mollymoo

Tinkering with: icord knitting

French knitted braid (also known as icord knitting) is something you usually learn when you’re a kid but I’ve just tried my hand at it for the first time this month – better later than never eh!! Molly got a present of a cute little kit at Christmas and I gave myself several painful blisters on my fingers when I used it – trying too hard I think :)

Anyhoo I wanted to keep tinkering with icord knitting, without the blisters, so I researched and found a neat little?mechanical icord maker (reviewed below) that claimed to be able to knit 18 feet of cording in 10 minutes….. so I put it to the test and here is what I made for Miss7.

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iCord Lettering for Molly’s bedroom wall
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To make this I simply threaded wire through the icord braid

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and laid the braid over a printed piece of lettering, twisting and looping the braid around each letter.
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iCord Necklaces

These are Molly’s favourites of course, made in her favourite colour yellow!!

The first is a simple braid threaded through a natural wooden bead, which I painted with neon pink acrylic paint (this might be stating the obvious but paint the bead and let it dry before threading the braid through)

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The next necklace is made with more of the plain yellow braid, yarn wrapped with some gold cord recycled from christmas wrapping

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iCord Pen and Pencil Warmers

Such was the success of my new iCord maker I had ooodles of yellow braid left over so I wrapped up a few of Molly’s pencils for school – a cosy and soft cushion for her fingers and there’s no way her pencils can get mixed up with her classmates pencils now…. I’m near broke from buying replacement pencils :)
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I am no where near finished experimenting with iCord knitting ….. the next few projects will be decorative for around the house I think. Stay tuned :)

Caron Embellish-Knit! Machine Kit – the verdict!!

At just $13.44/￡20.17 I thought it was worth the investment because it is ‘a lot’ faster than knitting the same length by hand – with no blisters!!

It is a small plastic machine with four metal hooks. Once you take your time with the first four stitches, to ensure they catch on the hooks correctly, you can just keep cranking the handle and watch the braid flow out the bottom, until you run out of wool. It is fast. It is effective. And I am more than happy with my purchase and can recommend it for DIY crafters looking to experiment, and teachers/girl guide instructors etc for churning out metres and metres of iCord for kids to make and have fun with. The iCord makes great scarves for Barbie dolls too :)