Tutorial: Skinny Scarf On A Peg Loom

The weather has turned and I've felt like making scarfs. I've never been able to understand my motivation. I whipped up a skinny scarf on my new peg loom and as I was explaining just how I did it at knitting group I realised that it would be much easier with pictures. And this tutorial was born.

Skill Level: I'll walk you through it.
Time Taken: A couple of hours. Depends on how long you want it. 
Materials:

• one peg loom, we'll be using six pegs here so anything that has more than six.
• something strong for the warp thread: I used a contrasting DK weight cotton here. 
• Your funky bulky/super bulky yarn. In this scarf I used 100g of thick and thin hand spun. I made another out of sari silk yarn but as I had less yardage it turned out shorter. 
• Scissors
• Darning Needle

All set?

Right, let's cut our warp threads. You want your warp threads to be 2 and 1/2 times the length of your finished objects. I like my scarfs to be the size of my wingspan - about a meter and a half - so I cut them two and a half the size of that. You'll need six of the same length. 

Thread your first peg!

 And repeat six times.

Now make sure the thread is tied to the bar. The halfway point of your warp threads should be at the peg and the ends are held in place  by the bar. Now we're ready to weave. 

So tie your pretty yarn around the first peg and go...

front, back, front, back, front, back and repeat

until the pegs fill up. 

Now it's time to clear the pegs. Take your first peg and carefully slide it upwards so the yarn gets transferred to the warp. 

Carefully slide the second peg out the same way

and repeat until the pegs are clear

and the fluff is hanging out on the warp threads.

Then we need to start filling up the pegs again...

and again and again and again and again until you run out of yarn.

Slide everything down a bit so you have a nice gap and then

Snip it free!

Tie the ends together in pairs. This will leave you with three bits dangleing down which I like to tuck in 

by threading on a darning needle and sending them back where they came from. 

Then repeat the snip, cut and hide process on the other side.

That's it. Put it on. 

This is the one I made from Sari silk. To hold the shorter scarf together I sewed a big button on. The fabric is open enough to pass the button through without needing to make a button hole so it works out perfect. You could also sew the two ends together and go for a cowl if you wanted. 

right, I'm off! 

Tutorial: Needle Felted Christmas Pudding

We're having a bit of an enforced Christmas break here at Always Autumn. It's been ridiculously stormy. While that's not very good news for blog entries but it is a good news for crafting. Because I can't go outside.

I've been making these little Christmas pudding ornaments for people in my knitting group, my spinning group and family. They are really cute. You can thank Stephen for this tutorial. He's so in love with these puddings that he wanted me to share them with everyone I can while keeping one back for our own tree of course.

I've included the step where I blended two browns together to get a cool Christmas puddingy effect. If you don't want to blend feel free to leave them out.

Skill Level: you'll need to know how to needle felt, you might want to know how to blend.
Time Taken: Two episodes of Futurama, with commentary
Materials:

• those colours of fibre for felting. I used a mix of corridale and merino although I generally don't like using merino. What can I say, I was seduced by colour. 
• Needle felting needle
• Foam pad or similar
• Scissors 
• Gold lurex thread
• A darning needle
• Hand carders if you'd like to blend

Ready?

Okay blenders: let's take our browns out and mix them together. 

You want about 1 part light brown to 3 parts dark brown

You don't need to mix it thoroughly. I used about three passes to lightly blend the colour. 

 Pull your lovely blend off 

If you're not blending you want to join us here: Take a small handful of fibre and shape it into a ball. Stab it into shape with your needle, making a nice tight ball. 

To neaten up your ball take little bit more of your fibre and spread it out as thinly as possible, stop when you start getting holes. 

Take this 'skin' and wrap your ball with it. Needle felt it into place, if you've got a fine needle you'll want to use it here. Hopefully that will have given your ball an nice finish.

Next we're going to put our icing on. Take a bit of your white and make it into a circle about 3cm across or the size of a 2p which ever is easier for you to visualise. Start from the centre and felt it into place. 

To get the runs in the icing simply pull on part of your circle, drag it down (or up) and felt into place. Once you are happy with the shape go round and give everything one last good felt. Check your ball, if it's got a little misshapen then give it a quick stab in the problem areas.  

Once you are happy with the shape go round and give everything one last good felt. Check your ball, if it's got a little misshapen then give it a quick stab in the problem areas.  

Next we want to make our sultanas. This always takes less fibre then I think it will so I pinch off a tiny amount of fibre and start rolling it around my fingers to make a tight ball. You can always add more if you took too little 

I make about five and distribute them randomly around the pudding. Again you may need to make a couple of stabs to get your pudding looking ball shaped again.

To top off the pudding we'll need some holly. I've found the easiest way to get a nice definition in those spiky leaves is to make a rectangle of fibre the size of your finger tip and tightly felt it.

Then take your scissors and make some snips along the top edge. The bottom edge will be used to attach it so you don't need to bother snipping that. 

Hold it in place and felt that bottom edge down.

Our holly berries are made just like our sultanas but in red and you only need two. 

Felt those in place with a little lighter touch so that the stick off the top of your pudding rather than blend into it. You can see that all that felting has once again made my pudding a bit lumpy. Take your needle to it again until it's perfectly round. Ish.

To hang our ornament we're going to take our lurex and cut about 15cm off. Give the bottom a really big knot 

Pass it through your pudding from bottom to top. 

Bring it back down, a couple of millimetres away from were it came out. 

Give it another lovely big knot.

Take a little bit more of your main colour and cover the knots. Give it one last go over to check that everything is nice, neat and sturdily attached. Then... Hang!

Tutorial: 'YOLO' cross stitch magnet

So clearly I have an artistic motive for this one. Or not. I just thought it would be cool to cross stitch YOLO onto something. Mainly because I spent a weekend listening to my younger brother repeat YOLO to confuse my Mum. This one is for you Jack.

Skill Level: I'll walk you through it.
Time Taken: An hour of watching you boyfriend play Valhalla and the Fortress of Eve
Materials:

• About 15cm square of 14 Count Aida 
• Two colours of stranded cotton. I've used Anchor colours 131 (blue) and 687 (orange) I suggest going for whatever colours you want. 
• A rectangular fridge magnet frame: 70mm by 45 mm
• White paper
• Tapestry needle
• Scissors 
• The chart: you can download the PDF here.

3...2...1...Go!

First cut a length of thread about the length of your forearm. You'll have six strands. Pull it apart and take three strands. Thread your three strands onto the needle.

To start off make a knot in your thread. Go to the edge and pull the  needle through the fabric from front to back. We're going to start working in the centre and as we make our stitches the thread will be caught under them so later we can cut the knot away.

So we'll start in the middle of our fabric and the middle of our patten. That brings is to the bottom of the first 'o' Bring the needle up from back to front find the point on the square diagonally opposite and draw the needle through to the back. That's the first part of the cross.

Pull the tread all the way through. Now we have to go the other way.

Go back to the bottom of the square and pull the needle from back to front. Cross over the stitch you just made bringing your needle down into the diagonally opposite corner.

Carry on making the stitches as indicated in the chart. There is a second way of making stitches and I like to use them both as I go through a pattern depending on what seems easiest.

Here's how to do it. When you've made the first leg of you... don't make the second leg, make the first leg on the next stitch instead.

When you've done the first legs of all the stitches you want you can make all of the second legs.

And you've got all your stitches done. Cool.

At some point you're going to come to the end of your thread and need to start another. Instead of tying a knot the easiest thing to do is pass the thread under the stitches on the back side. You'll have to be careful not to pull to hard on the first couple of stitches but it's a way to start and finish without leaving a knot. A knot will leave a bump on the front of your fabric. If you don't mind bumps feel free to knot.

Okay so you've done all your stitches? Cool! First give your ends a trim, get rid of that knot you made at the start.

Then we want to cut down our fabric to fit in the frame along with that piece of paper I mentioned right at the start and haven't talked about since. Assemble it all and you are done.