Tuesday 20 September 2011

Knitting jewellery

 In about 10 days I shall be teaching a workshop under the aegis of By Local, the gallery in Cheltenham where I sell my work.  Amongst the work I sell are washable necklaces, knitted from embroidery silk or fine cotton, with a sequence of bead being threaded onto the yarn before i start knitting. This is the technique I will be teaching at the workshop.  The knitting itself is fairly simple, and the geometry of the sequence is more or less the same each time, but the weight of the yarn, and the combination of beads, makes an enormous difference to each necklace.
If I use evenly sized, identical beads, the geometry  becomes immediately obvious, and the design looks extremely neat and conservative, however, the more varied the size and weight of the beads, the less ordered and 'tidy' it can appear, partcularly if i am fairly anarchic about the order in which they are threaded!  Depending on the weight of the yarn, and the size of the needles, the same pattern can make a choker or a long, pendulous necklace - to be frank, I'm never absolutely quite what the result will be!

Being made from washable thread, the results can be washed by hand - and actually hang better once they have been washed.  This makes them very appealing to those with allergies and sensitive skin, as they can select for threads and beads they can tolerate eg non-metallic, non-mineral or natural materials only.

I look forward to posting the necklaces made at the workshop on this blog ;o)

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