When people see me standing somewhere with my drop spindle, two questions tend to come up a lot. What’s that? And what are you going to make with it?
The first one is relatively easy to answer, the second one usually elicits a shrug. ‘Can’t say yet.’ Especially with the advent calendar fibres, I might spin what I’ve got with no particular project in mind.
This project is an attempt at answering at least some of those question marks. At some point, I realised that I had a number of yarns in my stack from the pink and purple colour range. I developed the idea to throw together a warp from those yarns and make a multi-coloured scarf.
As a first step, I gathered the yarn and made a list, calculating where these yarns would get me with a warp 2,5 m long and a sett of either 4/10 or 5/10. I also played around with the option of using the stripes was weft as well.
All options gave me a comfortable margin, based on a length of about 2 m and a width of 30cm. Knowing I wouldn’t run into danger of running out of yarn I was good to go.
For the weft I spun a silver/grey wool/silk mix I had sitting around, deciding a neutral colour would work best with the multi-coloured warp.
After some further calculations, I settled on 2,5 cm wide stripes for the warp. I picked a sett of 4/10 hoping it would make all components shine best.
The rigid heddle loom is the best tool for a project like this, as it produces less waste than a floor loom, and plain weave was the best option anyway. I settled on a sequence of colours before starting to warp, placing contrasting colours next to each other.
Weaving went relatively smoothly. Just the one strip with pink Bluefaced Leicester/Mohair yarn kept sticking together. But in working with plain weave, it is relatively easy to spot any places where the shed didn’t open properly and those are easily corrected.
Fresh off the loom, the fabric felt a little stiff and still showed some gaps. After tying the ends, I gave it a wash in warm water, which filled the gaps and produced a nice even fabric with just the right amount of drape to it. It is a little scratchy for my taste but otherwise turned out nicely. The stripes stand out well, the weft colour merging into the background.
The scarf turned out a little longer and wider than I anticipated, but overall I am pleased with the result.
Snathanna 