Adhesives for Glass from Streuter Technologies

At the beginning of the year I blogged about Streuter Technologies products after encountering them at both CHA, The Craft and Hobby Association Show and then in Las Vegas at Glasscraft . My good friend and glass goddess, Leigh Adams has always raved about their adhesives. She uses the No Days sheet and mesh adhesives for mosaic work and the fusing adhesive for, let me guess…fusing. The sheet and mesh, as well as a number of their products are heat activated. A heat gun or an oven or even a kiln at low temperature will activate the glue and the hold is amazing. But more importantly is that if you’re creating mosaic work it’s ready to grout immediately. You don’t have to wait overnight for the glue to dry. Once the piece has cooled down, you’re ready to go. And as an instructor, that allows a mosaic class in a day…even just a couple of hours. Fabulous!

And the fusing adhesive is just as cool. Sometimes you need to tack everything down and then walk it to the kiln. Any false move and there’s glass or frit everywhere without some glue to assist. Not cool. And some glues, whether you like it or not can leave a residue. Yuck. The No Days fusing adhesive leaves no residue and it dries quickly and completely. Nice…and also handy if you teach. Nobody wants to wait around for their glue to dry. And no one wants residue…

Sometimes when I’m scrolling through Ravelry a pattern will catch my eye as much because of the name as the look of the design (which is a little hard to see in those little thumbnails sometimes, anyway).

So it was with the Stellify shawl by Paola Albergamo. Stellify means to turn into a star, and the name and the story behind the shawl come from the story of Ariadne. The better known part of her story is that she helped Theseus escape from the Minotaur, but he then abandoned her. What comes after in many stories is that Dionysus found her, fell in love with her and later married her.

When he threw her jeweled crown into the sky, the Corona Borealis constellation was formed.

What does all this have to do with shawl knitting?

The shawl itself looks like it has a scattering of stars on it, as if it, too, has been stellified. The shawl begins with an I-cord tap and is shaped into a triangular shawl with both lateral and central increases. I-cord edging is incorporated into the sides, and the colorwork is done with mosaic knitting, which means this shawl is easier than it looks.

Mosaic knitting has you working with just one color per row, slipping stitches that appear in the other color to make the colorwork visible. Even better for people new to this kind of colorwork, the pattern includes written and charted instructions throughout so it should be easy to follow along.

The pattern comes in two sizes (the larger one is shown here) and calls for two colors of fingering weight yarn. It looks great in black and yellow, but don’t miss the other projects on Ravelry to see other fun and beautiful color options.

You can find the pattern in English and Italian on Ravelry.

[Photo: Paola Albergamo]

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