kerravonsen | SED 06: Lucet!

Today I mutilated a fork. I turned it into a lucet.

A lucet is an ancient tool for making cord from yarn; possibly goes back as far as the Vikings.

I've been pondering lucets alot, recently, but had not actually made or bought or used one. Until today, when, as I said, I mutilated a fork. I'd seen other forks-turned-lucets where they bent the middle prongs backwards, but I was afraid they would have things catch on them, so I used this fork-lucet as an example, and curled the prongs up in the front. That worked pretty well. The reason I decided to try with a fork was that I didn't want to go and buy a lucet before I was sure I wanted to do the craft (and also have to wait around for it to arrive, impatient me). And the other DIY lucets that I had the means to make, didn't look that sturdy, or weren't as simple as just bending the prongs of a fork. Also, while the maker of that fork-lucet complained that it was small and fiddly, I was complaining to myself that most lucets available for purchase seemed to be large and clunky.

As for making lucet-cord itself, I tried with some cotton string, and that didn't work so well. So I made a few adjustments to the fork, and tried to smooth it out a bit, and refreshed my memory of technique by looking at one of the video tutorials in my bookmarks, and tried again with much slipperier and finer rayon crochet-yarn. That worked much better; I've made about a foot of cord now. It's much faster than Kumihimo braiding, but then it is only one colour too (well, apart from using multi-coloured yarn, but that's still only one colour at a time). It is possible to do two-colour lucet cord, but that is a more complicated technique, naturally.

There are actually two basic styles of lucet-cord: the figure-8 style, which gives a loose, lacy cord; and the turn-and-pull style, which gives a denser, stronger cord. The figure-8 style is really like spool-knitting with only two prongs. If I wanted to do that, well, I could use a knitting spool. It is the turn-and-pull style which interests me. Mind you, it gets a bit confusing when you come across the more advanced styles, starting with the "no-turn turn style"...

Having played with my lucet for a few hours, I think I will make/buy my next lucet with its prongs wider apart. The reason is this: with spool knitting (or with figure-8 luceting) the size of the stitch is determined by how far apart the prongs/pegs are. With turn-and-pull luceting, the size of the stitch is determined by the size of the yarn. This is because the stitches are pulled snug in the "pull" part of the action. Which means that the distance between the prongs is more about the comfort of the user, and I'm afraid that the fork is a little small and fiddly after all. Because what the user has to do is grab a loop between their finger and thumb and lift it over another part of the yarn. With the fork, there is just enough room for me to put my finger and thumb between the prongs, but it would be a little more comfortable if there was a little more room. So I will either make another one with thick wire (and hope that I can hammer it stiff enough so that it doesn't wobble), or I'll just buy one from one of a number of possible vendors.