Scarves, Scarves & More Scarves

Lately all the craft and art I seem to be doing is weaving scarves on the rigid heddle loom.

Of course, that’s not all I’ve been doing. I’ve also been slowly warping up the table loom, knitting and going to life-drawing classes. But the first two involve works in progress and the latter… well, I’m reluctant to post pictures of nude people in case that offends anyone.

Starry Night Scarf

A while back I posted that I’d set up the loom to weave a leno scarf. It involves a very interesting way of warping up the loom.

Unfortunately I had to abandon the project. The yarns were unsuitable, which is ironic because I bought them specifically for this project two and a half years ago and kept hesitating to try it since I thought the method would be difficult (which it isn’t).

The boucle warp prevented the thinner warp slipping around it like it was supposed to, and the sequins in the thinner yarn kept catching on the reed. I could see that the method would work better with smoother yarns, so I’ll try it again some time.

I rewarped and wove the scarf in tabby, which still made a very nice, soft scarf. Even if the troublesome thinner yarn turned out to contain a strand of ribbon yarn with an annoying habit of unravelling into a spider web mess at the fringe. (I had to knot the ends of every strand and trim off the mess.) I don’t think I could give away something with a fault like this, but it’s so soft that I certainly don’t mind keeping it!

Snowdrift Scarf

Using up the last of my own handspun, I made this scarf using the thick warp, thin weft method I tried out for the Ironwood Scarf and Warp Speed Scarf:

This one is lovely. Even if it didn’t contain one of the few skeins of yarn I’ve spun, it would definitely be a keeper.

Twisties Scarf

Then I went back to the method I’d used to knit the Loopy Scarf to weave some handspun I’d bought.

Um… those twists are supposed to be loops. See how it looked on the loom:

I know enough to understand that the yarn was overspun, but didn’t realise how this would effect the weaving. When I washed it the loops turned into twists, which are kinda cute.

I was pretty chuffed when my estimate of how long and wide the scarf could be based on the meterage of yarn turned out to be spot on:

Tempting though it is to keep this one, it’s going in the gift/donation basket. I can’t keep every scarf I make. Not when I’m making them at this rate!

And I haven’t got the scarf weaving bug out of my system yet. I’ve warped up the loom with more leftover yarn like I did for the Warp Speed Scarf. This time I’m using black, grey and white yarns.

Which will be the fourth scarf woven with this method. It’s definitely one of my favourites, now.