Knitting Board/Loom

LadyDee

Hi, I couldn't find where to post this really - looked for a 'Craft' section but couldn't find one.

I would love to try one of these but would like to find somebody who has already used one and can advise me what is the best size to buy. If I bought a larger one would I be able to make small items on it, or do I have to buy several different sizes?

The wooden ones tend to be a bit expensive and I don't want to pay out quite a lot of money only to find I'm restricted to knitting hats & scarves!

valk_scot

If you're making flat pieces you only use the width of pegs you need. So you can use a wide one to make narrower pieces. However if you're using a circular loom you need different sizes, depending on the circumference if the item.

I've never used one btw, just know people who have one. Oh, and my DD got a hat one in a kit last Christmas. But frankly a pair of straight knitting needles or set of double pointed needles will do the same job, are cheaper to buy and are far more versatile. Or you can make one at home...Google for "home made knitting board" and you'll get a lot of useful hits.

imogen-p

I've used a table top one, some years ago, about 20 to be honest. You could string with as many or as few threads as you wanted, so the width could be just a few threads right up to the whole width of the loom. One of the end bars rotated so you could string it with thread at lot longer than the loom, so you could make really long rectangular pieces if you wanted to.
I made a checked cushion cover out of wool unpicked from jumpers, and it took that thickness of thread okay. You could string it with much thinner thread too.

This is the sort of one I was using http://goforthandmakelovely.wordpress.com/2010/06/27/spears-vintage-weaving-loom-size-4/ so it might be different from what you are thinking of getting.

The trick to getting dense fabric with thin thread is to have a heddle (the bit that lifts up and down) with lots of holes in it, since it's one thread per hole. You could, I think you could double string from the pegs at the ends so wouldn't need to get more pegs, provided you could send all the threads through different holes in the heddle in the middle.

I only ever single strung it as the wool I was using was quite thick.

Really wish that I still had it, as it would be useful for a few things that I'd really like to get made for the medieval reenactment that I do, but it's at the other end of the country now, somewhere in my mums house - unless my mum has given it away (which is a distinct possibility) when she was tidying out my old room when I left for uni.