Chapter 18 | Mending
on February 4, 2021
at 12:00 am
Did anyone else pick up a fiber art in 2020? I learned how to knit.
Thistil Mistil Kistil
by Sarah Schanze
Velkommen!
Thistil Mistil Kistil is a comic about vikings, Norse gods, and their adventures together (or against each other). Updates are on Thor’s Day.
I learned to ravel
I just recently started embroidery; i dont feel ready to make a Whole Thing by knitting so for now ill just decorate every single piece of denim clothing i own
I tried to not unravel : – )
So glad you are back!!
does chain-mail count? its a little like knitting but with steel instead of wool, and pliers instead of needles… still kinda the same in that a shirt can take weeks of effort!
Now that you mention it, chain-mail would be a cool hobby to have: is it expensive? where to get materials? (not sure there are as many chain-mail supply shops as there are knitting supply shops…)
Sure there are; they just call them “hardware stores”.
All you need is a spool of wire, a rod to wind it around, and pliers and wire cutters. I use rebar tie wire, which is about 16ga. mild steel, and way more cost-effective than any other source I’ve found of appropriate wire. It might not be available at smaller local hardware stores, but you can get it at building supply places and the big-box type stores. I wind it around a quarter-inch diameter steel rod that I found in the barn. and have no idea what the original purpose was. But you can get appropriately-sized rod stock about anywhere. Dowels might be cheaper, but don’t work as well.
When I was in college, I knitted myself a full hauberk, for what I figure was a total material cost of about $20. And about eight months of my time. It was a pretty good deal… I’ve been fighting in it for 25 years. I should’ve welded the damn thing when I made it, though. I had access to the school metal shop at the time, but decided it was just way too much effort. It would’ve saved time in the long run, I’ve spent so many hours repairing it over the years.
Welcome back!
If it counts, I get rid of a huge yarn stash in 2019, and thought about using the remaining yarn in 2020 (and then I didn’t)? I actually spent 2020 working on figuring out digital art based on hand-drawn lineart.
I didn’t pick up any new fiber arts in 2020, but it did certainly provide a lot of opportunity to work on the tablet weaving projects I’ve been slacking on.
No new fiber arts, as I already spin, knit and crochet. Keep looking at weaving but space is lacking. Tablet weaving is soooo tempting. As it can be small…..
Nalbinding though, I keep reading about. Haven’t bought a book yet.
I see a lot of people doing tablet weaving with an inkle loom, but I just safety-pin one end to my jeans or wrap it around my leg, and keep it tensioned just by pulling with my off hand. My whole 10′-long band weaving project rolls up to about the size of a tennis ball.
Naalbinding is my list of things I’ve been meaning to try out some day when I don’t already have eleventy-seven other unfinished projects going. From past experience, this is likely to be approximately never. The plague canceling all my social engagements for the last year has given me a bunch more free time to work on stuff, but it’s also caused me to add more new projects than I’ve finished, so, on balance, I’m falling behind.