At the (Trollen) Wheel

The Beast to Blanket class took a big step this week! We moved from gathering and preparing materials from our woolly friends to actually using yarn to make recognizably useful objects.

You might argue, rightfully so, that thread and yarn are, in themselves, extremely useful objects. I get that. So is raw wool, if you want to include insulation and composting and other subjects in the discussion. I have to admit to feeling a little itchy when I get to this point and say NOW we’re moving on to making USEFUL THINGS with wool. There has to be a better way to express the transition we’re making.

Welcome to Weaving!

This transition, simply put, is from making threads to making things with those threads. In Beast to Blanket, we do it primarily with weaving and knitting. I start with weaving because while it takes practice to perfect, it’s very easy to grasp as a beginner, and I find that there’s a very natural transition between the peg loom weaving that we do at the end of this module and the finger knitting that we do at the beginning of the knitting module.

Weaving is done by passing threads over and under other threads, and one accessible introductory method of this is braiding or plaiting. I chose to teach the students to make and use a Trollen Wheel and make what’s referred to as a Viking Braid.

Seven Strands are Better than One

When we learned to spin, the students found that the resulting thread was stronger than a handful of the loose fibers held together. And yet, it wasn’t too hard to pull that single thread apart with a sturdy yank. We discussed how braiding and binding multiple threads together makes the resulting cord much stronger.

I passed around my sample braids and invited them to yank as hard as they liked to try and break them or to even stretch them out. I cheated a little as my samples were made out of strong acrylic yarn, but the principle is true. Many stranded cords and yarn are stronger than those with only one or two strands.

An acceptable anachronism

It’s likely inaccurate to call this activity Viking Braiding, as most serious historians have concluded the people we refer to as Vikings used lucets (two-pronged fork-like tools) to make cord with a method not too dissimilar to that of finger knitting. However, societies of Viking reenactors sometimes use Trollen Wheels to demonstrate braiding and some organizations have accepted them as permissible anachronisms in their villages.

There’s a similar Japanese method called Kumihimo using a wheel on a stand that is believed to have originated around the 6th century, so the concept is certainly not new.

In any case, making and using a Trollen Wheel is accessible and rewarding, and cements the concept of many interlocked strands being stronger than single ones. “Viking Braiding” is quick and easy, and lends itself well to situations like my class, where we don’t have much time to get a satisfying result.

Making another tool!

To make the Trollen Wheel, students traced a plastic oatmeal lid (or other similarly sized circle) onto sturdy mat board and cut out the circle. Using a ruler and a pencil, students then drew four lines bisecting the circle on the diameter. Precision isn’t important. I drew a plus sign, and then drew another one with the lines centered between the first plus sign I’d drawn. The goal is to find roughly where the center is, and have eight points around the circle that are somewhat evenly spaced apart.

The next step is to make a hole in the center of the wheel, where all those lines cross. We made a tool to make it easy for the young kids in my class. We drilled a hole through a 2×4 block, then sharpened the end of a dowel. I had the kids center their wheel over the block with the hole, put the point of the dowel on the center of the wheel where the lines met, and then whack the unsharpened end of the dowel with another 2×4 block. A hole was easily made, and they worked the dowel around to widen the hole enough for our purposes.

Finally, we cut small, narrow slots at each of the eight places where the lines met the outside of the circle, coming no further than one-third of the distance from the edge of the circle to the center of the hole. Narrow cuts are best, as the slot will “grab” the yarn and hold it tight while you’re working with other strands.

That’s all there is to a Trollen Wheel. We had fun thinking about how you’d make them from materials found in nature (we agreed a tree trunk would be easiest). I showed them a (dull) circular saw blade that was perfectly suited to be used, as well. You could skip the mat board altogether and use the plastic oatmeal container lid itself if you wanted to. As I repeated to my students, this is a low-tech tool!

Braiding Time

To begin the braid, cut seven equal lengths of yarn. You don’t want them to be too long, as they tend to tangle as you go, and that’s no fun when you’re learning. I think three feet is about right to start. Tie them all together at one end and push that knot through the hole of your Trollen Wheel.

Put one strand of yarn in each of seven of your eight slots in your Trollen Wheel. You will have one empty slot remaining. Pull them snugly so that the knot of yarn is floating right at the level of the hole in the wheel, not dipping down below it. You’ll get the best results if you braid snugly, but don’t worry if that doesn’t happen right away. Like everything else, practice helps!

Hold the wheel parallel to the ground and with the empty slot closest to you. Counting to the left from the empty slot, pick up the third strand and move it to the empty slot. Notice you are pulling (braiding/weaving) that third strand over two other strands.

Rotate the wheel so the empty slot is closest to you. Pick up the third strand on the left of the empty slot and move it to the empty slot.

Repeat the bolded instructions. Eventually you will see the braid building from the knot in the center. Pull it down through the hole as it builds. Continue braiding until the piece is as long as you want it to be or until your strands are getting too short to work comfortably. Remove all strands from the slots and tie them all together as you did the first knot.

You can see above that Greg tried twine on the circular saw blade and paracord on another wheel. I think the kids got a charge out of seeing some other examples of Trollen Wheels and braiding materials. We’d even found something similar at Walmart.

I just barely got all the students going on their braiding before the end of class. We’ll see how far they get this week. I did promise sugar to the longest total length produced over the week. I wonder if the parents will love or hate that by Sunday night?

Beginning Knitter Project Report

Greg and I finally found a few minutes on the same continent, in daylight, to sit down together and go through finishing off his knitting projects. And so, overachiever that he is, Greg has not one, not two, but three finished objects!

Before:

And after binding off and weaving in the ends:

The two at the bottom are the same pattern, a basic 40-stitch garter stitch dishcloth, and you can see the improvement in tension and consistency very clearly. I think that’s such an encouraging picture for a beginning knitter to see. It just takes a little bit of practice to see very noticeable results!

He’s got some choices to make about what he does next. We’re all eager to see what he decides.

What are you working on today?

Happy knitting!

Kiersten J