posts tagged: scarves

weaving into the storm

What is it about natural disasters that makes me want to weave? I broke in my 10-inch Schacht Cricket during Hurricane Irene a few years ago, and I haven’t touched it in a while—but I feel as though I’ve only pulled it out during long stretches forced at home. (Let’s not talk about how often I normally have long stretches at home—it’s not as if an incoming storm really changes things!) But the threats of a blizzard—complete with a total subway shutdown and a ban on all cars on roads after 11pm—got me itching to use it again.

This time, I turned to the space-dyed yarn I bought from Jill Draper Makes Stuff while at Vogue Knitting LIVE two weekends ago. I recently saw a few examples of deliberate-pooling woven scarves that were truly gorgeous (this one in particular has me swooning), and I wanted to play with the technique. The colorful skein of Hudson that I got (colorway Deep Breath, Cold Air) was not actually a palindrome skein; two patches of gray were divided by one dark teal and one light. But I went forward, matching the teal sections and the gray sections for the warp. I used this technique and it was quite easy, but I forgot all the steps of warping exactly, and a few strands got quite askew before I started weaving them up (not that anyone would notice).  For my weft I used a solid gray (Mourning Dove) in the same yarn; the result in the color sections is very gridded, and I like it a lot, even if it wasn’t what I’d envisioned happening.

I kept the tension on the warp and the weft rather even, and the end result is maybe a little light and loose—the sproingy yarn didn’t bounce back as much as I thought it would when it was taken out of tension. I really have no clue what I’m doing, but I think I did a good job of keeping my “gauge” even. However, I prefer a heavily beaten look—when the weft is scrunchy in the warp. I think in this case that would have highlighted the weft (solid gray) too much, though, so it’s all well and good that it worked out this way.

I started warping this around 4pm or so the night the storm was coming (I think), and I hemstitched it at around 10pm, including a break to cook and eat dinner (but no other real breaks). I still marvel at how fast weaving can be!

I went the full width of the 13″ loom, and ended up with a scarf 8 inches wide by 64 inches long. Kind of an awkwardly wide scarf but I didn’t want it to be narrow, either. This used up nearly all of each skein of yarn, too, so that was satisfying. The next morning we woke up to find that the blizzard had been all talk and no action; we had a nice good snowfall and some wind but not the three feet of snow that was predicted. I took the scarf with me while we went on a photowalk and set it in the snow to shoot it. Because the snow is so light and fluffy and the temp still so frigid, giving the scarf a good shake removed all the snow from it—and I set it down, snow-free. It was so windy and snowing so hard during the few minutes I was shooting that it ended up nearly covered in snow!

another woven scarf!

More playing with the Cricket loom! This time I warped with one yarn (Brooks Farm Four-Play) and then wove with a second (Brooks Farm Solo Silk). The yarn had been in my stash for a long while, but little did I know that they were destined to be the perfect scarf for Holly. I gave it to her for Christmas, and when I saw her tear up, well, I knew I did good.

It came out narrower than I’d intended, but extra long, so she can wrap it around a lot or let it hang. It’s lightweight, as all the woven scarves I’ve made so far are, but Holly runs hot so she often likes something light. The colors are definitively Holly, which is particularly perfect. The variegation in the Solo Silk worked nicely against the single-color Four-Play.

Going to the stash to find suitable weaving combinations is so much fun! Though I can only make scarves with the Cricket, each is so fast and helps make dents in my out-of-control stash.