I used my hand spun Jacob’s wool yarn on my new Zoom Loom. I did the three preparatory wraps a little looser this time (as instructed) and it helped ease the way when it came to weaving.
I’m in awe that these little woven patches lay flat, both with the Samoyed yarn and the Jacob’s wool yarn.
As a Thank You to Sugar the Samoyed’s family for sharing Sugar’s fur for my fiber study, I sent them a crocheted heart and the remainder of the yarn.
I designed the leather heart using Adobe Illustrator, then cut it from vegetable tanned tooling leather. Having precision cut holes was awesome to make a blanket stitch around the edge. I then crocheted into the stitches using a single crochet in the back loop.
I am happy to report that the Samoyed dog yarn I spun does well in nålbinding. I was afraid the yarn wouldn’t felt, and my favorite way to join in yarn for nålbinding is to unravel a section on each end, trim the ends so I have two sections on one side and one on the other, build up twist in the short end, linearly braid the ends together, let the twist come back into the braided section, then rub it between my hands to lightly felt it. (Hm, that sounds more complicated than it is, I really need to do a blog post on it specifically.) It is a belt and suspenders and sticky tape way to join yarn, but it is strong, and almost undetectable, especially after incorporating it into the work.
This is one of my favorite nålbinding stitches. It is easy to remember and I feel like I have a connection with my Finnish and Scandinavian DNA.
In February 2015 I finished crocheting a driver cover for my Dad, in the shape of a black Labrador head.
The neck is a crocheted rib, the ears are single crochet triangles, and the rest is single crochet in the round with a small hook in the style of amigurumi (although I don’t think I knew that word at the time). The nose is stuffed, but the skull is provided by the head of the golf club.
I have had a Zoom Loom on my wish list for a couple years. I finally purchased it and am so glad I did. This is an ingenious little loom that makes a 4 x 4 inch, four selvage woven square by wrapping three layers and weaving a fourth to achieve a plain weave.
This just made my weaving swatch the fastest swatch, outpacing both knitting and crochet. I use the swatches for my fiber book pages for each fiber I spin, but this went so fast I’m intrigued by the design possibilities that are now open to me!
