Spranging on

 Sprang is totally addictive due to two things. I can see a result almost straight away, and it is something I can do with the TV in the background our talking to someone. So of course I couldn't keep myself from testing more things. I set up a warp for a male hairnet of 44 loops and 35 cm in length. Carol James had a suggestin for 44 loops and 30 cm for a 16th century male bonnet, since my husband has a really large head I increased it to 35 cm. I made what she calls the "double grid" stitch, that is also called "holes all over" in my book about sprang. It was a fairly easy way of working, the hardest thing was to remember which part of the cycle I was in, the pattern consists of a cycle of four rows. I did  miss in at least one place and got a row with double sized holes in it.

The hairnet worked but was too tight, so the next time I am going to make it both wider and longer, yes my husband has a really large head. I felt confident enough to order a nice coloured wool yarn to make a proper hairnet though.

But I couldn't wait for the yarn to arrive, especially when I found that I actually had two colours of yarn that I hadn't used, but now I have gone through my whole limited yarn stash. In the book by Tine Abrahamsson there was a pattern to make mittens which didn't seem to be too complicated, if I skipped the diagonal geometric pattern in them. The pattern called for 22+16+22 loops, I increased that to 28+20+28, since I thought my yarn was thinner than the one in the pattner, but most of the measurements in length was made by siimply holding up my hands to see if it looked about the same size.

The warp consists of three indivdual warps, that you will join together after a while. Two longer ones, that will be the hand of the mitten, and one shorter part in the middle that will be thumb.. I also decided to try making horizontally stripes. As usual it took me longer to actually set up the warp than to get going. I worked the basic intertwining stitch all the way. It was a bit tricky to start, where you have to sort the two different yarns so that you separate one colour for upper and one colour for the lower thread.

After having worked the three warps separately they were joined together, with a row starting with picking up  two threads at the start. It worked fine, but after having finished it was clear that there were quite loose loops at the joining of the warps, and that after having joined the warps together my overall tension got looser. I worked as far down as I could, with the last few rows being taken in by treating two threads as one, and starting with either two or four threads. I would have liked to make the mittens longer, but my frame is too short for that.

This was the finished pieces after blocking. The bottom was ended with a fringe, and the tops were chained together. I also found that it was a lot easier to chain when I first put a safety line through the top and took them off the sticks to chain them. It's also obvious that the bottom part of the weave has gotten larger, also probably having to do with difference in tension and that it's easier to pack the top part tighter than the lower one.

When you fold tie piece in half you get a mitten with a thumb. The sides were whipped together and the rest of the threads were weaved into the whipped seam. For the larger mitten I felt it was too big, so I took it in by making a dart and closing it by weaving a thread through the weave. It got a bit clumpsy on the inside, but looked a lot better on the outside.

The finished pair of open mittens. This was a project where I learnt to make stripes, adding width and taking in width but also to make a fringed endings. I would have preferred to make them longer, I love wearing cuff warmers since my wrists do get cold, but for that to work with my short frame I would need to make them shorter, probably starting by the thumb instead a covering the fingers. Or I need to find a way to make a bigger fram. 

All in all it took me one day to make the mittens, so I think they are nice projects to start learning new techniques and maybe even patterns, if I make more cuff warmers then I acutally get something I can use, instead of making an endless supply of hairnets that I only use in historical recreations.

Sprang - an actual result

 Well I couldn't wait to try more sprang. I found that I had a purple yarn of unknown fiber in my very small yarn stash. It felt like wool and it was definitely thicker than the red and brown yarns I had tried in the first projects. So I set up a new warp, once again winding it around the plastic board for the picture frame. I also decided to go back to the basic sprang stitch, not the one making larger holes. I felt that I needed to understand better what was going on, and I needed to learn how to deal with the sticks and endings, and with the basic pattern I could concentrate on that. I also tried to once again make a wider pieces, so I used 60 loops again.

The first rounds didn't go well. I got large holes and I tried to work with lifelines rather than sticks, but kept on failing. The 60 loops just fit my hands when working on them. Then something fell into place and I understood how the threads were supposed to be moving around each other, with the thread that I picked up tugging on two treads and not just one. With that I started to get row after row without having to redo as much. I gave up on the lifelines, but I could use just four sticks, which what was I had in knitting needles, for this piece the chop sticks were too short. Also when I made a mistake I could see it and if it wasn't too close to the start I didn't have to unravel the whole row but could just go back to the mistake.

Here is as far as I could work the piece. On the last row I did drop a few threads because it was too fiddly to work them, so I decided to quit. When the threads started to get tight I worked with one of the sticks that I removed and then I twisted a few threads, put the stick there, went on another few threads and so on. I had a tendence to make mistakes and drop threads when I took a bread to insert the stick and then continue, but it made it possible to work until there were only a few cm between the top and bottom. I then chained the bottom, top and middle to prevent everything from unraveling. After some wriggling with the piece the weave evened out, so that there were no large holes in the middle.

This is the finished piece after blocking it. There are holes in it, especially the large on in the middle of the first rows, before I had understood how the threads were supposed to move. There are also holes close to the middle, and that is where I dropped threads when it got too fiddly, the next time I can probably finish even earlier and the weave will still even out. I did close the large hole by just tying it together with more of the same yarn. I then treaded the bottom edge with a piece of yarn to gather it together, and used the same yarn piece to whipstitch the sides together, but not quite to the end of the side.

The finished net cap, sitting on my very small styrofoam head. I have threaded a fingerloop braid through the corners of the front edge so that I can close it. The length is probably good enough that I would be able to use it with a wulst under it, but it is too narrow for that. I can get it around my head, but I would not be able to have anything under it. Now when wearing it it feels a bit like a net gnome cap, since I don't have enough hair to fill out the bag part.

So the next thing I need to do is come up with a way of making a wider piece.

Sprang - learning a new craft

 I have forced myself to a hiaturs in sewing projects, since I need to finish a non-sewing related thing. So what did I do instead, well I've been trying out different kind of yarn and string crafts instead. So yes the deadline for that other thing is approaching and I haven't worked as much as I should on it. After a Sunday with a lot of wasted yarn trying to come to terms with braiding garters, weaving ribbons and making string I decided to pick up this book that I have had in my shelf for many, many years.

I had read through it, but without really understanding the instructions. The last 5 years språngning, or sprang in English, has really picked up steam within the crafting and historical recreating community, so nowadays there are also a lot of tutorials out there. My biggest help was this tutorial by Sally Pointer - "Make a sprang bag with handles"

The book and tutorials made me confident to set up a test piece on an embroidery frame and with some acrylic yarn. And this was the result

Yes it is totally uneven, but I could see that I had figured out the principles, and compared to the string making and braiding I could see a result forming fairly quickly.

The next thing was to get hold of a loom that was a bit sturdier than the the wobbly embroidery fram. And for that I went to the second hand store across the street.

A large picture frame, some knitting needles and chop sticks and I was ready to set up my first bigger sprang project.

Ha, or so I thought. In my overconfidence I spent two days warping 72 pairs of string, that turned into a total twisted and knotted mess. The problem was the tension. On my first text piece I had had a tight tension and it had become impossible to continue the sprang quite far off from the end, so this time I thought it might work to have a looser tension, but it was too loose for my skills obviously. I gave up and removed it. I then found this tutorial on how to warp on a board. And that made it so much easier. The clear plastic that had been in the frame worked perfectly, and was of course in a good size for the frame. Or so I thought.

When I put the warp on the frame it was once again too loose. I removed it (again) and made a new warp, but this time on the short side of the plastic, and finally I had a good tension on the frame. The short side was also exactly the length that I had planned from the start. This time I also cut back on the number of threads, making 60 loops instead of 72, so that it would be easier to keep track of them, but still getting a width on the finished piece that could hopefully be used for something.

So I started spranging, and soon I once again had a bit of a mess. I totally understand that I would miss some threads, but I thought it was fixable. Reading up on this tutorial on "sprang errors and how to fix them" I understood that dropping threads must be corrected by unraveling. So I unraveled everything and took really good care to make sure that I would have the correct number of threads and twists on each row,  and not thinking that was something that could be fixed in the next row.

Here is my current status. It is working. The first rows were definitely tricky so I had to undo several and go back, making sure that I had not dropped a thread. After a while and with good tension on the warp it has started to become easier. The blue knitting needles that are holding the warp are not just tied on to the frame, they are winded up, so I can keep a good tension and when it gets too tight I can just unwind them a bit to make it easier to handle the threads. I haven't seen this solution so there might be some downfall to it that I discover when I'm done, but it works fine for me so far.

I actually got in quite a nice flow and felt that I got a nice net structure going - and then two things happened. I felt that the sticks were in the way for my hands, not between the warp threads but rather where I kept the palms of the hands while the fingers were working, and my mother called. Somewhere here I totally lost track of where I was. I tried to repair it, I tried to switch to lifelines rather than sticks and felt that it might work. But then the bottom of the warp fell of the whole knitting needle. With the mess that it was in I decided to stop.

This is what I could salvage, what is basically the top part. Yu can see that I had some net structure, but then I started to make really big holes. Well instead of getting something usefull I have to consider this another practice piece.

I'm not giving up yet though. For my next piece I want to try with a thicker yarn, I probably have to go to the expensive traditional craft store and get suggestions on what to use, and I want to see if I feel that it works with lifelines rather than sticks, once I have gotten the starting rows correct. I also need to work some with how I position myself so that I don't get such a stiff neck after a while. Well, well, maybe I can get a usable net out of the next piece.