So, an actual blog post!
Remember waaay back in early January when I took two scarves off the loom and started weaving again on the warp that was left?
Well, I wove and wove and wove (with lots of LONG breaks, focus, I lack it sometimes) and…
I was very proud of my forethought when I dressed the loom at the very beginning of putting it all back together. My back apron easily reaches to the harnesses, limiting loom waste quite well! Only had about… 8 inches of waste.
And once it was cut off the loom…
Yay! Now it’s time to cut them apart, unweave the extra weaving, and take out the sticks. Then I twisted the fringe on one scarf, and hemmed the other, getting them ready for “wet finishing.” Wet finishing means a lot of things, depending on what your desires and goals are.
I prepped these two scarves a little different. Both got soaked in hot soapy water.
Both also got shocked back and forth into cold water a few times for a weak fulling effect. The colorshifting herringbone scarf also got a far more… thorough fulling.
Actually made me sweaty. Whacked, thrashed, banged, scrubbed… fulling fabric is much harder than fulling yarn, which I suppose makes sense, given that fulling yarn is much harder than felting fiber!
Finally satisfied, I hung them up to dry…
And once dry, they’re almost ready!
Now I just needed to trim off the ends hanging out from where I changed strands (I use a totally paranoid method for changing strands more suited to something being used for like sail cloth or something).
And then they’re all done!
Both are the zephyr wool/silk warp in black. 230 ends.
The more gently fulled scarf was the primary goal of this draft. It’s the most technically complicated of any of the four. Two colors, spindle spun and spindle plied myself from batts blended by the incomparable Abby Franquemont.
I made a more complex pattern on the ends…
One of the hardest parts was figuring out how to do a color change without needing to weave in a billion ends. I took a page from knitting, at the suggestion of my fabulous sock making friend from the UK, and stranded it up the side when not in use, allowing me to use two colors at once without actually switching.
If I had it to do again I’d probably make the colorchange slower and longer, but I’m pretty happy with it!
The second scarf’s weft is BFL, and was mostly an experiment in how the color changes that came with the (beautifully dyed) fiber worked with the weaving. Spun on my Ashford Traditional, unplied, but set with a light weight to make it easier for weaving (also resulting in a less active final fabric than the previous singles weaving).
The color changes came out beautifully with the direct translation to weaving.
Similar to knitting, since I wanted to focus on the colors, I went with the simplest pattern this weaving draft can produce, a simple herringbone. I like the way it came out.
Again, I’m pretty happy with it! Originally I planned to use the fabric for sewing spindle bags and a Kindle cover, but I think that would ruin the beauty of the color changing. So it will stay a scarf. I do need to pick which scarves I’m going to actually keep, though. I’m at four, and I really don’t need four.
So, that’s one of my latest finished projects! Yaaay.
This is another thing I’ve finally started. And no, it’s not a sock.
So, a real blog update. More to come I hope!
Finally, gratuitous puppy in the rain!
That’s all for now
~The Gnome
