Monday, May 21, 2012

What a tangled web...

Well, not really, but there are only so many weaving quotes out there.

Anyway, I've been having fun.

 I wanted to play with Gingham, which is a variety of plaid woven with only 2 colors (one of them white). I have an entire Romney fleece that was mill spun to a worsted weight. I washed the fleece, and then sent it out to be spun. Yeah, I know- I love spinning, but I don't love spinning acres and acres of plain white. Besides, I wanted to see how the millspinning looked. Verdict: it looks great. Anyway, the white is the millspun, and the green is some of my handspun.
 I really love how this came out. It's my generic scarf size- 6 1/2" wide x 72" long (excluding fringes)(I'm still wrapping the warp around 2 kitchen chairs).
 The gingham plaid looks good too. I'm going to do more of it, probably with smaller squares.
 It wasn't until I got the scarf off the loom that I noticed this huge blooper, right in the center. Sigh.
 The non-blooper parts look pretty good though. I'm learning more and more with every project.
 On Sunday, I decided to play with leftover yarns. My only restriction was that the yarn had to be handspun, and it had to be leftover. I used assorted fibers (mostly wool, but some silk, some alpaca, some mohair blends) and weights (in some cases, I doubled the strands for the weft). I used my 8 dent heddle (8 threads per inch).
 And then I just chose colors and wove the scarf, roughly equal areas unless there wasn't enough yarn to do that. I wanted it to look semi-random. This wasn't a 3 1/2 hour scarf, but I still started and finished it on the same day.
I think it turned out really well, and I especially like the yellow/gray sections. I have plenty of that yarn on hand, and I may weave a yellow and gray scarf.

Oh, most of these scarves are not next-to-skin soft, so they'll have to be worn with collars, which isn't a big deal on a coat. Or they can all serve as table runners. However they end up being used, they're all going in the Big Tub 'O Knitted Things (which may need a title change).

2 comments:

Nancy said...

How about the Big Tub O' Fiber Things?

Nora said...

Absolutely beautiful! You almost make me inspired enough to take up spinning and weaving myself. LOL I say almost because I don't have the patients to spin never mind weave. :) Besides, with four cats I'd probably have cat hairs among the fibers if going by my own clothes is anything to go on. But I love my cats so put up with the hair getting everywhere. :)