Fire & Water

I started just playing around with different colour combinations, since I have a lot of colours to work with, this year, so I made a scarf with a combination of red/orange/yellow in the warp.  I was going to do the whole weft in a lighter yellow (as you see in the bottom right of the photo) but decided that the light colour was washing out all of the vibrancy of the warp.  I plopped some orange stripes in there, and that helped, so then I switched to some darker paprika stripes and liked that too.  For the darkest colour, I also shrunk the width of the stripe, just to keep things interesting.  I think the way it changes looks pretty cool.

Then I decided to try something with a greenier tone, so I put a couple of pale greens and a yellow in the next warp and wove it with a light blue and a darker blue/green, in an unequal ratio.  The combination of colours makes me think of Aquaman, though I'm sure no kids today would even know who that is.

It's Time to Light the Lights

Two more scarves for the kids:

I was looking at an example of the clasped weft technique in one of my old weaving magazines, a while ago, and had an epiphany, that I could use it to make a cool zig-zag scarf.  It didn't take long to get from there to the idea of a Kermit the Frog scarf, emulating the little green pointy collar he has around his neck.  The technique worked perfectly and was so easy!  Maybe I'll use it again sometime to do something more harlequin-y.

Having done a Kermie scarf, I thought the pink and purple one I followed up with might suit Miss Piggy, since it made me think of her purple opera gloves.  I chose a bunch of colours for evenly spaced stripes in the warp and then did a two-colour stripe for the weft.  It's nicer than this, in person, I just couldn't get the colours right in the photo.

More to come!

The Season for Scarves

So it's that time of year again, where I occupy my weaving loom (Miss Bennet) with a whole series of quick and fun and colourful scarves for donation.  This year I inadvertently started out with a bit of a Disney theme, since my first inspiration was to weave a scarf for all the little girls who want to be Elsa, from Frozen.  I just picked a handful of representative colours and did the warp randomly, and the weft in little stripes of two colours.

Then my next thought was of a recent favourite Disney lady of mine, Merida, from Brave.  I did a tartan-ish design (she's Scottish, so duh) and used the colours of her dress and hair to weave it.  I really love how it turned out, particularly since I was lazy about it and just used two of the colours for weft, when there were so many more in the warp.

My third inspiration was Maleficent, from the recent movie version with Angelina Jolie.  I used a bunch of darker colours in the warp (and again two in stripes in the weft) but this time did an inlay technique with a couple of shades of green (like green misty magic.)  Well, the two shades of green turned out to be a bit too close, since they look pretty much like the same yarn, and the mist might look more like PacMan, but I still think it's really cool how it turned out.

I have another scarf on the loom right now, but am always looking for inspiration, if you have any ideas...

Snowflakes in Red

Every serious crafter knows you'd better have your holiday ducks in a row by the time the leaves start changing, or you'll be caught in a mad panic, come December.

I'm pretty well on top of things this year (it helps that I don't really participate much in exchanging gifts at the holidays) and am just enjoying this cute set of striped towels before I get serious about working on my charity weaving.

Don't you just love 'em?

Why Are There So Many Scarves About Rainbows

This is the final scarf of this year's Kindergarten Scarf series, and none to soon, since it's the Zz scarf.  I might have to use the Greek alphabet to name them, next year!

This one is another scarf of leftovers, this time using leftover yarn from my Hue Shift Afghan (in every colour of the rainbow) and a bit of teal from my Opie hat.  You might notice that this scarf is therefore 100% acrylic.  Not my favourite, but certainly practical for a kid.

I used all of the colours (except the violet from the weft) to wind the warp, mostly in random single stripes, with a few doubled.  I had tons of the violet, which is why I chose to use it for the weft, but not quite enough to do the whole weft with it, so I considered a few options for stripes.  In the end, I did a 4:2 ratio, with 4 picks of violet to 2 picks of an alternate colour.  I did wide bands of the colours rather than changing up the alternate colour a lot, mostly because it would leave me with fewer ends to weave in.  With wool it's not so bad, because the ends will felt into the fabric somewhat, but with acrylic, I'm a bit more worried about things working themselves loose, so I figured the fewer ends the better.

I'm really happy with this one - I think it's pretty wild and some kid will love it!

Tenth Doctor Scarf 2.0

Lest you think you're seeing double, this is actually a second version of the previous scarf I wove.

As I mentioned in the last post, I decided the first scarf might be a bit on the itchy-wool side of things, so I wanted to weave the same pattern in something softer.

Believe it or not, I had the two exact right yarns just sitting in my stash (it really pays to have too much yarn, sometimes.)  I have a little basket of SweetGeorgia yarn (mostly sock yarn, and yes, a whole basket just for her yarns) and I realized that I had two skeins of Cashluxe Fine in there, in the colourway Bison, that were just the absolute most perfect brown for this scarf.  And with 20% cashmere, definitely on the soft and luxurious side of the spectrum.  Then I remembered I had a skein of Tough Love sock in the Mist colourway, which is an almost ideal shade for the pinstripe - I was aiming for a cornflower blue, and Mist is just a skosh more purpley, but pretty darn close.  So, voila!  A second Tenth Doctor scarf from my stash. 

You can see that the Mist is a bit variegated, which gives some nice visual interest to the stripes, and the Bison is fairly solid, which makes a nice even background fabric.  It's soft and drapey and wonderful and I really couldn't be happier with the end result.  Hopefully the recipient feels the same way!

Tenth Doctor Scarf

Recently I gave into some peer pressure and began watching Doctor Who.  I started with the Christopher Eccleston series, since I've loved him for years - at least since Shallow Grave, if not even before that.  I enjoyed him a lot as the Ninth Doctor, and now I'm up to my ears in the Tenth, the David Tennant years.

Every Doctor, of course, has their own sense of style, and the brown pinstripe suit that Tennant wears, early on in his tenure, really stuck with me.  I decided that it would be fun to emulate it with a scarf inspired by that pinstripe design.  I had some fingering weight wool in a nice dark brown, and only needed a smidgen of blue for the pinstripe.  Even though the colours weren't quite perfect, they still look great and I'm pretty proud of how well it echoes the textile of the suit.


The weaving was finished last night, and I gave it a good soak and hung it to dry.  It turned out quite soft, although the wool still has a potential for itchiness against bare skin.  The fabric itself is a loose weave, as you can see with the sunlight peeking through it, toward the left in the photo.  It makes a lovely and lightweight and pliable fabric, all floppy and foldy, which is perfect, since the scarf is wide and long enough to be squished up and looped and tucked through itself.

I'm really happy with this one, although I do plan to revisit it again, in more accurate colours and softer yarn.

And I do really appreciate the irony of a Doctor Who scarf that isn't the stereotypical Tom Baker number.

Dusting Off the Loom

It's been a couple of months since I've had anything on my loom.  I had good intentions of doing some sewing this summer, so I cleared the loom off my table to make room, but you know what they say about good intentions...  I ended up just spending my summer knitting and never got around to the sewing.

This week I had some inspiration for a new weaving project with some leftover yarn I had laying around.  Yesterday I did the requisite weaving math and wound the warp.  Today I sleyed it and wound it on and wove a header.  Only one small mistake which was an easy fix, and now this cool new scarf is officially a work in progress.

I am so excited!

Horoscope Shawl

Way back in May, I showed you a progress photo of a wrap that I was weaving.  I finally got the finished project shots back from my photographer, so now I can give you the whole story.

When I was a beginning weaver, I did a lot of websurfing to look at weaving projects.  Somewhere along the way, I ran across Bonnie Tarses' website, and found inspiration in her work.  She was creating these pieces based on horoscopes - she would make a sort of map of the sky in the moment a person was born, and use colour and texture to indicate the position of the astrological houses and planets in that moment.  I was entranced by their beauty, and although I thought it was well beyond my skill level at that point, I ordered myself a kit to make one.

Having made a lot of other things in the meantime, the horoscope shawl was always in the back of my mind, and this year when my birthday rolled around, I thought it would be a perfect time to bring this project to the head of my weaving queue.

Winding the warp was the intimidating part - it involved 12 different colours of Bambu 7, being wound in a very specific order, often with two (or three or four) alternating.  It was a challenge to get it right, while keeping the cross intact and not ending up with a tangled mess of spools on the floor.

After the warp was wound, it was a relatively easy process to dress the loom (thanks to a couple of really helpful tips from Bonnie) and then the weaving itself was simple and meditative, being just a basic plain weave in one colour of Bambu 12.  Throughout the weaving process, I spent a lot of time just admiring the colours, stroking it and feeling the texture of the "planets" nestled in the smooth fabric.

The finished product is a soft and colourful wrap - bamboo yarn has a great hand and drapes like a dream.  As you can see, I added a band of blue to either side of the horoscope, to widen the wrap a bit, and make it a more appropriate size for me.  I think it ended up just about perfect, and look forward to using it to brighten up some outfits, on dressy occasions.

Currently on the Loom

I decided which weaving project to start, next.

And it's a real stunner, I think you'll agree.

More details when it's finished.