Friday, February 27, 2009

It's the end of the month as we know it... [Scarf 20]


Well, folks, there it is: the 20th and final scarf of Scarfaday Month One. It's hard to believe that a whole month and yet only a month has gone by already! Truth be told, I'm not sure if it seems longer or shorter than a month... funny how that goes, eh wot?

I hope to post a wrap up of the month tomorrow so I'll just blog today's scarfa as usual. I do want to mention a couple of things first, though:

1) I'll be going back through old posts tomorrow see if there are questions in the comments that I never got around to answering. If you've got questions about anything you've seen in the blog so far, add a comment to this post and I'll answer as best I can.

2) Scarfaday is not over! Tomorrow I'll wrap up Month One and on Monday I'll be posting my revised rules of engagement for March and the months following. There will be some changes but I definitely plan to continue for as long as I can, so please keep coming back!

3) Be sure to check back Monday when I'll also be posting about my first free giveaway. I always get a big kick out of the giveaways I see on other blogs so I'm going to have one too - yay! Hopefully it will be the first of many. :D


And now for ... dum dum dum dum duuuuuuuummmmmm ... Scarfaday #20! My last Scarfaday v1.0 day was really busy, and most of the highlights had nothing to do with scarves! It went sort of like this:

10:30 am: Meet with a customer so she could choose her fave of the baby blankets I wove a month ago and decide which binding she likes best. I love it when customers love my fabrics as much as I do! :D

11:00 am: Stopped at a local sewing store that's going out of business, where I might be able to pick up a lot of notions for a song. How many zippers can one person really use? I aim to find out!

12:00 pm: Lunch with da galz. This was great for all the usual reasons but even more GRATE because a friend's daughter is finishing up the first year of a graphic design program and is looking for a month long work placement - a volunteer work placement, I might add - and asked if I'd be interested in hiring her. Ooooh, boy, I cannot tell you how excitin' that is! It really seems like everything is falling into place for me this year. Woooot, and again I say Woooot.

4:00ish pm: After more errands (and more fabric stores) I finally got started on today's scarfa with the lovely burnt orange:


Was a bit anxious before I started weaving that it wouldn't look as nice in the warp as it did in my mind but after just a few shots I was really happy with the results. :) As much as I liked the red and the black, I think I like this one the best so far - at least on this warp. The burnt orange is about halfway between the old gold and the rust in the warp, and it contrasts well with both the black and the off-white. Turned out really well, ifIdosaysomyself.

The weaving didn't take long since I made a point of beating this one even more gently than I have recent scarves. I was really happy with the drape of Scarf #4.5, you may recall, and that one I'd also beat more lightly than the others on its warp. I'll be really curious to see if this one's too sleezey or if I like the added drape.


I decided to weave this one and the one before it shorter than the others I've done lately because 1) I think it's fair to say that guys tend to wear shorter scarves (true? not true? opinions?) and 2) I've done so many long ones lately it seemed time for a change. Still, I'm tempted to go right back to the loom and weave another in the same colour but longer. Might do that over the weekend.

At any rate, today's scarf is 66" under tension (UT) and yesterday's was 60" UT. I'm usually a bit dodgy about keeping track of how long I weave my scarves since I'm not weaving them for anyone in particular - I aim for something between 60" and 84" which, as you may imagine, is a target that's not very difficult to hit. For reasons that I hope will become clear soon, it's now important to me to know just how much they take up and then shrink. I figure if I post it right here then I can't possibly lose the little slip of paper I made the note on...



There's still enough on the warp for at least one more scarf and, since I made these two a bit shorter I can make the next one longer than usual. Variety is the spice of life and all that!

So! Thus ends Scarfaday Month One. See you tomorrow for a wrap up and then Monday for the start of Month Two!

1 comment:

Life Looms Large said...

Yay!! Congrats on an inspiring month!!!

Will be staying tuned to see what you decide to do for March.

You'll probably talk about this in your wrap-up anyway, but I'm curious about how this scarf a day commitment felt for you, the weaver. What did you like and dislike about it? What did you learn?

As always, I'm inspired by your productivity!!

Sue