Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Poppies and Crosses

Tomorrow is the next meeting of our group and I haven't posted about the last one yet! So this will be short and sweet, especially as today is my birthday and I am busy, busy, busy…

 A few were not able to make it on November 7th so we were a small gathering. May told us about a campaign to knit poppies for wreaths to commemorate 1914 and showed us one she had knitted. Yes, I forgot to photograph it, so here is one I tried later:


It took about an hour and measures just over 3" across.  Knitted in cotton, it is a bit floppy.  I wonder if it would be more structured in super chunky to make giant poppies for really amazing wreaths?

Whilst May knitted away at another of her amazing hats, the rest of us worked on sorting out the technique for entrelac (or basket-weave) knitting, including the concept of knitting backwards (yes, really).  Because time was short we began our pieces with a chevron border to give us the required triangular base shapes for starting the actual entrelacs, although that turned out to be less straight-forward than we had anticipated.  Still, progress was made:


and June, Janette and Lynne took away written instructions to practise on.

Well, ladies, I do hope you made sense of it and look forward to seeing how you got on, or otherwise.  For myself, I have decided that this is not for me.  Although I like the idea of backwards knitting and can see that it will have other applications, I cannot see myself knitting entrelacs at any time in the future other than under duress!

The finished wristies are to the top of the above photo, by the way, but I have enjoyed knitting these pulse warmers for my friend Muriel much more:


I hope to get the design written up as a pattern at some point, as with these fingerless mittens that I am now working on for Tom:


…but as you will have guessed by now, it takes me a long time to get around to the writing up.  Too busy knitting!  Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow.