Wow, what a good day I had! Got stuff done on both looms, got some handspun yarn washed, got more stuff off my to-do list and got a scarf and a half done today, too - all before 5:30! 'Course, I didn't get a shower or get dressed until after 5:30, but hey... it's all about priorities, right?
Today I decided to follow up on my little revelation from Scarf #4.5, i.e. that using a warp colour as weft is Quite Nice and should not be against the rules. I was curious if it worked as well on a random warp of finer threads - something must have made me establish the rule in the first place, after all. To test this out, I chose an old gold that's in the warp as a boucle. Yellow is not usually my first choice for a weft colour but I use it pretty often in warps and it is the colour of the year, plus it made a nice switch from the darker wefts I used in scarves #5 and 6. Turns out that I quite liked it - both the colour and the warp-colour-as-weft. I'm scratching my head now, trying to figure out where on earth that rule came from.
I kept an eye on the back beam as I was finishing up scarfa #7, since I wasn't sure how much warp would be left over - if it wasn't tooooo much, I thought I'd just keep going and make another long scarf. When I hit 78" there was still at least a whole roll of paper on the beam, though, and there really is a reasonable limit to the length of a scarf. (Ask me how I know this.) So, since I was liking the yellow so muchly and there was clearly not going to be enough for scarfa #8 tomorrow, I went ahead and wove off the rest of the warp with another, lighter shade of yellow that was also in the warp. I am happy to say that it was every bit as nice as the first one, so now I've got another short little scarflette. I'm going to have a project on my hands, figuring just how to use them. Good job I like projects!
Scarfa day #8 went like this:
2:30ish pm: Pick a yellow, wind a bobbin. It's like sunshine on the loom!
2:39 pm: Start weaving. I'm just about to hemstitch the first end here:
2:40-4:00 Weave a bit, twitter, wind a bobbin, twitter, weave a bit more, twitter... ["turning into a twit" joke removed due to extreme lameness.]
4:09 pm: Done with Scarf #8:
But wait, there's more! I kept on going and by...
5:30 pm: ...I was done with the extra scarflette:
I really wanted it to be as long as possible, and I wanted to use up all the bobbin I'd wound, so I just kept on weaving until it ran out. Can you see the rod the warp is on right smack up behind the shafts there? If not, here's a better look:
That's 11.75" inches, for anyone who cares. At least 4" of which will be fringe. Loom waste? What loom waste?
See you tomorrow for a whole new warp and scarf #8!
Posts
2 comments:
Gorgeous scarves!! Those colors are great!
Here I go, asking another question in a comment...although I think it's easier than my last question (of course, since I don't know the answer....maybe it's not easier.)
Anyway, when you were weaving toward the end of your warp, did it start misbehaving? Do you have any tricks that make it behave better? Last time I needed to eke out as much warp as possible, it got kind of difficult to get a clean shed toward the end, and I had some skipped threads.
Just curious!
Sue
It was surprisingly cooperative, I have to say. Usually they do get a bit fiddly close to the end - the closer and closer that back rod gets to the heddles the less shed there is. I let up on the tension quite a bit in order to get a shed -- and by "shed" I mean just the suggestion of one, a space to poke my shuttle very carefully through. Of course, with less tension on the warp threads, I had to be more careful about my selvages and my beat.
Sometimes if the shed is really narrow I can improve it by pushing down the shafts that aren't supposed to be up. On a jack loom like Joey, those shafts tend to float up when you get really close to the end. This time, though, I wanted to see how far I could go without doing that and, although the shed was split and very narrow right at the end, I managed to use up my bobbin without having to push down the shafts at all.
Post a Comment