Llama on the Loom

I finally finished something on the table loom: the Llama Blanket

The yarn was bought at the Bendigo Sheep & Wool Show a few years ago:

Unfortunately, when I knit a swatch I realised that, while the yarn felt soft in the ball, it felt a bit scratchy to knit. Odd, that. I blame what looks like guard hairs. It also shed quite a bit. And it was a bit fuzzy. I got over fuzzy in the 80s. Especially white fuzzy. Who needs to look like a dandelion? Or a cotton ball?

All in all, the yarn just didn’t feel right to knit. But I could picture it woven so it went into the weaving stash. When I got back from overseas I took it out, washed it, did lots of measuring and maths to work out how much fabric I could make, and cut the warp for a small throw blanket. It took me a while to get to the warping, because I hadn’t decided what weave structure to use. Tabby was too plain for a plain yarn, and I wanted to move on from twill. I looked through Handwoven magazine and my books, and eventually took a deep mental breath and tried huck lace.

The first attempt to warp the loom failed:

Must have got distracted. My second attempt succeeded. Mostly.

Huck creates ‘floats’, where the yarn skips over the top, and the underneath threads tend to nestle together, creating holes. In between, tabby sections keep it all stable.

Once off the loom, a wash helps the yarn to shift into place, not unlike lace knitting:

Here it is ‘blocking’:

When I said the warping was ‘mostly’ successful, it was because on the second attempt I wound up with a side border that looked too narrow. The huck lace threading is a repetition of this: 1414123232 repeat across loom then 14141. I changed the first five back to tabby (plain) so it went 2323214141 with 23232 at the end. But I didn’t make the same change to the weft sequence:

But for my first attempt at huck lace, I’m pretty chuffed with this throw blanket. And though I’ve never been a lace kind of girl, and dislike lace knitting, I like the geometric look of this woven lace. The same weave structure would make a lovely shawl. Just not in this yarn, which would leave white hairs all over your clothes.

I’ve already gone through all my Handwoven magazines looking for 4 shaft huck lace projects. I can definitely see more lace weaving in my future.

One thought on “Llama on the Loom

  1. Very pretty! I went to a Tri-loom class yesterday and I’m now the proud owner of one. I love it! It’s only a 30″ but I’ve got plans to get a 7ft in a few weeks. I’ve almost finished a shawl!

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