Shawls are done

I ran out of green yarn as I neared the minimum length for two shawls so I decided that's where I would stop. I did have to use some other yarn on the end of one shawl to get them to be long enough so it ended up with a bright yellow stripe at the end.

Here they both are!


And here I'm modeling the all green one. I really like it. I wasn't sure that I would, given the colors and the kinda busy pattern I picked, but somehow it all works.



I did intend to have the shawls be a bit longer. I wove approximately 160" total, or 80" each on the loom, expecting to end up with around 72" after take up, and 70" after hemming. Either my measuring tapes are all crap (could be...) or the takeup was a bit more because I ended with right around 67" each, just barely over the minimum of 66".

As my first weaving with very fine gauge wool, this was a great learning experience. I now know how to beat carefully to avoid broken warp threads. I also know that I tend to prefer shorter warps. I'm probably going to stick to doing only 1 thing at a time so I don't have to weave off warps longer than, say, four yards or so.

Next up--I've come up with a color scheme for a simple plaid double-weave blanket. I've got 5 colors of Harrisville Shetland that I'm going to set at 10epi. What a treat to work with "big" yarn after the 20/2 wool! I'm winding the warp tonight in front of the TV with Brent and will try to get it on the loom tomorrow. This is my first try at doubleweave. I understand the concept pretty well, so we'll see how that translates to reality.

A lesson

I've been weaving along on the Afghans for Afghans shawls. I'm nearly out of green yarn for the weft, and I'm not sure I'm going to have sufficient length for 2 shawls, let alone 3. I may have to substitute another color. I have some brown I think that might work OK.

I'm working with approximately 20/2 wool in the warp. This is the finest warp yarn I've used. For the first 10 inches or so I had a broken warp yarn every few minutes. It was very trying on my patience!

I did some research online and saw someone mentioning that for fine yarn, they beat with an open shed. But more interestingly, they would beat twice--once on the current open shed and once on the next.

It took me a while to get the rhythm of beat-change shed-beat-throw, but after I got it, wow what a difference. From that point on, I only had 2 broken warp threads! It also really evened out my beat, I think.

Yay for new things learned.

Resurrection

I haven't quit knitting, just blogging. I'm going to make an attempt to start this up again, but with a fairly good dose of weaving content. I took a weaving class last summer and have been doing quite a lot of it lately.

I recently finished my first waffle-weave project. These towels were from a kit I got from Halcyon Yarns. The kit was to make 3 towels, but I had enough warp for an additional square dishcloth.

I've only hemmed the dishcloth so far. Even though I used sewing thread for the weft on the hems, the flare is quite pronounced compared to the draw-in of the waffles. I'm going to have to mess with the hem on the others a bit to get it to look nice.

These towels are for us. They should go nicely with the green kitchen walls!


During the WEBS anniversary sale, I picked up a few cones of 6/2 unmercerized cotton. I used almost an entire cone of the "oatmeal" color for some huck lace towels for my cousin's wedding (Coming up this Saturday!). I'll post another picture of the completed towels. I'm going to be cross stitching a monogram on some of them in white embroidery floss.

I got the lace pattern out of an Interweave Press compilation of huck lace articles from Handwoven magazine. I'm really impressed with the book. It gets into detail about the structure and how to create your own patterns. It also has instructions for a form of huck that can be done with pickup sticks on the rigid heddle loom. I'm planning to try that out with panels for an afghan one day.


And finally, the next project on the loom. I'm making some shawls for Afghans for Afghans. Syne at weavecast sent me a pre-wound warp (major time saver!) in these crazy colors. I've gotten started on sleying the reed but a diversion to go hear some jazz at the Missouri Botanical Gardens last night has put the brakes on that project for a bit. I might get some more done today, since I got some Alias dvds from Netflix in the mail yesterday.

I'm planning on doing the shawl in an undulating twill pattern from the Davison book. That'll be my first try at undulating twill and at an EPI of 30. Previously I've only done as high as 25.