Experiment in Stripes

Another scrappy scarf, this time using the Irelande and Chocolate and Robin's Egg blue from previous scarves, and some Chartreuse Patons Wool with a bit of Peace Fleece in Kamchatka Sea Moss.

I did a warp stripe, but it's almost lost in the twill - I swear the weft was open enough when I was weaving it!  You can see the angle of the twill is pretty much 45 degrees, so I'm not sure why the vertical stripe is so subtle.

What shows up fairly well is the sort of fade I did to change from blue to chartreuse and back again.  I think it really turned out, and makes a cooler transition than just a clean break from one colour to another.

Happy holidays to one and all - I'll be out of town and away from my loom, so the last scarf will have to wait until next weekend!

Using the Leftovers - Purples/Grey

And so my beautiful loom, Miss Bennet, is naked again.  (Don't look!  She's shy.)  The last of this year's series of Kindergarten Scarves is finished, washed and dried and ready to go.

For this one, I did another plaid in 2/2 twill - this time I didn't mirror the colour sequence, but rather repeated it twice across the width of the scarf.  Then I wove the same repeat for the length.  Because I had more of the grey and lavender (Montmartre) left over, I doubled the width of those stripes in comparison to the other four, which worked out perfectly to balance the light shades and dark shades.  My only regret is the lack of symmetry, i.e. not having one more column up one side to make it five colour blocks wide instead of four.  That would satisfy my aesthetic side a bit better.

The funny thing is that of this year's scarves, the ones that were unplanned were the ones I got the best feedback on.  Maybe next year I'll just skip the planning and do a series of assorted plaids.

I present to you, the Kindergarten Scarves, 2012 series:

Using the Leftovers - Blues/Greens

Having made so many scarves in this series, I had quite a bit of yarn left over, and split it up into two piles: blues/greens and purples/grey.  I had plenty of each left to make a final couple of scarves.

For this one, I arrayed the blues and greens in a progression of colour, mirroring it at the center.  Then I wove it following the same progression.  It made for a nice plaid and I really think it's my favourite of this year's scarves.  Maybe it's just because I picked all these colours in the first place and I think they're all so pretty...

Kindergarten Scarf Qq

I can't think of anything clever that Q might stand for, but here is the next scarf, nevertheless.

Another crazy design in crazy colours -- as someone with no kids, this is the sort of thing I believe they like -- this one is in Garnet Heather for the warp (a sort of plummy wine purple) with Citron for the weft (a glorious bright apple green.)

You're looking at front and back, there.  Not a lot of difference between them, but some of you might pick it up.  I had a challenge in making the diamonds even - some of them are a bit stretched out on one side because I wasn't totally consistent with my weaving.

That's the last of the scarves in original colours.  I am doing two more using up all the leftovers: one in blues/greens and one in purples.  I've started the first one, and I think it might be the nicest, yet.

N is for Navy

It might look more black than navy, but trust me on this one - that's a grey and navy 4-shaft houndstooth  you're looking at.  I figured that not all kids are playful and colourful and looking for wacky scarves - some are more conservative, like future PC party members (or Young Republicans, for our neighbours in the south.)  This scarf will match perfectly with a dressy grey or navy suit that any kid might aspire to wearing.

Not Quite a Burberry Scarf

When I first put these leftover shades together for a scarf, I thought of it as just a bunch of autumn tones.  After weaving a bit, they started to remind me of a Burberry Scarf, if only the colours were a bit different (and of course the plaid was more regular.)

I started this one out with a warp using a 6:2:6:10:4 repeat.  With only four colours, this means that it would make an irregular-looking pattern.  Once I started weaving, using the same repeat, I soon realized that I wouldn't have enough of most of the colours to make the scarf long enough.  I had lots of the natural, though, so I started to incorporate longer sections of natural within a random design.  You can see the transition between the left and right panels.  It certainly ended up an irregular scarf, but still sort of cute.

L is for Lightning

I decided to start using up some of the leftovers, for this scarf, and picked a simple 2/2 twill with Oxblood for the warp and Lemon Yellow for the weft.  I thought it would make an interesting scarf if I did a bunch of random back-and-forth with the twill, and it did.  Then I realized that I was going to run out of yellow before the scarf was long enough, so I had to throw in a bunch of natural yarn to make up the difference, and I did it randomly in amongst the random twill.  It made for an interesting effect, overall.  If I had the choice, I would have rather it was just yellow, since I think that colour combination vibrates less, but as Tim Gunn would say: make it work.