The Jane came with a warp – mercerised 5/2 cotton in a pinky purple threaded in rosepath – and the seller included the draft for the project she’d intended to weave. I tossed up whether to weave it, or remove it to use later so I could get my homework project on the loom. It seemed a shame to waste the former owner’s efforts, so I decided to weave a little and see if I liked it and could weave it off in time.

I don’t have any 5/2 mercerised cotton, but I do have unmercerised 5/2 saori warp in many colours. The tie up was a bit more complicated than a straight zig zag. I tried both, in four colours.

I didn’t see a lot of difference between the complicated tie-up and a simple zig zag, so I stuck with the latter. The matt yarn against the shiny appealed, and when the blue yarn produced an iridescent effect it was too exciting to stop weaving. The sampling also showed up a bit of extended twill in the threading. Maybe it was deliberate, maybe an error, but I liked it. I decided to make it seem so by reflecting the ‘error’ in the weaving:

I did the same at the other end. It took me a week to finish the warp.

The colours and length suggest ‘scarf’ to me…

… but the hand says ‘table runner’.

I have to go with the feel of the fabric. It’s really not soft enough to be a scarf – even after washing. So table runner it will be.