Colourwork Double Knitting

After deciding to quit the Stephen West KAL, I had to find another use for my Einband yarn. Inspiration finally came to me in the shape of an interesting double knit colourwork scarf.

Scarves: check

Colourwork: check

Double knitting: Err?

A tutorial had to be found and I decided to use some stash yarn for a first try.

It's still kicking my butt, but I'm getting better - one stitch at a time.

       

Lalupe

My most time-consuming critter so far is Lalupe, the little dragon.

I used the brown country sheep roving as core material. Normally I stick to my starter kit selection of merino for the top layer, but I had green "felting yarn" and thought I'd give it a try.

Learned:

- embellishing with contrasting fibre

Feltertinger

During the creation of this critter it quickly became clear that what I wanted it to become and what it wanted to be were two different things.

The Bavarian and Austrian tradition of "funny" taxidermy came to mind as I was finishing off what shall henceforth be known as:

The Feltertinger

Learned:

- eye lids

Mamegoma style

Mamegoma are incredibly cute baby seals in different colour schemes:

This is my take on the idea:

Learned:

- covering a "country sheep" raw form with merino

- tiny detail for mouth

Practizing, practizing

First felting needle broke. Not a pleasant experience to have 2cm of barbed pointy metal flying past my ear...
So this is Bowler, the Squid, named after his bowler hat.

Practized:
tube shapes
round flap
attaching shapes

Bunneh needs to get out of Dodge

- a predator has arrived: Barney Owl

Experimented with:
- smaller shapes
- flaps
- several colours

Learned:
brown country sheep carding should be reserved for filler duties

Potawatomi Chevron

I admit it, I just wanted an excuse to say / write Potawatomi again.

While beading the green and yellow bracelet in Potawatomi Chevron Stitch, I noticed the cute little "picots" the pattern created. I wanted to accentuate them in an otherwise simple colour combination, and using the Gütermann beads I had "inherited" with the beading loom, made this this evening:

And yes, today I ordered more miyuki beads, for a bracelet I found for sale on a new age jewellery estore. The stitch I'll be learning for this is, nomen est omen, the Square Stitch.

Peyote

When it comes to my crafts, I can almost always draw from what I learned as a child and in my early teens. We were introduced to weaving, sewing, embroidery, crochet and knitting at school, and my mom and her two sisters would make clothes for themselves and me. Mum and I also played around with origami, pouring plaster into little moulds to later paint reliefs or "Venetian" masks. We would bend wire into petal shapes and cover them with colourful panty hose to create flowers, entire bouquets. And I remember a similar technique using some kind of coloured glue to make flowers as well. I'll nee to ask my mum about that last technique.

Beading, however, was never on my schedule. Working with the beading loom during the weekend wasn't that different from good old basic loom weaving. Learning Peyote Stitch was. It's been a long time since I felt so silly watching three different youtube videos to learn the basics. Eventually I found this helpful site and the low tech animations finally lead me to that Eureka!-moment.

So here are my first even- and odd count Peyote pieces: