Hot and Color Exercises

Not a whole heck of a lot going on over here - Mr. Conall just got his third tooth, so, as any parent knows, it's been a lovely couple of days with him, poor little man. Add to that the heat, and, well... yuck. We did finally break down and put in a couple window air conditioners, though, so we've stopped the melting. So spoiled - we didn't put them in at all last summer, it was so mild.

On the weaving front, I have two new projects going that I'm really enjoying - a turned twill scarf using six colors of Tencel and a turned Ms and Os in some of the new bamboo I bought. I also have a bunch of organic cotton yarn from Silk City waiting to go on my big loom - can't wait to try it out! I love working with eco-friendly yarns, and this cotton is not only organic, but raised under Fair Trade Standards, too, hooray. Expensive, of course, but worth it, I think. Must get around to taking some pictures...

The six color combination is directly from my teacher at the Worcester Center for Crafts, Rita Steinbach. She's a wonderful weaver with an awesome color sense. At some point in her education, she had a teacher tell her to experiment every day with color - and that one of the easiest ways to do that was to use crayons! Just take six colors and draw elongated squiggles with them across the page - the colors overlap and wind around one another, and it really is quite surprising to see how they work together, even colors you wouldn't necessarily think to combine. So, this scarf has two shades of green, varying shades of red/browns (adobe, sienna, and a chestnut color) and a nice little zing of red-purple.

The warp is really pretty, I think. As usual on a project like this, though, I'm second guessing my weft color (I'm using the sienna right now). Happily, I put on enough warp for two scarves, so I'll try out another weft color for the second one. Or more than one weft color if I'm feeling ambitious.

That's another Rita tip - put on enough warp for three of whatever you're making. I've found that two is about my outside limit, what with my limited attention span, I often have a tough time making it through two, never mind three!