I’ve been meaning to weave scarves for charity for a while now. Partly because I had read that people who lost their belongings in the bushfires would start wanting winter accessories once the weather started to turn cold, partly because weaving is so much faster than knitting and very suited to making scarves, and partly because it would be a great way to use those odd balls of yarn in my stash without ending up with a gadzillion more scarves, hats and gloves for myself.

Then on the Packages Down Under forum in Ravelry a request went out for new (no second hand) winter woollies, and since I hadn’t made up my mind what to do yesterday, having decided I best skip the s’n’b dyeing day since I was still suffering a bit from vertigo, I decided to get weaving.

Turned out there was an unexpected benefit. Suddenly I wasn’t under pressure from myself to only add to my collection of scarves if there is some new method to try that can’t be used to make something else. I could try things that weren’t necessarily clever, just fun. I was free to play with yarn.

First I made one of the simpler scarves from The Ashford Book of Rigid Heddle Weaving. (The scarf on the right.) When I had started weaving I’d automatically used plain thin warp and only played with the weft. Now I wanted to play with multicoloured warp.

I used white, grey, black and burgundy Cleckheaton Country instead of neutrals and aqua. I’m hoping this would be considered non-gender-specific.

Then I did my own thing, weaving with mostly grey since it’s been a fashionable colour recently and also suit a male or female recipient.

And lastly I started what was going to be a pretty plain and boring scarf to weave out of a subtlely graduating colourway of Bendy Neon, except that another pattern in the Ashford book inspired me to put a shot of brown alpaca boucle in at 10cm intervals. I love how this is coming out. (I may make another to keep for myself.)

I have plenty more odd balls of yarn and ideas for scarves. There’s enough Cleckheaton Country Silk in grey and green to make a few, the yarn I dyed at the first s’n’b dyeing day will hopefully make two scarves, and there’s enough of the first yarns I used to make a black scarf with stripes of burgundy, green and grey.

I’m also considering weaving up the organic cotton shown above. Though the request for accessories specifies they be woollen, there will be people needing scarves who are allergic to wool.

If I do all ten scarves it’ll take a couple of weeks. While there’s a chance the charity will be overwhelmed by donations by then, I’m sure there’ll be another requesting them. At this time of year there’s always a need for warm winter woollies.