I’m on a flight to Portland, typing on my iPhone, so this won’t be my most tightly edited post, but I want to tell you about Tunisian crochet. Ragga Eiriksdottir‘s Sunday morning class was easily the most fun I had at Stitches West, in part because she’s delightful and in part because this is such a breeze to do and I was really ready for something breezy by then. And having a new skill, of course, means a new creative outlet. So: big fun.
If you haven’t seen Tunisian before, the basic stitch, called Tunisian simple stitch, creates a really interesting fabric somewhere between knitting and weaving. And it’s fast. The washcloth-sized swatch above was done, with no previous experience, in a little over an hour. (The spots that might look like mistakes are where we were learning increases and decreases. And the edging is Tunisian purl stitch.) I was working with the Shibui yarn seen in yesterday’s post and it turned out to be a great combination of yarn and stitch pattern.
Anyway, I am really in love with this technique. I’ve already done a prototype of (you guessed it) a fingerless mitt, working out a pattern. And if I have time later between my meeting and my return flight, I’m going to Knit Purl to look for some really luscious yarn for a cowl. There are basically two methods for working Tunisian in the round, one of which Ragga taught us and the other of which will allow me to use that giant double-ended hook in the previous photos. So you’ll be hearing more about all of this.
I LOVE Tunisian crochet. It would be great if you developed patterns for things using this technique. There is TC group over on yahoo groups of you are interested in learning more stitches.
Hi, Judi. I’m working on a couple of patterns, very simple things as I get started with it. I’ve never done a Yahoo group — don’t know how that works — but I’m interested!