A while ago I bought the Lazee Daizee viking knit tool kit and it came with copper wire. I haven’t played around much with it but I will be today.
What I wanted to talk about today was the Wyr Knittr. I read a ton of really bad reviews about this tool but when I came across it in one of the stores I picked it up to give it a try. I found the little instructions that came with the tool easy to read but the photos are not much help and I happen to be one of those people who rarely reads the instructions because I look at the pictures. If I can’t figure it out by the photos then I read.
Anyway I ended up going to their website and they have much better instructions for using the Wyr Knittr.
The first time I tried to use it the stitches just wrapped around the hooks. I searched the website and found this information and thought yep that’s what I’m doing wrong.
Q. My knitted wire gets bunched up around the top of the Knittr! What am I doing wrong? (This happens only if you have a Wyr Knittr with one clip.) Mine came with three but I was only using one.
A1. Pull down gently but firmly on the nose of the clip that’s holding the wire more often.
A2. The weighted clip may not be hanging freely. Be sure that it does not rest on the table and there is weight on the wire coming out of the machine.
A3. The stitches being knitted are not falling below the latches. Make sure you push EACH STITCH below the latch (see close-up of instructions) or the wire will not knit properly.
A4. It could be that your wire broke around the needles while you were knitting. Look down the tube to see if this has happened and, if so it would be best to just start again.
A5. If you are using 28-gauge wire, you will need to pull down a bit more often since this wire is thicker and less resilient.
Okay so thanks that makes a little more sense, but when I tried it I found that the stitch on the hook didn’t drop below the clasp so I had to find out about that and what to do. Here’s what I found out, if it doesn’t go below you clasp on your hook you have to push it down. No other solution for that problem and I had to push it down on every single stitch.
Push down stitch
I started using the Wyr Knittr but I quickly found that holding the wire in one hand and not putting tension on it, turning the handle with the other while holding onto the Wyr Knittr, pushing down each stitch and making sure I didn’t bump the weights and cause them to fall off was just too much to do. I don’t know about you but I was only born with two hands and even though all moms learn how to multi-task and do things that used to take two hands with only one because the other is holding the child, I still couldn’t do all this.
So when my husband, Steve, got home from work I told him about what problems I was having and the looked around my studio work bench and said, “If you have a dowel that will fit the spool of wire you could put the dowel in your vise and drop the spool on that. Then you wouldn’t have to hold the wire and your hands would be free.” Genius, I knew there was a reason why I’ve kept him around for 32 years.
This morning when I got to my studio I got out one of my dowels and put it in the vise, dropped the spool of wire on it and just looked at it and the Wyr Knittr. I was thinking okay I don’t have to hold the wire but I still have to turn the handle, push the stitch down, hold the Wyr Knittr, and not bump the weights causing them to fall off. Still too many things with only two hands.
I have figured out what to do with it and here is what I did. I got out the clamp I use to hold my rotary cutter when I am making jump rings, placed my vise on one side of my bench and the Wyr Knittr on the other side; I angled the Wyr Knittr so that the handle was free to rotate and the wire could drop through the center without restriction. Now all I had to do was guide the wire with one hand and turn the handle with the other. As I said before with every stitch I had to push the stitch down but found I simply turned the handle, pushed the stitch down, and turned the handle. While I would rather that I didn’t have to push the stitch down each time I found it was easy and quick to do.
I did have a problem of the wire breaking. I was using the wire that came with the Wyr Knittr and the only thing I found on their website was that it breaks when you are using too thin of a wire. What I did was when it broke at the beginning I just kept going and cut it off when I finished, but when it broke in the middle I had to quit and I ended up with a shorter piece than I wanted. Since I work a lot with wire I know that sometime I’ll need a smaller piece of this and I will get it out of my scraps and use it so it’s not a waste.
Now it was just like it should be and I was free to stuff beads into the mesh or coil it or do just about anything with it. I decided to draw it down using my Lazee Daizee Viking Knit draw plate. I pulled the mesh through the draw plate drawing it through a smaller and smaller hole. I ended up with a slightly longer piece of mesh than I started with but what was the best is that is looks like a chain. It’s very flexible and just beautiful. I can’t wait to use this tool with all the colors of 30 gauge wire I have and see what it looks like.
For what it’s worth I would recommend this tool. It’s so much easier than actually knitting wire in the round and what you end up with is so versatile you are sure to come up with thousands of ideas for your designs.
Here are some photos of my Wyr Knittr set up and the mesh I ended up with.
