My first attempt on a hand loom

      As my blog showing the glorious cardigan knitted to go with the Crufts dog dress explains, I cannot knit. I would love to be able to but my natural inclination to cut corners and look for the quickest route to the finishing line has meant the precision and skill of knitting is not for me. Believe me I’ve tried plenty of times, and have a cupboard of holey scarves to prove it. However, at Christmas I received a gift that bridges my ineptitude with knitting needles with the ability to make lovely decorative things out of wool: I got a hand loom.

Unfortunately I did NOT knit this!

      This very simple wooden square with notches cut around the edge and a big plastic needle was, I think, aimed at children but it was perfect for a beginner like me too. There were instructions to make either woven squares/rectangles or circles and I decided to make circles as I thought they would make lovely trims for my sewing projects.

The basic loom

      I began with a black and red design, although I didn’t think to count the over and under parts and ended up having to skip an extra thread every time I’d done a full circle round the ‘web’! That said, within half an hour I had a very pretty red and black trim that reminded me of poppies.

I love these colours together

      Eager to continue I used red and yellow for the next one and made the ‘web’ using every other notch around the edge. This produced a far denser concentration of the yellow wool that I weaved in and out. Once finished this trim reminded me more of a sunflower or even a big floppy tulip.

Less of the red showed through here

      I’ve yet to have a go at a square design because I’m struggling to think of what to do with it once it’s done but when I do have a go I’ll let you know! 

**UPDATE** Read my blog detailing how I eventually used the flowers on a dress here!

Put to good use as embellishments!

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