This week we were lucky enough to have Debbie Abrahams come to visit the studio and do some filming for us. I had a chat with Debbie about her career in knitting, how she got started and what she is up to now. She also brought in some lovely examples of her cushions and throws.
After her interview she stayed on to film a couple of demonstrations as well. She demonstrated knitting Intarsia with some very useful hints and tips on how to join in new colours and change colours across the row without getting holes in your knitted fabric.
Her second demonstration was bead knitting using the slip stitch technique which is the method she uses in her patterns. She demonstrated threading the beads onto the yarn before knitting and then adding beads using the slip stitch technique when working on both the right side and wrong side of the knitted fabric.
After Debbie finished I stayed on to do a couple of films on blocking lace samples. The first demonstration was on blocking a sample knitted in wool or other animal fibres i.e. lambswool, mohair, alpaca, angora etc. I washed the sample first in water with a little Eucalan and then pinned out the sample to show off the lace.
The second film was to show how to block a bamboo sample and a cotton sample. Cotton can be washed before it is blocked but bamboo needs to be handled differently as it stretches a lot when wet. If you need to block a bamboo sample you should pin it out first and then dampen it by either spraying it with a hand mister or covering it with a wet tea-towel.
Cotton sample
Bamboo sample
In all three cases you need to leave the samples pinned out until they are completely dry. When they are dry they can be unpinned. You may be able to see from the 3 samples that even after blocking the wool sample still has more spring or body to it than the bamboo or cotton samples. The cotton sample is more or less flat but the bamboo sample is the flattest sample and when held up will have the most drape.
