my Christmas vacation

My woven potholder tote!
I used an old button and a looper for a closing.

During my brief break from my day job this holiday season, I actually did a bit of crafting and made this potholder tote bag! No, it's not a bag for toting around potholders, but a bag made up of squares that I created on a potholder loom using loopers.

I used a standard metal potholder loom (eighteen pegs) and 100% cotton loopers from Harrisville Designs. They're quite thick and sturdy and the color selection is great. the body is made up of eight squares (four on a side). The handle, sides and bottom are made of half squares. I made the half squares by just looping at half the number of loopers as usual (nine) and weaving through loopers in both directions. It creates one edge that's a bit different from the others... but that didn't bother me.

Instead of sewing them together with thread, I decided, because of the weight of the final piece, that I'd use loopers to sew them together. I cut the loopers, used a fairly big needle and joined the seams with using loopers... it just seemed sturdier that way.

one side sewn together

I went for a multicolor look for this project since those were the loopers I had on hand. What I like of the Harrisville loopers is that you can purchase bags of loopers of all one color, so if you prefer to work with a certain color combination you can do that.

Although I ddon't care much for sewing together pieces/motifs//squares etc ... in projects, this one was not too bad and I would probably do this one again.

close up of bag

potholder scarf

Last winter I came by a website of someone who had used a potholder loom with yarn instead of loopers, and sewed together the results into various forms. I ended up weaving up a scarf that I blogged about back a few months.

For some reason the urge hit me again, so this week I've worked up a potholder scarf in two colors of Cascade 220 wool. Here are the results:

scarf woven on potholder loom, crocheted edging

I was really pleased with the random crossings that using two strands of red and white created. As crazy as this sounds I've already started another one. This one will be lacy with each block a different color. I'll let you know how that one turns out!

first three woven squares of next scarf

Wearable Potholders

Soooo.... I decided to play around a bit with some yarn on my potholder loom. I had bought the loom on a whim a few months ago as something to busy myself with over a weekend, and cranked out a few potholders with the nylon strips included with the kit. I can remember making them as a kid and giving them out as Christmas and wedding gifts to the unsuspecting. It quickly came back to me why working with those loops are so annoying! And yet ... weaving squares gets to be addictive! I ended up stitching them together (something I really dislike and is why I try to avoid projects made of multiple "parts" ::shudder::) and giving it a slip stitch border. Here's the result:

close-up of scarf section

I used some leftover yarn to try out the process since I have never used yarn on a potholder loom before. It's a dk/baby/light worsted weight yarn. I got the idea from tweets I had seen from Noreen Crone-Findlay. The lighter weight yarn gives it a "lacier" look.

nine sections joined together

As I mentioned, it does get addictive weaving the squares (or am I just obsessive?), so before I knew it I had used up all the yarn and decided to join them all to make this scarf. Interesting, eh? Looks better in person, really, and I kinda liked the "raggety anne" look of it, especially my joining - I mentioned I hate doing that, right?

a regular metal potholder loom

All in all, it was fun and now I'm thinking of another project. Working with yarn seems so much easier than those pesky loopers despite how happy the little girl is on the box - gotta love those "old timey" boxes they like to sell things in. It felt like 1950 all over again! Not that I was there in 1950 when you were able to "amaze your friends" (lower left hand corner of box) with your potholders.