`Centre Pull Ball.

I’ve just finished unpicking a couple of old cardies. I wound the wool into shanks and then washed and dried it before rolling it into balls. Something I like to make is centre pull balls so I don’t have balls that roll all over the place when I’m working from them.

You start by winding the end of yarn around your thumb a few times. This is the thread that will be pulled from the centre when you’re finished.

Next you start winding the yarn around three fingers and the tip of the thumb. Keep all the winding loose/soft.

When you’ve wound a couple of dozen times remove it from the three fingers but keeping the yarn wound on the thumb. Now hold the wound yarn with the three fingers and the thumb in the centre of the yarn.

Keeping the thumb in the same position as you wind around the fingers and yarn. (Winding around the fingers helps keep the ball loose) Ever few winds remove the fingers and make a quarter turn until all the yarn is used.

Tuck the end under; remove your thumb along with the centre pull thread.

Barking and Burping

Adventures in brioche knitting.

Well it took me about 3 nights before I managed to get any knitting on my needles. I first taught myself how to do the Italian cast-on, and then with 2 colours! Going straight into the pattern with no ribbing was also a challenge. Each second stitch is slipped with a yo, so on the first row everything gets twisted. What a nightmare.

So very carefully I finally managed to get started, following the pattern row by row. Two rows in one direction, then two back in the other direction. As with any pattern when you’re starting out, it’s hard to see how the pattern works. My biggest problem was working out if I was doing a plain row or a purl row (barking or burping) Except for the colour both sides of the work are identical. I had to make myself lots of ittle diagrams with different coloured pens, and arrows trying to make sense of it. After reversing the colours a couple of times accidentally it eventually dawned on me. The predominant colour facing is a knit row with that colour, followed by a purl row with the contrasting colour. Brilliant!

It’s a scarf by the way, with just 30 stitches – not too many to undo when I make a mistake. Because I unintentionally changed colours at the beginning I’m now using that as my pattern - random colour changes.

‘Bark’ is brioche knit stitch and ‘burp is brioche purl stitch.