The first time I witnessed a roll up was at Urban Glass in Brooklyn. It was absolutely amazing to watch. The piece being made was a very large, and would become the globe for a lamp. I never saw the finished piece but the process was forever stuck in my mind. I used to think I really wanted to do roll ups. Then I had a dose of reality. I am not going to be a glass blower. My interests are in lampwork and kiln forming. Ah, kiln forming. That’s how a roll up starts. I’ve watched more and more roll ups and realized I could make a cool piece of glass and someone else can roll it up. So finally I got one done. It’s lovely and it was blown by Ryan Staub from Washington. He comes into town regularly to do roll ups over at Pacific Art Glass. In fact, he’s there right now. Doing roll ups. Check out this video from Eugene Glass School. Also you can check out an explanation of the process at Bullseye’s web site. And the picture is of the piece Ryan blew for me…
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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