I hope you have had a wonderful day that included lots of lovely green living

photo by Noreen Crone-Findlay copyright

and eco projects, and that you are going to do something special for Earth Day tomorrow.

We are going to plant some baby trees.  That’s them in the pic to the right.

The Spool knitter is one that I made from a chunk of old wood that we found in Jim’s Dad’s workshop 10 or so years ago. Jim’s Dad was a champion recycler.

He would upcycle stuff in the neatest ways…. nothing much got thrown away around Mum and Dad’s house. If it could be re-used, repaired, re-purposed, reclaimed, or restored or renewed, you know it would be!

In amongst the things we found in the workshop after Dad passed away was a very old handle from some kind of gardening or maybe woodworking tool.  The wood is super hard and wonderfully worn.  You can feel the years of use that have gone into wearing the grain into the wood.

So, I have been really enjoying being able to upcycle that old handle into spool knitters for jewelry makers to create wonderful treasures with.

Today, as an ‘almost Earth Day’ project, I finished up  a bracelet that uses a fun bit of upcycling and reclaiming: (as well as the upcycled wood in the spool knitter itself, that is!)  I spool knitted a bracelet with copper wire, and pushed a vintage marble into the center of the spool knitted wire cord:

photo by Noreen Crone-Findlay copyright

I bought the marble at our favorite second hand store, because it looks so much like the earth.

How perfect for an Earth Day bracelet.

Spool knitting with wire is somewhat tricky, as wire has no give. It’s worth it, though, as you can do fab things with wire!

There are a few things that I have found over the years that make spool knitting with wire much easier, and so I have made a video to help show these special hints and tips:

Post from: Hankering for Yarn

photo by Noreen Crone-Findlay copyright

The questioner had just gotten a fab deal on 24 gauge copper wire and snapped it up.

When she experimented with crocheting it, she found it to be not very pleasant to work with.  24 gauge is pretty energized, and fairly stiff.

Crocheting with it is mighty tough on the tendons.

She had seen that someone else had asked me to make them sturdy spool knitters for spool knitting wire and wondered if  the 24 gauge could be spool knitted.

Why would you spool knit wire?

Because you can make absolutely gorgeous jewelry with it!  Scrumptious!

I tend to use mostly 26 gauge wire for crochet and spool knitting, so I figured I had better give 24 gauge wire a try.

I tried it on the spool knitters that I had already made, and yes, it worked. BUT…. it seemed to me that it would work better with a different configuration on the spool knitter. One size doesn’t always fit all with spool knitters. In fact, it’s really helpful to have a selection of spool knitters in different sizes and shapes, with different numbers of pegs or nails.

By the way…. don’t try to spool knit wire on a plastic spool knitter, or on one with wooden pegs.

You’ll regret it…. plink, plink, plink…. the sound of breaking pegs…

I went out to the workshop and started working on a spool knitter that would work better for the 24 gauge wire.

photo by Noreen Crone-Findlay copyright

I used  some wonderful old wood that we had inherited from my husband’s Dad (Earth friendly… it’s an upcycled very very old handle that had parted company from it’s original tool. I have no idea how old it is, but it’s O L D and incredibly hard wood!)

Anyhow, I made her a different configuration spool knitter, with a larger hole and the pegs spread further out, and it works a fair treat with the 24 gauge wire!

It’s slow going to work with such heavy wire, but worth it.

I decided that I had better make a video tutorial about spool knitting with wire, because it’s a whole other kettle of fish than spool knitting with yarn.

But, I had also been working on getting the soundtrack re-recorded and edited on a couple of other videos that I have just made, and ran into frustrating techno glitches (grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr).  So… it’s way late, now, and when I tried shooting the spool knitting wire video under artificial light, it looked baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad.

I need to wait for daylight to shoot it.

Some things are worth waiting for…. and sunlight is one of them.

So is a tutorial sharing secrets of spool knitting with wire, so stay tuned!

Post from: Hankering for Yarn