Wednesday, November 3, 2010

A Green Scarf

Although I have been remiss about blogging, I did finish that scarf in no time flat. I dressed the loom on a Saturday morning and did a bit of weaving throughout that day. After I worked all day on Sunday, I came home and finished the weaving, then cut it off the loom, tied some fringe and gave it a bit of a soaking and blocking.


Monday morning I woke up to snow on the ground, so I grabbed my new scarf off the floor and was nice and warm for the walk to work.

The washing and blocking certainly helped to plump up the yarn and hide my uneven beating. While it was under tension on the loom, I could really see the difference in my weaving tension -- sometimes the rows of weft yarn would be spaced closer together or further apart. It's the first time I've woven with wool, so I'm not used to how grabby it is. Cotton or bamboo yarns are smoother and slide against each other, which helps with consistency, I think. Also, I've previously woven at a tighter sett (with the yarns all closer together, with respect to the diameter of the yarn) so I have been more used to beating each weft in pretty solidly. Weaving at a looser sett takes a gentler hand, since you don't beat the weft so much as coax it into place.

It was certainly a learning experience, and I am looking at all of my stash yarns again with a different eye -- not just for knitting possibilities, but also for weaving ones. I have already decided to reassign one big bag of wool from a hibernating knitting project to a multicoloured woven afghan.

I have many other projects on the go, as well, of course. I will get some more photos up, soon.

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