Tuesday 20 September 2011

New technique- Entrelac

This week I challenged myself to learn something new. Right now I'm working on a cabled baby jumper and it's hard going because there are 26 twists in the cable row. It's been killing my fingers, but I still wanted to knit.


I've been trying to cull my junk, and found a bag full of the odds and ends left over from a single sized crochet blanket I made a couple of years ago. I didn't want to just knit a straight blanket, and had seen entrelac in my Compendium of Knitting Techniques and wanted to give it a shot.


Turns out entrelac is really easy. It's just using increases, decreases, and picking up stitches to give the appearance of knitting sideways. There are tutorials online, but I can't recommend one because I worked from instructions from this book (which by the way, is a fairly wonderful knitting book overall). I'm using a 5mm circular needle and chunky acrylic.


At first it looks really weird and like you've gone horribly wrong and got twisted somewhere:



But after the first foundation lot of triangles, things start to look up:

And here's where I am at the moment:


I am very happy with how it's going and how fast it's growing. Honestly, I'm glad I learnt entrelac, the finish is just so intriguing- it's like an optical illusion of colour changing strips weaving in and out. It also feels lovely and plush, so I'm sure the end baby/pet blanket will be lovely and warm.


Long term challenge? Knit an entrelac bedspread from DK remnants. 

1 comment:

  1. This looks very neat. I'm really enjoying your blog btw. I like how your blog focuses on making things. Your last post on the typewriter was interesting.

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