Color Horoscope Weaving with Bonnie Tarses

This weekend I took a class through the Saint Louis Weavers' Guild with Bonnie Tarses. The topic was Color Horoscope weaving. Bonnie has come up with an amazing method of translating a horoscope chart into a color weaving draft.

She started working with us weeks before the workshop by asking us our birth date and time so she could do our charts and drafts. I didn't have my birth time, so mine's based just on date. She sent us the drafts and some helpful instructions for selecting yarn and winding our warps.

I knew I was going to be using my Kromski Harp Rigid Heddle loom, so I was looking for some fairly heavy weight yarn. I also needed something that I could get 12 colors of the color wheel in. I decided that Knitpicks Palette was a good option. I put together my color wheel and ordered the yarn.



Then I wound the warp verrry carefully and very slowly, pretty much one thread at a time!



I wound three chains as I needed to weave the shawl in three panels.

I documented my process for dressing the loom since people might be interested, but that's coming in a separate post.

Here's the second warp on the loom with the first off the loom next to it. I ended up loving the look of a burnt orange weft with the colorful warp.


And here's the rest of the workshop working at their looms:


I finished the weaving on Tuesday afternoon, then did the joining of the panels Tuesday night, and today I twisted the fringe and wet finished it.

And here's the finished shawl, serving as a kitty tent. I'll have to get a good outdoor picture and some closeups when Brent's back in town to be my photographer (and when it's light outside!)