Ah, Spring, every year you tease me! [Scarf 30]

You can take a girl out of the Pacific Northwest and transplant her to the Great White North but you can't take away her hope each year that maybe, just this once, Spring will come early. This year it really seemed like it might happen, too. This was our walk in the park on Sunday:


Chickadees and buds on the trees...


squirrels and bird feeders and green plants in the background...


and snow receding into pleasant memory.



That was Sunday. This was today:


I just have to face facts: Spring in Cape Breton is the third week of June. Sigh.

Oh well, it may not be Spring outside but it certainly is inside! Last Friday I finally wound that blue/green/brown warp I've been alluding to for some time now and today it went on the loom. This is a colour combo I came up with last fall:


I've woven this with brown, blue, tan, yellow and even a bright chartreuse but this time I wanted something that said "Spring" so after considering a few other options I went with a soft, light green (the top spool):


This warp is all 4/8 cotton rather than the 8/8 I've been using so much lately. I've been itching to do something besides the standard scarf of the past few weeks, so I'm trying a new experiment: I've got this sleyed at the same 12 EPI that I generally use for 4/8 but I left big gaps in the reed, which account for the extra texture that you see in the cloth. I'm not sure yet whether they're going to work as they are, so I may cut this scarf off and wet finish it before weaving the next and then fiddle the gaps or the threading around if need be.

The hope is that the finished scarf will be open and airy and that, even though it's wide (15" in the reed), it will have enough drape to be comfortable gathered up round your neck and worn as a scarf. The fear is that it'll just be sleazey. I can't get too anxious about it though since, if that does turn out to be the case, it'll just mean I get a new scarf for myself rather than the shop! It's a win-win. :)


I tried to weave this without a temple but the draw in was just too much for the weft to pack in well at the selvedges without it, so I added it after about 15". This made the weaving slower than usual but was well worth the extra trouble.


I finished it up while chatting on the phone with my dear ol' Mum, which gave me a crick in the neck from clamping the phone to my shoulder but was also well worth the extra trouble. Big news from out her way: two of the pieces she's got in an upcoming show have already sold, and the show doesn't even open until Friday. Huzzah! Huge congrats, Ma!