Friday, January 26, 2007

Teaching my daughter to loom knit


My eight year old stepdaughter has been home with the chicken pox since Monday. Yesterday she started feeling much better so I started showing her how to loom knit using the blue KK Loom. I was very, very tired from being up all night the night before since my one year old just contracted the chicken pox (she was just miserable, she cried all night and the only way she would sleep is with me holding her on my chest laying down on the couch--a couch, mind you, is not designed for sleeping on at all and is the most uncomfortable thing!) Well, anyway, I was completely wiped out and needed to lay down while the baby napped so I took my three year old to bed with me to keep her out of trouble. I let my stepdaughter to her own devices and when I got up an hour later she had a great deal done. Unfortunately, she also had a huge hole in her work. I recognized it immediately as dropped stitches. I asked her what happened and she just looked up and me, shrugged her shoulders and grinned. I told her that she may as well stop since it needed to be fixed before she could continue. She was making a hat and her hat would have had a big hole in it! She was just devistated to learn that if I couldn't fix it that she would have to start her project all over again. I told her that I would do my best but I couldn't promise her it would turn out ok. I made the same mistake when I first started but caught it right away and was able to just unwind my ewraps the rest of the way around and only undo a few stitches from the loom. Her's unfortunately was just about in the middle of her project! Aaaaaaagh!

I thought for a moment when I sat down to repair her project and a flash of brilliance struck me! This leads me to my next tip: To fix a dropped stitch, first take all of the loops off of the loom and carefully pull on the working yarn until you are past the row with the dropped stitches, then thread a long twisty tie through the loops (a cable tie that is smooth and has a locking mechanism at one end would work just as well), secure the end of the tie at the last loop in the circle and begin placing the loops back on the loom. The twisty tie will prevent the loops from being pulled out while you secure the loop preceding it back on the loom and it is extremely flexible (unlike stitch holders) so it will conform to the shape of your loom.

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