Last year, I completed the challenge set forth by The Livestock Conservancy called Shave ‘Em to Save ‘Em (SE2SE). I purchased and spun wool from people who raise sheep listed on the rare and endangered list. The goal is to … Continue reading
Recently, I was accused of being “project oriented”. At least it felt like an accusation. I’m still trying to decide how I feel about it. I was spinning with some friends and discussing what I would do with the yarn … Continue reading
I think purple is my new favorite color. This is a picture of a scarf I recently finished using my hand-spun yarn for both warp and weft. I have never done that before so it felt good when it turned out so well. It has a nice drape, it is pretty, and it is soft against the skin.
I have been trying to use up some spinning/weaving/knitting/sewing supplies recently. I picked up this fiber, one whole pound of it, at a spinning retreat in the fall of 2017. So it has been sitting around a while. It is 60% merino, 20% soy, and 20% bamboo.
To my great delight recently, after finding and join a local weaver guild, I discovered a group of spinners who meet each week at a local bagel shop. That in itself could be a whole long story. We attract a bit of attention from the bagel costumers who often stop and chat with us.
I spun the purple fiber and plied it with some 1/9.5 wool-cashmere blend yarn.
I really like the way it turned out. The individual groups of fiber show up well without being to muddied by plying them on each other.
After a disaster trying to wind balls of yarn from skeins hung over wine bottles, I finally invested in a yarn swift. It makes me happy. Read the previous post if you want to hear about the mess.
I hurried to spin enough to get started on the scarf so I could join a “weave along” scheduled by the guild at the local library.
I warped the Schacht 25″ flip rigid heddle loom at home and then folded it up and carried it to the library in its bag. It traveled very well.
Weaving at the library was fun. It wasn’t a public event, like the bagel shop, but it was nice to get to weave with others. Weaving has always been a solitary endeavor for me. Apparently weavers even bring their large floor looms sometimes, though no one did this time. I can’t wait to see how that works.
Between the variation in fiber regions and the unevenness of my not-yet-skilled spinning the warp threads certainly varied. I thought the yarn was interesting enough on its own that a plain tabby weave would show it off best.
It was an easy project and went along quickly. I made sure to leave a pretty large angle so prevent too much draw-in. I think the mathematics of draw-in is interesting. Maybe I will write about that next.
To twist the fringe in groups of three, I used my handy hair twister and held the odd fringe with a clip while I twisted the other two.
Here is the scarf after wet finishing.
These are photos of the fabric before wet finishing (left) and after (right). The fiber fulled nicely creating a dense soft feel.
I have been toying with various record sheets to keep track of my projects. Here is the new one. I weighed the scarf to see how much of the fiber I had used up. This will be helpful in calculating the cost to make things. Looks like this one was about $14 for the fiber.
I hope you like the hand-spun, hand woven scarf. It is very purply and feels very nice.
As always, your polite and helpful comments are welcome.
Knitting, Weaving, Writing 