the first place, namely square-mesh netting. (I did, I admit, skip the bag with the cane handles, largely because I didn't have any; though it was labelled as