Friday, July 25, 2014

A super amazing woven thing

I'm so excited to show you how my bulky handwoven frog-green scarf thing came out!  It's the first time I've tried weaving something where the length is manually striped, using two different colours of yarn, and it looked so cool even at the setup stage I knew the finished product was going to be awesome. Bonus: this is a fantastic way to use up odd leftover lengths of much-loved yarns.

weaving, handspinning, handspun scarf
Had to do some fancy footwork with my yarn scraps to pull this off...

The stripes looked great on the loom, too.


Once the loom was ready, I waited until the singles had rested enough for plying and got to work on that part of the job.


The finished yarn looked a little crazy, and if I hadn't had a plan for it already I might have felt like it was a failure.  I was pretty sloppy with the original spinning too, as I recall - I was aiming for sooper bulky and meandered between that and regular bulky . Still: plied!

And because it was going straight onto the loom, I didn't have to skein or block it before winding it around the shuttle thingy.


Turns out weaving with sooper bulky yarn is just as fast as knitting with it, because it didn't take very many passes to get from nothing to this splendid fabric:


That's from the same night, my friends.  Like, minutes after getting the plied yarn ready to go.

In fact it was still light enough outside for me to be able to show you how the fabric was building up on the roller:


I think this is the point where I realized I might be weaving a table runner.  I mean, it's pretty hefty fabric.  I kept on working though, and put off bedtime till it was done so I could take this glamour shot first thing in the morning.  I don't think you need to click on the photo below to see just how tall that last row is where the yarn finished off.  Sooper. Bulky. Yarn.


I couldn't wait to pull it off the roller...


and tie off the fringe at the ends...


and take some glamour shots.

I think the whole process, from starting to spin to tying the fringe, happened over 48 hours.  That's pretty amazing, isn't it?  Even if what I got really does feel like a table runner or a slice of carpet.


I absolutely love the way these stripes came out and I feel completely certain this was the right way to use this yarn and fiber...



... and it's definitely the most interesting weaving project I'll do for quite a while.


But best of all?  Table runner or not, it makes an amazingly warm and soft scarf.


Still - nobody else is going to want it, are they.  I should just keep it for myself.  Ahem.


Hope your weekend is fantastic and that you're able to pop back in on Monday.  I've got a whole week of good stuff lined up to share with you.  See you then!

6 comments:

Leslie said...

gorgeousness!

Mary Keenan said...

Thanks Leslie! I'm *almost* wishing it was cold enough outside to wear it ;^)

Laurinda said...

OOOO- I need to clear my loom now!

Unknown said...

I think you need to hide it. Gorgeous!!! I'm sure someone will be like "for me?!" Off you go parading it around. Ahem, I have a peg by my front door if you need a place to hide it. Love those colors!

Mary Keenan said...

Laurinda, I feel the same way... I've got that cute pink silk thing on there and I'm so anxious to see whether I'll like it as much as the green one!

Mary Keenan said...

heh heh Karen, I bet the scarf would be much more comfortable hiding out on the peg by your door than in the Ziploc on my hutch, too ;^)