Saturday

French Spool Knitters

Four new spool knitters were listed in our Etsy shop today.  The woods are birdseye maple, apricot, tiger maple and white ash.  Each spool knitter comes with a matching loop lifter.

The basic shape of most knitters is always a tube or spool shape with a hole in the center and different numbers of pins around the top to serve as a mini loom. While Dave has made a variety of different knitter shapes, he most commonly uses the basic shape that comes from a duck or goose call. Millions of duck hunters can’t be wrong! He has used these calls himself while hunting waterfowl and during his game warden days he checked hundreds of hunters with the calls hanging around their necks on lanyards. He doesn’t know when the basic shape of the duck call first came about but it has been round for over a hundred years and is the best design for hand holding.


When he was turning a few different game calls he noted how similar the shape was to the original “Knitting Nancy” spool knitters so he adapted the basic shape of the lower part of the game calls to be the primary shape of his spool knitters. Like duck calls, they can be carved, inlayed, burn etched or embellished in many different ways.