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...

Galactica

For the first FO of 2014, I have a scarf, but not just any scarf.  This is the sort of scarf that only a crazy person would begin, since it is done in fingering weight yarn on 2.75mm needles.  I also had to learn a new technique (Brioche stitch) to knit it, but once I saw the design up on the Purl Bee, I just had to do it.

The first question, then, was what yarn to use to knit it.  I'm a huge fan of Madelinetosh and when I saw the Spectrum colourway of their Tosh Merino Light, I fell in love.  My skeins are a bit darker than the samples on the website, but there is still an undertone of deep purpley blue with all of the colours of the rainbow within.  I like the way that, at a distance, it appears to be more of a semisolid, but up close it is so complex and beautiful.

Brioche stitch turns out to be pretty simple and also fun to do, which made it easy to dedicate a lot of knitting time to this project.  I also wanted to get it done quickly, to make sure I got some good use out of it this winter (I'm sure that won't be a problem, given the weather lately) so I watched a ton of Battlestar Galactica while I knit row after row, inch after inch, of Brioche.  It seemed like it took forever, but according to the Ravelry page, it was actually only about 35 days.  I guess that just proves how hard it is to be monogamous to any one project.  Thank goodness I have a bunch more to work on, now.

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!

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!

A Little Bit Hobbit

Changing up to a different sort of colour scheme for this one, I chose some nature-shades for a little hippie kid.  Upon weaving it, I find it very hobbitty.  The vertical element of this scarf really makes me think of trees.  Needless to say, I like it.

More Cascade 220 Wool Heathers, this time it's Chocolate Heather and Irelande Heather.

Another scrappy scarf is up next.

Using the Leftovers - Oranges & Pinks

Once I've made a few of these scarves, I have enough leftovers from the colours used to make a new scarf with the combination.  This time I added a bit of Galway wool in Natural and a bit of Custom Woolen Mills wool in Red, to round things out and give a bit more contrast.

I kept it in hopsack, which for some reason I thought would end up looking different than just a fat plain weave.  Live and learn.

I do love these crazy plaids, and I'm betting some of the kids do, too.

Shrimp & Eggs

I like to put a few unconventional scarves in the pile, in some crazy colours, because I know that kids aren't afraid to have fun the way some adults can be.  I'm also kind of into hopsack at the moment, so for this scarf, I revisited a hopsack design that I'd used in the past: sort of a windmill design.

While I was weaving, I decided the Robin Egg blue and Shrimp pink didn't have enough contrast to be really effective in this design.  In fact, the fear of that was partly the reason I chose a pattern that had big blocky elements to it.  One of these days I'll remember to think more about contrast when planning colour combinations.  For now, it's just one more warm and wooly scarf done.

Weaves with Orange

For the second scarf, I chose another classic weaving pattern - a simple but effective herringbone design - in some unconventional shades of orange.  The darker one is Provence, which I used last year as well, in a crazier scarf, and the lighter one is Tangerine.

I was a bit concerned that there wouldn't be enough contrast for it to look good, but I think it ended up being a nice subtle herringbone.

If you're thinking that this year's scarves are a bit conventional, don't worry.  Things are about to get wild.

Another year, another pile of scarves

I got a bit of a slow start on the Kindergarten Scarves this year.  I've been meaning to weave a set of towels and even wound the warp to make them, but just never got inspired enough to put them on the loom.  Eventually I decided I'd have to make the scarves first, since time is ticking away, so I set the towel warp aside and started to wind some wool.

The first one I made is a fabulous pink and black houndstooth for some fashion-forward kid.  I kind of love this one a lot, and would gladly keep it for myself.  One can never have enough scarves, after all.

I definitely found my scarf mojo with this one, and have been diligently weaving since then.  I'm pretty excited about how things are going!

Magic Carpet Ride

Sometimes all the basic hats and socks and sweaters have to give way for something a little more spectacular, something a little more shiny.  Even in winter, a girl needs a little bit of something precious and lovely.  This particular lacy bit of a scarf is not for me, but it's something I'd love to keep, if I could.

The colour is a bit off in the photo (and yes, I also know it's blurry; I'm terrible at this, sometimes.)  This is an amazing alpaca/silk blend in a beautiful teal colourway, with pretty coppery beads glittering throughout either end.

I had ordered nice matte teal beads for this project, initially, but once I started to knit, I realized that the beads were too perfect a match for the yarn - they were almost invisible, so what was the point of doing all that beading?  I frogged the knitting, went back online, and ordered a second batch of beads, this time in a beautiful metallic copper - sure to be visible!  I love the colour combination, and think that it was a much better decision to change things up.

The original pattern also has a column of beads up either edge of the scarf, which would indeed be beautiful, but I see the potential for those beads to be a cold shock against the neck when initially putting the scarf on, so I left those columns off.

It was a somewhat complex project, with several charts to work off at any one time.  It also seemed to take ages to knit this, but I expect that's just because I was working on a few projects at once, and most of them were smaller and simpler and used fatter yarns.  In the end, it's quite lovely, and should be warm, too, even though it's light as a feather.

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!

The Joker's Henchman

Just when you thought I was done showing off scarves, I pull out one more.  I actually made this one in the midst of all of the Kindergarten Scarves (and the leftovers from it were included in the plaids) but it's actually a separate project.  Because I was so in-the-groove with weaving wooly scarves, I offered to make one for one of my friends, if she was interested.  She bought the wool (Cascade 220 in Chartreuse and Heather) and picked the weaving draft (which she liked when she saw it in the Jj scarf) and I wove it up for her a week or so ago.

Although "little green men" might make you think of aliens, the colours actually evoke the Joker for me.  I guess that makes her one of the Joker's henchmen.  She loves it, which is what really matters.

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.

P is for Purple

Yesterday, as my series of Kindergarten Scarves starts to near the end, I decided to go with something a little fancier and more complicated than most of the ones I've done, so far.  I had set aside two shades of purple for this design, an M&W threading for a 2/2 twill.  I was worried that a lot of the detail would be lost in the fluffy wool, but it actually turned out pretty nice, after washing and drying.  It will be nice for a kid with an eye for detail.

The day before yesterday I did the last of the hopsack scarves - this one was a 3:1 hopsack, which made a design of little magenta squares on one side of the scarf, and little teal squares on the other side.  The squares fluffed up quite a bit and it seems like a thicker scarf than the others, which might just be an illusion.  I like that the two layers are coordinated but different.