Any Questions?

Any craft has its basic rules in order for it to look the way you want it to work. If you know the rules well, you can figure out how to correct or cover the mistakes you will inevitably make.

I'm an expert at making crochet mistakes disappear in the grand scheme of things and am learning quickly how to correct for mesh weaving errors. Nothing about this craft is really difficult. It takes some planning and paying attention to the pattern.

If you have any questions that I haven't addressed or, if you have information that I haven't stumbled upon yet, please add comments.  I would love to hear from others doing this particular yarn art.

I'll try to post my progress tonight.

Thanks for visiting with me,

Kathi Linz

Doing the Math P.S.

After I carefully explained how to count and divide up the length or width of the mesh in order to construct a pattern, I would like to take a little of the sweat out of the equation.

If you work from one side to the other and the last rows don't add up the way they are supposed to, you can trim a little more or fold an extra row or two under to make it come out right.

Thanks for visiting with me,

Kathi Linz

I'll post my progress later tonight or tomorrow.

Making Progress

I don't want to put you all on hold, but I do want to finish this project before I go on to the next one.

I finally decided to put in 9 stripes. There will be four on each side and one up the middle.

I have a really exciting project in mind for the next thing I will do. I want to make a sampler loosely based on a crocheted granny square pattern.

Stay tuned. I'll keep you as informed as I can.

Thanks for visiting with me,

Kathi Linz
 

Extra Mesh

If I'm weaving a whole afghan, it gets a bit cumbersome to work with the extra mesh in the beginning and the finished woven section at the end.

It helps to make a few folds and pin them together or run a loop of yarn every so often along the length of the cloth like this.

Thanks for visiting with me,

Kathi Linz
 

A Couple of Thoughts on Weaving with Yarn

Sometimes when you pull the yarn through a number of holes in the mesh, the yarn will wind around itself and make a knot.

 

Hopefully, you understand that the proper way to deal with this is to stop pulling and work the knot loose.

 

 

The other thing that might help you as you weave is to know that sometimes - at least when I weave - the yarn untwists.  If this happens to you, figure out which way to twist the needle and give it a couple of turns to tighten up the yarn.  In my case, I have to turn it clockwise.

 

Thanks for visiting with me.

 

Kathi Linz



 

Ways to Work

The old patterns say that you should work from right to left and from the bottom to the top. This assumes that you are right-handed. It also means that the company wanted you to point you needle away from your body and work upward across your work space. I'm here to tell you that's doing it the hard way. 

Their directions make sense, in that your right hand will rest on the finished part of the work. That makes a softer place in the mesh. If you rub your hand across the empty mesh often enough, it starts to feel as rough as sand paper. Working over the yarn-woven section is much softer.

It is, however, MUCH easier to lay the mesh sideways in front of you so that you can work across the table from right to left, weaving the length of the fabric without having to reach forward as you weave.

If you are left-handed, then you should work the opposite way - from left to right.

As I worked the baby blanket in a diagonal chevron pattern, the mesh itself was barely visible and made no impact on the finished product. Working the length of the mesh leaves some of the mesh visible and that has to be calculated into your pattern.

Some people have more than one weaving needle. They can thread several at once and work a whole section of the mesh at the same time. If you do this, be very careful about how you start each needle so that your visible mesh will create the pattern you've decided on.

Two possible ways to place the needle:

 

 

Mesh showing up/down/up/down

 

 



Mesh showing up/up/up. Can continue in upward diagonal or make step pyramid down from here and then up every certain number of rows according to your choice.

More thoughts on using more than one needle. I think it would be harder to keep the mesh from rippling unless you stretch the mesh after pulling each needle through every time. I do that anyway using only one needle, but it would be critical to do this if you are using more than one needle. Each new row locks in the row before it. Keep a close eye on the ripple in the mesh as you weave.

I have been known to work in order straight across. But I am just as likely to do each side, then a section in the center to establish my pattern and then work the rest of the parts in between.

On my current project,  I am weaving a lilac afghan with some narrow stripes of a complementary variegated yarn. There will be an odd number of stripes so that one stripe will be in the center of the afghan. It's tempting to make each of the stripes and then fill in the spaces between with the lilac color.  The only thing that gives me pause about that plan is the pattern of the mesh that will be showing. It would be fearfully easy to mess up the up and down step pattern of the visible mesh if I traipse merrily across the piece without carefully figuring which way the mesh will appear.

All of these decisions are up to you. If the visible mesh is not a big deal to you, then you are free to weave any section of the work that you want to do. If it is important in the scheme of your pattern, then make sure to take it into account when you do the next strand of yarn or the next section up the way.

Thanks for visiting with me,

Kathi Linz


 

Doing the Math

If you are going to space out your stripes or whatever pattern in an even way on your mesh, you are  going to have to do at least a little counting.

I started on one edge with an idea in my mind for the rest of the panel.

Here's one way to do it. Once I determined the width of my accent stripe, I counted the rest of the panel by fifties - one side, then the other side - until I got to the center. I marked the center row since I want a stripe running up the middle. The middle row is marked in red.

Now, even though I am not likely to work the pattern in fifties, this will make the counting easier since I know how many rows are in each section. 

When you set up your design, you might want to mark it off in smaller numbers or in larger numbers depending on the image you have in your mind about how it should turn out.

If you have already worked a few rows to see how the design looks, please remember to figure that number of rows on the other side before you start to mark off the fifties.  My edge pattern was: 5 rows lilac, 2 rows dark purple, 9 rows variegated, 2 rows dark purple, making 18 rows in all. When I started on the unworked edge, I had to mark off the first 18 rows before I counted the fifties.

Also, count 50 on the left, then 50 on the right, back and forth, until you get to a small section in the middle, which you will count across and then divide in half to get the exact middle row.

I hope that made sense.

Thanks for visiting with me.

Kathi Linz