Craft Post - Toooooools!

[kerravonsen]

And this post, is some craft tools I made, some old, some recent.

First, my lucets. Here are the first three:

First three lucets. Top left #1: fork lucet, bent with pliers; top right #2: hammered aluminium wire, handle wrapped with string and black hot glue; bottom #3: brass tube, copper tube, craft sticks, string, black hot glue

1. The Mutilated Fork Lucet
2. The Aluminium Wire Lucet
3. The Wide Lucet

Here is The Fourth Lucet, after which, I may never make a lucet again, it is just so good.

Lucet #4: hammered copper wire, black hot glue, leather thonging, viscose ribbon.

The Copper Lucet



This is my peg loom. It is made of Dolly Pegs and cardboard.

Peg Loom: Dolly Pegs + cardboard; front side; decorated with nail polish + embossing powder; pegs finished with beeswax + oil finish

Why did I make it?
Because people were raving about the Zippy Loom, which the Authentic Knitting Board folks have brought out, which has huge pegs, and is also modular, in that you can clip the looms together to make a wider loom. I thought, cool, I'd like to try this out.

Only AKB refuse to sell them outside the USA, and there are no agents for it in Australia. So I Can't Get One!

Gah!

So I thought I would try to make something similar. It occurred to me that Dolly Pegs might make good knitting loom pegs, and that's where the idea started. Dolly pegs, very thick cardboard, hot glue on both sides of the cardboard, slide the peg down over the glue, stick!

Then I went mad decorating it.

So. How does it work as a loom?

Pro: The pegs are very firm, they don't wobble. They are a nice size and spacing for chunky yarn.

Con: No matter how much I have sanded them, it seems impossible to get the pegs completely smooth. Even though my fingers think they are smooth, there is always some teeny tiny jagged bit which the yarn snags on. (*headdesk*)

I actually made two, but I'm not posting a picture of the second one until I can figure out a solution to the snagging problem. Or give up on Loom #2 and start again with Loom #3.

Comments

[reynardo.livejournal.com]

Rather than sanding the little blighters, what about dipping them in varnish to smooth them?

[kerravonsen]

Well, I thought embossing powder would smooth them (that was Loom #2) and it didn't. 8-(
Coatings smooth things a little, but not as much as one thinks.

[jaxomsride.livejournal.com]

Nice tools as for the rough pegs would a layer of gloss paint or varnish help after a bit of fine sanding? After all most wooden french knitting looms are painted, it might be more for the need to make them smooth than just to make them look attractive.

[kerravonsen]

I'm going to sand the heck out of the pegs for Loom #3. It's a bit hard to sand them more after they've been glued to the base - that's what I've been trying with Loom #1, and while it improved it a bit, there are still one or two pegs which have these Mysterious Snagging Bits.

[miamadwyn.livejournal.com]

Weaving is something I have always wanted to do. I did a small hand-weaving thing with a piece of cardboard once.

[kerravonsen]

I wove a hanging for art once. It's still hanging in my front hall.

But, no, I was talking about a knitting loom, not a weaving loom.

[vjezkova.livejournal.com]

WOw. I have never seen anything like that. So these are your tools of magic...

[kerravonsen]

8-)

[delphipsmith]

You can't fool me, lucets are just little barbeque forks with a posh education ;)