More Ruffles...

I actually managed to hem, photograph and list a scarf today. Wow.


Black merino yarn combined with a hot pink tencel that I dyed myself back before I was pregnant with Conall. It's been lying around, looking at me accusingly, so I decided to finally use it in a brightly colored scarf...

I am really having fun with this differential shrinkage stuff. It's very neat to give up a measure of control - weavers are such control freaks - once you put it in the washing machine, all you can really do is cross your fingers and hope it comes out right...

And, obviously, we're home again! We had a very fun trip to Stowe, lots of good skiing for everyone (even on the day that it rained - it just sprinkled up on the mountain and it turned the snow soft-ish, very much like spring skiing - and the rain scared everyone away, so, no lift lines!).

This is what happens when an almost-four-year-old skis for a couple hours:

She was so crashed, she didn't even realize that Tia Lexi had stopped in for a surprise visit (photo by Lexi). Conall knew though, and flirted appropriately.



Very neat to see Lexi! :) And I can't wait to get back up to Stowe - probably next weekend, the cats would never forgive us if we went up again right away. We were looking at real estate listings up there a little bit... So close to being able to swing a little vacation condo, that would be awesome! Maybe in another year or two...

Ruffles Galore!

So, here's the latest installment in the experimenting with differential shrinkage saga:

Hee! I love it! Not quite a poofy as the last one (which I thought was a bit tooo poofy), but still all ruffly and fun. Here's another pic:



I have listed it in my etsy shop, but this is one of those ones that I kind of want to keep for myself. Ah well, I can always make another, maybe in a different colorway (I'm very partial to purples on myself after all)... Fun - I'm loving this texture!

Noodling Along

Ever have one of those days/weeks? I feel like I've sort of been treading water so far this week.

I'm working on two projects - an 8-shaft plaited twill scarf on my big loom, and another shrinkage experiment on my little loom. They're both very nice projects, but they're also slow to weave, or so it feels... I like the shrinkage experiments, but, MAN, are they boring to weave. I've gotten so used to weaving with two shuttles/multiple colors, that weaving with just one weft is kind of dull.

But I think it will be pretty in the end - here it is on the loom:

Photos of projects on the loom always end up looking washed out. Hmph. It's black merino, with blue and teal tencel stripes - the merino will shrink and the tencel will poof, as before. I've made it narrower and I'm making it longer (yawwwwwn, lol). I think I'm going to have to start dying some yarn to make these projects more interesting, because I am *really* liking the poof effect. Was also thinking of making some chokers/neckwarmers out of some of this fabric eventually...

Happy Birthday to Me

Hey, it's my birthday! We won't talk about how old I am. :)

I got a nice early birthday present last night - a lovely customer bought two of my scarves! The Un Poco Caliente full-size scarf, and the spring green and yellow scarflette (sorry, Mum, I know you loved that one).

I'm also in the midst of experimenting with differential shrinkage. First, I tried a doubleweave scarf (two layers of cloth, basically) woven with 18/2 merino wool and Bambu 7 (inspired by the similar double-weave scarf in The Best of Weavers: Fabrics That Go Bump), just as a starting point. I fulled it - the idea being that the wool yarn shrinks, the bamboo yarn doesn't, and you end up with ruffles - and it came out pretty good! A bit too heavy, in the end, for my taste.

So, then I tried just a normal plain weave scarf, instead of doubleweave, still using the 18/2 merino wool (sett very loosely) and Tencel as the non-shrinking fiber. This came out much better!

Here is is before wet finishing:



And, here it is after wet finishing (sent it through the wash twice, actually):



It's kind of hard to see, but not only did the Tencel get all nice and pucker-y, but the white merino at the edges have a nice little scallop to them as well. Neato!

It's too short (it shrank by about 50% in length) and too fat (didn't shrink as much width-wise, which makes sense, I used white Tencel as the weft), so I'm trying again with different colors, but I'm completely tickled! How fun!

WeaveCast and an Unhappy Project...

So, I've been working on a really pretty 8-shaft shadow weave scarf on my big loom. It's made of 18/2 Jaggerspun wool, in teal and silvery grey - quite a nice combination, it has turned out, for a men's scarf. BUT. Sigh. Partway through, I snapped a warp thread. Phooey. Repairable, but I don't like to sell anything with an error like that in it. So, I thought, ok, I'll give it to Carlos for Christmas, he'll like it, he's already looked at it and said he likes it. And then, partway through, my pattern starts getting all out of whack. What on earth?? My treadling hasn't changed, I haven't got the shuttle order backwards (you use two shuttles and to weave shadow weave). Weirdness.

Turns out on of the cords that tie-up my one of my treadles (the 8th one, actually) had come undone, so whenever I opened the shed with that 8th treadle, the first shaft wasn't rising. Hmph. My big loom lives in the basement (poor thing) and the lighting isn't spectacular (poor me, lol), or I might have spotted it earlier, there's a definite weft float in the pattern for about half of the scarf. Argh!

So much for my powers of observation.

I'm going to blame it on Syne Mitchell.

Syne has a wonderful (free) podcast all about weaving - WeaveCast. It's great! Go check it out now!

At any rate, I've been listening to it while weaving this scarf (weaving with 18/2 wool is a slooooow process) and was having such fun listening - and laughing - that I wasn't paying enough attention to my project.

Does this mean I'll leave the iPod behind while weaving this evening?

Nope. :) I'm only through episode 2 of 18!