I am playing around with four shafts on the Louet W30 loom. Believe it or not, the yarn is the old Red Heart acrylic I kept meaning to put in a giveaway box. I finally decided to use it up. I “think” this is a twill, but it reverses the patten. It’s on page 71 of The Handweaver’s Pattern Directory by Anne Dixon.
It's better this time around. I rethreaded the edges to continue with the pattern. I also got rid of the floating selvedge. The bottom half is woven with the black thread always over the gray. The second set is with the black thread under, but only on the right side. I think it looks the best with it over. Lucky thing, I only have to "unweave" one pattern set. Always learning something new…
If you check the January/February 2012 issue of Handwoven, there’s an article devoted to weaving pinwheels on an eight shaft loom. If you also check Ravelry, you’ll find there’s a weave-along featuring pinwheels. So my loom was empty, and I wanted to try eights shafts. Guess what I decided to weave?
With the yarn I chose (crochet cotton at 40 wpi), doubled in a 10 dent reed, the designs that worked the best were the ones marked B and C in the article. After trying five different ones, I finally decided to try either B or C in a slightly longer sample (the second from the bottom and the third from the bottom in these pictures). I have no real goal other than trying something with eight shafts. Because this is only a 3″ wide warp, it could become something crazy like a bookmark.
Next up: another scarf. I’m crazy about scarves!
I finally finished the fringes on my second rambler rose scarf/wrap/shawl. It ended up shrinking down to about 9.75″ wide after washing, which means I lost about 1.5″ in width! Quite a bit. I made a true beginner’s mistake by washing it before twisting the fringes. I’ve done this a dozen times without any problems, but this time, the fringes came out of the washing machine in a big knot. They were twisted around each other and nearly each one separated into its own little fringes, meaning I had a huge mess on my hands. Instead of the hour or so I estimated it would take me to twist the fringes, it ran over three. I also had to spritz them to keep them fairly flat, as they had a mind of their own and curved all over the place. Another lesson learned.
For anyone who is interested, this is a four shaft pattern. I’m am taking a little breather before jumping into the next multi-shaft project which will use all eight–pinwheels! In the meantime, I’ve been playing around on my other looms, making a cotton belt on the Emilia and practicing some inlay on the Kessenich.
