Wired

I spent some time in Providence, Rhode Island last year and I met many keen knitters there (not to mention visiting all of the knitting and craft shops in the city itself - heaven). One of them mentioned that she had enrolled on an evening course to learn how to 'knit with wire' and I honestly thought I had misheard. Wire? Knitting? With wire? As if.


Back in England, curiosity peaked and in a post-travelling funk, I started Googling "wire knitting". It was then that I found a vast array of photographs of beautiful, intricate jewellery created with knitting needles. Amazing! I kept on searching and reading and made a page of notes with people's hints and advice for achieving success in what looked like a particularly tricky craft area. The one consistent factor was that it should be attempted with 28 gauge wire, which I found in abundance on eBay. Since then, I have discovered that Hobbycraft also sell it on reels, in a variety of colours, for under £2.

My experiments with wire knitting have been varied in their successes. For a start, it's really difficult and makes your hands hurt. I had to dust off my knitter's wrist support gloves to prevent getting a RSI! Yarn bends and moves, making knitting a pleasure. Wire is much less forgiving. I had to loosen my stitches and use an embroidery needle at intervals to pull the stitches into order. Most of my jewellery so far has been knitted on UK size 10 needles, which are pretty small. This is to make neat, small jewellery but again ramps up the difficulty. Lots of patience is required if you are going to attempt this!

To start off, I used the exceptionally simple backwards loop casting on method shown here. This gives you a supple edge without too much messy wire sticking out. You must remember to cast on the loops from the reel of wire and not the tail from the slip-knot - I kept forgetting and having to slip it onto a new needle at the end. If you are going to attempt to use beads in your work, these need to be slipped onto the reel of wire before you cast on. Again, a learning curve that I did not get straight away. I then just used garter stitch to knit as usual until my wire was the right size.

For the wrist cuff, I cast on 20 stitches and knitted roughly 10 rows. I then used the break and thread method of casting off followed by wrapping the tail of wire tightly around one of the other stitches. Some of my cuffs are fastened with hooks, some with ribbon.

I still have a lot to learn about this method of jewellery making, but I'm pleased with my progress so far :)