Tag: rigid heddle

An Awkward Scarf, or Why I Should Never Use This Yarn Again

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  • image from www.flickr.com
  • image from www.flickr.com
  • image from www.flickr.com
image from www.flickr.com

 

In my defense, it was extremely early in the morning when I decided to use up some of the four skeins of Lion Brand Homespun I had purchased a long time ago, probably thinking I'd knit an afghan or shawl. But have you ever used this stuff? It's not easy to knit at all. So, I wondered how it would look as a woven scarf. I warped my loom (again, very early in the morning), extending the warp. I can get exactly 87" of a warp from the back beam of my loom to the far wall, so I extended the warp to the end of my bookshelf, adding an additional 30". That's one smart thing I did. The other was I only warped every other slot/hole to change my 10 dent heddle into a 5 dent heddle. Yes, part of my brain was awake and thinking.

But after weaving a dozen rows, I was terribly unhappy with my scarf. It looks like a muppet, but in a bad way, because most muppets are cute, and this isn't cute. So, I spent at least an hour experimenting with different ways to add in some really pretty homespun (in this case, it's actually homespun) of a plum color with a touch of sparkle. I tried using pick-up sticks, which didn't work well with the spacing of the warp (too wide), and I tried Danish Medallions. I actually think these are pretty, but my silly wide warping is messing up the edges. 

I think I'll let it sit for awhile and come back to it. One idea is to just add in a single strand of the plum color for every three or four of the LB Homespun. My weaving motto: if you don't screw up, you're extremely boring.

Finished: Tangerine Scarf

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  • image from www.flickr.com
  • image from www.flickr.com
image from www.flickr.com

 

 

 

I hand washed it this morning and it didn't shrink one bit, so the edges are still a bit bumpy but oh well. There you have it, a bright orange mohair/merino/cotton scarf, washed, dried, ironed, triple fringe knotted, and waiting for cooler days. It was woven on my trusty Glimakra Emilia rigid heddle loom. It's a fun and cheerful scarf, although the pictures captured it in a quiet, rather somber mood. 

Tangerine Scarf

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  • image from www.flickr.com
  • image from www.flickr.com
image from www.flickr.com

 You know, I must have my old orange Vox blog on my brain, because this scarf reminds me of it. I used Cascade Pima 100% cotton for the warp, warping 8" wide and 88" long. I used the 10 dent heddle on my Glimakra Emila, which as of right now is the only size heddle I own. The cotton is smooth and a little shiny. The warp is a bright, orange mohair. Orange! It's stranded, which means there's one fine strand of mohair right alongside another strand of merino. Out of the 220 yards of the warp, I used practically the entire skein. The weft, though, left me with about 100 yards, so there's enough for another project if I ever foresee needing another bright orange mohair woven item. I started this last week and took it off the loom this morning, with just a handful of hours of weaving. Now, I need to wash and finish off the fringes.

It's time to think about pumpkins and nice orange leaves. What better way to welcome fall than with a very bright orange scarf?

Coming soon: the sad story of a broken Weave-It 4" loom.

Frogging, weaving style

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So, in a crazy fit of I-really-don't-like-this-at-all-REALLY, I cut off my clasped weft project and tossed it. If it was a knitting project, it would have been frogged, but seeing that it's a weaving project, all caught up in strands, it was tossed.

It wasn't that I didn't want a clasped weft strap, it was more that I didn't like the colors, and the pattern wasn't to my liking. So, "snip." Thankfully, the yarn was very-nearly free, and the warp was extremely short, so there wasn't much waste.

In other news, I'm happily waiting for "The Weaver's Idea Book: Creative Cloth on a Rigid Heddle Loom," by Jane Patrick. There's an awful lot of excitement about it on Ravelry, and some are saying it will rank alongside Betty Linn Davenport's classic, "Hands on Rigid Heddle Weaving." We'll see!