As The Yarn Turns

Adventures in Lucet Making

About a month or two ago I needed a cord to go an a little knitted bag. I had never tried making a cord with a lucet, so that seemed as good a time as any. Only one problem, I didn't have a lucet. So I used this big plastic meat fork which was never any good as a meat fork. It worked well as a lucet except that I kept sticking myself with the ends. It was easy making a cord this way once I got the hang of it. The next step was to make myself a lucet. Lucets aren't all that expensive. It's just that we have extra pieces of wood around and woodworking tools. I just had to try making one. First I sawed the basic shape out of some oak with a band saw and drilled out a hole for the completed cord to go through. Okay, actually Rick did the sawing. I drew out the basic shape and supervised.

Then I used a rotary tool (Dremel tool) to grind down the edges and smooth it down. In hindsight, oak probably wasn't the best choice but it was available. Once I got it shaped up with the rotary tool, I sanded it down.

Then I sealed it, let it dry, and put some furniture wax on it.

Now if you've read all of this and don't have a clue how a lucet works, take a look at some of the links below. Much better than me trying to explain it with my little bit of knowledge.

http://www.stringpage.com/lucet/lucet.html

http://www.allfiberarts.com/library/bl/bllucet.htm

http://www.finniwig.com/lucetinst.htm

http://www.icanspin.com/lucet.htm (Quicktime video)

It's not exactly symmetrical and it kind of has a primitive look to it, but it does the job and I like it. If I had to do it again, I would choose a different wood and maybe make it a little bigger. Overall, though, I'm happy with my experiment. I might even try another one sometime.

On a completely different note, thanks to a mention on blogdogblog, I found the Mathematical Knitting Pages. If you need some inspiration, browse around. Until next time...

by Sydney  |

Blocking Away

Yes, that's right. It's the sign of a Ribby Cardi being blocked on the blocking sheet. It's actually a little more olive green than it shows up here. One of these days I'll get a picture that shows the colors right. I don't always block my sweaters before I sew them up. If I don't, I always block it after I sew it up. I don't have a standard routine. Sometimes I wet block. Sometimes I steam block. Sometimes I block the finished garment. A lot depends on what the item is. If it doesn't have much in the way of seams or if it doesn't roll much them I'm more likely to seam first and then block. If the edges roll, then I'll block it first. Whether I wet block or steam block depends entirely on my mood and sometimes the weather. Both ways work well but steam blocking can be tricky. If you get overzealous in your blocking, you can kill the yarn and flatten out any texture you have. In any case, I'm really excited to get this far. That means there's not much more to do to make it a sweater. Plus I have other projects that I need to finish and still more projects waiting in the wings to be started. I'm still chugging away on the Shetland Tea Shawl. It goes slowly because it's a lot of knitting and requires a lot of concentration but I'm managing to knit at least a row or two a day. Speaking of which I think I'll go work on it right now.

by Sydney  |