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| Featured in Craftziners magazine sep 12 |
After my Kerala outing with Chithiram collection, I turned to wire to make my next collection and have been wanting to show the pieces off for a long time. It all started when I chanced upon a pinterest board titled Alambre by Andaira . I have an habit of looking up foreign words in dictionaries and when I found that Alambre meant wire (btw love it pronunciation – it sounds so exotic) I wanted to do a collection based on it
But before that I have to tell you about Andaira and how I found her board. In one of my posts reg my feature on heart handmade I had remarked that I was trying to learn Viking knit. Andaira, left a sweet comment saying “Hey, Say you’re learning to knit Viking. I searched my Pinterest and I have this, if it’s any help…” and left me a couple of pinterest links. I was touched and over joyed that someone was taking a lot of interest in my work and was actually helping me learn. That’s how I found the board and decided to use my already learnt VK skills to make something beautiful.
Here are some of my works..in my usual style I havent stuck to strictly viking knit or wire wrapping or making bezels with wire…but I have just combined everything with a lot of variations..so expect nothing traditional..Some of these were also featured in my Modahaus post here
Part 1 deals with all Viking related designs
Viking Bezel:
I wanted to learn Viking knit for a very long time; tried many times and gave up. But this tutorial, I found on the Beadinggemjournal is what really taught me the basics. So I tried the prong/dowel method and it didnt work for meo I do bezel & chains the same way with a wire shape. I also really like adding normal beads or crimp covers to my bezels to make them look more elaborate.
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Viking chain – The amber necklace shown above (first pic)uses a combination of wire coiling, purposeful kinking, wrapping and viking knit. I have used 26g brass wire, 28g & 30g artistic wire for knitting and so far found 28g to be the best. Both 26g and 30 gauge kinks a lot (A LOT!!)but base metal wire retain shape better than artistic wire. Also Artistic wire esp 30g tends to look very thin( and lifeless) on stretching the knit.
I am curious about one thing though – Why is a viking knit chain called the Trichinopoly chain? – Does it stand for a chain made with tri or poly loops/prongs? or is it named after a place.If so where is that place? By the way I am from Trichy, short for Tiruchirapalli, which was called Trichinopoly during the times of British.Is there a connection between the two? Curious isnt it? I have asked this question many times in many forums, but havent received a satisfactory answer till date. so If anyone knows about it, please enlighten me.
More about my other experiments with wire soon!!
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