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Strickliesel, spool knitting


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A Strickliesel (stricken = knitting, Liesel the girl name) is a tool to learn knitting, often painted too look like a woman and which was probably the reason to name it Liesel.

 

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Our 15year old daughter was shocked when she learned that the 'Art and Music' class would do knitting for the rest of the schoolyear. All the knitting in our household is done by an old knitting machine bought at a garage sale and was controlled by punched cards (I bought it for 20 german marks as the only interested person when I was 17). I bought it for the punched card interface which I 'needed' to automize a photo show with light effects and music (it was the time of the Commodore C64, so punch cards were still an option if you only had 64kilobyte of RAM). My older sister asked me if I could put the interface on again so she could do some knitting and as a lovely brother I said no, she could have paid the maschine herself (actually she laughed and said what the hell I would do with a knitting machine when I came home with the machine so it was a little revenge). After some discussion she agreed that she would drive me to town 20 times (driving license is with 18 and I was just 17) if I would do the interface back on. So I did it, just to be asked 3 weeks later how she could do her own punched cards for new ornaments. Since I had no card puncher I removed the interface and attached the machine to the I/O bus of the Commodore. Which turned out to be a big mistake, because now my former computer hating sister suddenly learned what she could do with a computer and asked me to do a program so she could design her own knitted clothes.

So the old machine is in usage for more than 2 decades now, and even my daughters can use the machine and know how to code their own designs, they never learned knitting without a machine. I remembered that I used a Strickliesel as a 8 year old boy to make nice headbands and so it took 15 minutes to saw a 3 inch long piece from a wooden pole with 1.5 inch diametre and drill a half inch hole in it. Using a file to clearn away possible splinters, 4 U-shaped nails hammered in the top and ready. Not as good looking as the versions you buy, but it was doing its job: teaching how to learn knitting.

It took me 5 minutes to remember how to start but then we started. Everyone wanted to try and we ended with around 7 metres of knitted cord. I searched in internet and this is a headband in the german colours for the next world soccer championship. Luckily we had produced black, red and yellow cords too. so we could do it.

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So we made nearly the same headbands and armbands I did as a kid and still a lot is left.

 

What else could be done with these cords?

 

A door stopper? Weights placed on ground are too light for our Leonberger dogs(100+ pounds). So no longer accidently shut down doors?

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Or a octopus 'guarding' the reserve roll of toilet paper?

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Hope it is correct to post this in the creative forum, because we need ideas ;)

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