A renaissance hairnet

 In my last post I had set up and started on a net with the sprang double grid stitch. I did the net in pink because I already have a black net, even if there are a lot of mistakes in it, and I also have a yellow and red as well, so I felt that I wanted something new. After all I am calling mine and my husband's landsknecht outfits for "50 shades of red", so to make something in pink felt like a fun project, even if I can't say that I have ever seen evidence for pink hairnets. For this I use the yarn "Grane" from Korps.se, which is a z-spun wool, 100 g = 400 m.

The net worked fine and I could make the whole net in one evening. I used 124 loops and it was 43 cm long. When I released it from the loom it was huge. This could never work as hairnet, unless I use my largest and heaviset wulsthaube, the one that was an experiment with wool and that I can't wear for more than a short while without getting neckpains and headaches. I did take my measurements and I could work out that I had a 0,75 conversion rate. Meaning that if I take the number of loops and multiply with 0,75, then I get the finished width. This is all very much depending on yarn and your own tension, but now I had a number.

So I set up a new warp with 80 threads and 40 cm long. It took me a bit less than an evening to make a new net. This size is perfect for my head with my own hair, it might be a tiny bit too small to wear a wulsthaube or large hairpiece under it though. So I guess a good size for me is probably around 90 threads.

I blocked the net over a bowl, but to be honest I don't really see a difference between this and just flatblocking it.

Here is the comparison between the first version and the new version. I think I will use the first version as a net bag for bulky but light things, maybe I should simply keep my yarns there.

A new sprang frame/loom and finally a double grid net

 I started out my adventures in sprang with an old picture frame that I found in an op shop. but a few weeks ago it finally broke so much that it couldn't be saved by duct tape any longer. The whole frame got wobbly in the diagonal direction which made it quite hard to work with. I have thought about a more "historical" frame for a while, one that I would be able to bring to a medieval market and it wouldn't look too out of place. I still wanted a frame that was easy to carry and move around.

In the end I decided to follow this tutorial I found on youtube.

I kept overthinking what kind of sticks I would use, until I took a stroll to the park and realised there are so many sticks and branches still on the ground after the severe winter storm we had back in January.

I picked up two loose branches and carried them home.

Here are my materials - a saw, two long sticks and some cotton string. The old frame that I used is also in pieces on the table so that I could use the pieces as general measuring devices.

I first laid out the size of it to see if it felt good, and it dig. It's definitely taller than my old frame so it will allow me to make longer sprang pieces.

And here is the finished loom.

I decided to try the loom and to finally get my head and hands around what Carol James calles the double grid stitch. It's supposed to be an easy stitch, basically on every second row you pick up double threads, but I had alwasy gotten a lot of loose threads and what I call "church windows", where the treads created little frames where they crossed each other. Now I decided to finally understand what I did wrong, work it out, and also to make a test piece to see if I could be better at calculating the final size.

I made a warp of 124 loops (248 threads) that were 43 cm long. I then followed the instructions of Sally Pointer on how to make the grid, her video can be found here. By working slowly, and having to untangle everything after around 10 rows and starting over, I realised two things. On the rows where I work single threads it's easier if I consider the four threads that have ended up together as threads to be braided together rather than just counting 1 up, 1 down. When I worked them four at a time I could clearly see if they twisted or if I got out of sync. I also used saving sticks for all four rows, the double grid is a set of 4 rows creating the pattern. The sticks made it a lot easier to "see" how the threads were moving, and I made sure to mark the nr 1 row, that is the red thread on the stick in the image. A lot of my problems with the double grid, that I realised this time,  come from threads twisting out of order, and that I couldn't remember which row in the four row pattern I was on. Marking that first row made it so much easier. The lower pieces of fabric are extra lifelines that I put on every fourth row to make sure I wouldn't have to go back too far if I realised a mistake that was more than 4 rows away, that happened the first time.

The loom worked really well, both with warping up and being easily movable, and it was a lot sturdier than my old frame. I am only thinking about replacing my metal knitting needles for the top and bottom, but we will see when I do that.