Waste Not, Want Not

Since I tend to tie on to a warp twice for a total of three unique color ways, I’m left with back beam thrums of around one yard in length. It isn’t much more work to tie those long bits together into continuous threads.

These are a few spool knitters from my collection.
The little red one in front is the first one I bought as a child.

  

At first I used my little spool knitters with knotted thrums to create long tubes to use as thick weft in my Rep weaves. Those cords made very nice rugs, runners and placemats. But after a while the slowness of the knitting process grew tiresome and my hands grew tired, too.

Then I discovered I-Cord, a far quicker method of making the same knit tube. With short double-pointed needles I knit to the row end and without turning the work slide the stitches across the needle, pull the working yarn around behind and continue knitting. This is a huge improvement over spool knitting. It is lots quicker and isn't nearly as hard on my hands.

It's far easier to create cords from knotted Thrums with the I-Cord method.
These cords are knit from knotted 8/4 Cotton Carpet Warp Thrums.

Knitting yards and yards of multi-colored cord, I realized I was creating another version of variegated yarn. Have I mentioned my strong attraction to color? Ha!

My loved one is still very ill and we spend many long hours at various doctors’ offices and treatment centers. By the end of the year we should see a reprieve and hope for an improvement. Time will tell. In the meantime we are happy for every new dawn.

I am behind on photographing my work but promise to get around to it and to write again sooner rather than later.

Warp On/Weave Off,

RepWeaver