On Sunday I had a few hours spare but I wasn’t feeling awake enough to warp up the table loom, so I decided to start weaving on the rigid heddle. I was hoping to make another leno scarf, this time with a coloured warp set up so each leno twist would be a fan of graduated colour.

Unfortunately, I discovered that this yarn (Lisa Souza ‘Sock!’) was a bit too slippery to hold twists of that many ends in place, and if I pulled the weft really tight to compensate the side twists distorted and pulled in.

So I went back to the lace weaves section of The Handweavers Pattern Directory to see what else I could do. First I tried some wrappings. The directions suggested plain weave on either side:

But it was a lot of work and by the time I’d finished this section I knew doing a whole scarf in this way would get old very quickly. I tried wrapping all the way across instead. It looked okay, but I had trouble with the plain weave sections between rows of wrapping. The first and last picks refused to sit neatly (again, the yarn was too slippery). I was going to unweave everything again, but then I turned a few more pages of the book and discovered danish medallions. I figured it was worth seeing if the ‘knot’ that makes the medallion shape would hold the plain weave in place. It did:

The effect was rather pretty. But after doing a few alternating rows of wrapping and medallions I realised this was too open a fabric for a scarf. I decided it would have to be a decoration at the end of the scarf, and the rest be plain weave.

But it didn’t look right. Too dense after the openness of the lace. I unwove the plain weave and considered what to do next. What about rows of medallions without the wrappings between?

Yes, much better. Still lacy, but not so much it wouldn’t make a good scarf. In fact, I like the look of the danish medallions so much I’m tempted to cut off the wrappings and make the scarf all medallions. Guess I’ll have to decide that when I get to the end.