While at Bullseye last week for the class I took, we were shown how to properly prepare a kiln shelf for firing. I’ve been an advocate for thin fire to fire glass on, but that’s because I can be a bit lazy now and then. You can get away with it for flat work but if you plan to slump your work you’ve got to use kiln wash to prep your surfaces. Over at the Warm Glass web site they have a tutorial on how to coat your shelf with wash. The picture in the pdf file was taken at Bullseye, so this is exactly what I learned last week. I’ve been shown this procedure in the past but Nathan, our fab instructor, was so good he made me want to always use kiln wash. And since I did pick up that set of square plate molds in various sizes…but that a whole other posting.
Have you read?
Gather Your Scraps for a Fun Wrap
Are you all tired of scrap knitting projects yet? I hope not, because I probably never will be.
This is one of those that was actually designed to be worked with scraps, though I’m sure you could use whole or partial skeins of a few different colors if you want a less scrappy look.
The Rock Salt Wrap by Nick Davis is mostly made with mitered squares (which is a fun technique to learn if you don’t already know how to do it). Make each square a different color, or alternate colors, if you don’t want to make it fully scrappy. The pattern actually suggests places where it would make sense to change colors and includes line drawing you could color in if you want to plan it out more carefully.
Because it’s mostly made out of squares you can easily alter the size by working more or fewer squares, or making them smaller or larger. The borders are worked in garter stitch and you could also make those wider, narrower or add more of them depending on the size of shawl you want and how much yarn you have to use.
Nick says their version took about 520 yards/475 meters of worsted weight yarn to make a shawl that measures 58 inches or almost 1.5 meters long and 14 inches/36 cm wide. This same technique would be fun for a scarf if you made it a bit narrower, or you could make a bunch of strips of squares and make a blanket.
Another thing I love about this pattern is that it calls for worsted weight yarn. So many scrap projects are made for lighter weight yarn, which is fine, but the vast majority of the knitting I do is with worsted weight so I always love seeing options that are made for using those leftovers. Of course you can also use lighter weight yarn if that’s what you have on hand.
You can get this pattern from Ravelry.
[Photo: Nick Davis]
Take Your Scrap Yarn on a Voyage
Use All Your Yarn Scraps on This Great Cardigan Knitting Pattern