This month's challenge for #craftblogclub was to try out something new. I'd recently found all the pieces to my hairpin lace loom again (long story), and since I'd never actually made anything from hairpin lace, I thought it was about time that I did.
I pulled out some vintage 80s yarn from my stash — some Scheepjeswol Voluma I'd picked up at a fundraising sale for the Textile Museum of Canada — and started making loops. I guesstimated that three metres of loops would make a two-metre-long scarf.
That worked out to 600 loops per strip (300 to a side). This is hairpin lace at its most soothing, yet most unrewarding. The basic loop-making stitch is very simple, but you need guide yarn to keep the strip from tangling on itself, plus it's a good idea to tie at least one side of the loops into clusters of 50 so you can keep your count straight... it looks messy, and unwieldy, and like you're going to use up a lot of yarn just making a tangle.
But then all of the 600 loops are finally made, and it's time to do a joining pattern. I just used a simple fan pattern, which was included in the instruction booklet that came with the loom. The pattern is four groups of three loops, then one group of twelve loops. The pattern gets reversed on the other side of the strip. The loop joining went very quickly. It took less than a quarter of the time it took to make the loops in the first place. It is good after the discouragement of making the big mess of loops to obtain the final effect with relatively little effort.
I made two strips, then joined them together with small UK treble crochet (US double crochet) clusters. The result was a scarf which was, sure enough, about two metres long, and about fifteen centimetres wide.
The point of the exercise was to learn a new method and to decrease my stash by at least a little bit (the scarf used up about a ball and a half of the Voluma). I brought it in to show Bonnie, my chiropractor's office manager, and she liked the scarf so much that I gave it to her. So it was a win-win — I love it when that happens!
I like the look of hairpin lace when it's finished, but it's a bit of a one-trick pony. Certainly it's a good way to use up either ribbon yarn, or, as here, yarn with some fuzz to it — any type of yarn has some texture and interest to it on its own, so that it looks nice in those loops. I'd like to try making medallions (circles of loops) next time.
All of the scarf photos here, incidentally, are taken in the waiting area of the Beaches Wellness Centre's offices. I love how the wood planking looks behind the yarn!
