Home Made French Knitting Spool's

My Home Made Tools

I have had to make my own tools for French Knitting mainly as i was testing the idea out first but also i am always intrested in using matirials things and rubbish to create stuff with. I thought that by making a French Knitting spool from waste items that I had around me would be the perfect way to continue the recycling them.
My first idea was to use a inner tube from a toilet roll with some plastic plant labels taped around the edge to make the hook like shapes to create the loops when knitting.
This for me was the best way to work, I had the idea I wanted to make some French knitting and i just used what I had to had to do so.
Always growing up I have been told to . . . . . . . "Make do and Mend" . . . . . . . . . . "Make use of what I have got" . . . . . . . . . "Not to throw away perfectly good things" and so no.

I think growing up we were all told things such as this and for me it has always stuck.

I think that this could be partly as I am from a rather large family, eldest of seven and one of twenty-nine grandchildren. So with a upbringing where cost mattered and things were never wasted. certain things stuck with me, such as curling my hair with old rags from a bed sheet, making peg dolls with my mums pegs, tree house out of the old shed and fence panels. For me seeing something made from things which has had a past life is something quite inspiring. Making something from rubbish also has that sense of good will, your giving it a new life, new meaning, you are doing something other than just disregarding it as unwanted or rubbish.

My "Home Made" Knitting spools now have that sense of sentimental value as I had made them myself, and in a small way been imaginative with the matirials that i had to had.


This is the four main Knitting Spools that i made to begin with, so that i could have a series of different knitting on the go all at the same time, and using different matirials as well.



This is Knitting spool is made from a CD container which I found in Uni in a bin. All I did was cut off the top, (which I have kept for something else) and tape plant labels around the side which I got for free from the scrap store.

This Knitting spool ha been made from a used thread spool which I had cut in half and stuck some waste cable ties around the edge. I like this one because I like t use the end of the cable ties as a hook to stop the more resilient thread come off the hooks. All the matirials i used with this one was found in and around UNI waste bins.


This is just a toilet roll inner tube with plant labels taped around the edge.



This is just a toilet roll inner tube and waste cable ties, but this works really well to use for knitting with my Recycled video tape thread. The finished piece comes out quite delicate but really strong at the same time, I think that it helps that the hook parts of the spool are quite close together.

This is the same as the one before but the cable ties have been placed a bit further apart to make the loops bigger.



I feel that my "Home Made" Knitting spools have been quite successful and have in cureged me to look at other possibility's of knitting in this same way but looking at different types of materials to use for the spools.
It has also made me think more about scale and just how big or how small I could create a French knitted piece.

I feel that the next step for this would be looking at scale and matirials seeing which samples worked and developing them further.

My thoughts at this point also is seeing if this could be done on a much larger scale and some how making it interactive within a space, using again items which I have to hand that are waste found things transforming them into tools.