A scarf on Sunday

Yesterday I spent the afternoon working through my yarn cupboards. Caking up some loose yarn and leftovers. Rummaging through bags and frogging the odd swatch, some still connected to a ball of yarn.

Some of the yarn holes in the cupboards are now filled! I want to either use up or get shot of some acrylic yarns I have. I’m leaning more to natural fibres now, and want to create some gaps to fill with some new lambs wool and more in new colours.

My main aim from yesterday was to plan some quick project for the loom. Two yarns kept popping up for me, both the same brand, Llama Una from Mirasol in Peru. This yarn is 100% Baby Llama. 🦙 A colour called Tumeric and another called Moss – I think.

Next was to think what to make. I played around in iWeave and came up with some drafts. However, I only have 109 yards in each, so I needed to be quite precise.

I settled on Log Cabin. Something I have meant to try for many years. An interesting design with 3D illusion. This is a decent approximation of the colours.

Next morning, I set to dressing the loom. I threaded the heddle adjusting the warps to work for the pattern. While you can direct warp, you then have to pull out the warp threads and re-sley them in the appropriate sequence.

I was doing this downstairs, so once done, I picked up the loom to move back upstairs. Navigating the doorway I lifted the loom to vertical and the heddle fell out 😩

Back upstairs, I had to re-thread the heddle. It went quickly though. I needed to add an extra two warp ends, which meant unwinding, then rewinding. But got there in the end.

And so to weave.

The pattern for the weft is the same order as the warp. Imagine the Moss green is 1 and the Tumeric is 0. My warp is 0101011010100 and so on. The bold numbers are where the warp diverges from typical plain warp. My weft is woven the same way. 0101011010100101011010100 and so on. It’s easy to remember once into the pattern. Just read the colour for example, 2 green, 1 green, 1 green, 2 orange, 1 orange, 1 orange and repeat. I just ignored the extras to keep me on track.

Being only 8 inches wide and 5 foot of weaving, I started and finished it either side of a walk.

I love the sound of scissors through the yarn. And I like how you can really see the pattern. Quite 3D. The out of focus actually makes the 3D element standout more. You wouldn’t believe it is flat.

I finished off the fringe tonight and now it’s ready for a wet finish. Watch out for the finished pictures later this week.