Lacy Handwoven Silk Scarves

Being an early riser, I have a few minutes before I have to leave for the show this morning, so will sneak this post in.

I knew I only had two handwoven silk scarves left after Elmwood, so wanted to give my customers at least one more option. I had enough dusty rose silk left to weave two more, and chose alternating blocks of Swedish Lace. I sett this 20/2 yarn at 18 end per inch, and was off and running.

They worked up quickly. As usual, I made these handwoven lace scarves on my counterbalance loom.
I was pleased with the results, and quite surprised when I saw how clear and lovely the color was in comparison to the last/first

time I’d used this yarn in the gray twill blocks – it really muddied the color more than I realized.

I thought that would be all I’d have time for before the show, but had a whole day left (woo hoo!), so decided to weave a few more cashmere silk scarves, too. I intended to weave two, but my habit got the better of me in measuring the warp – when I finished winding the last bit, I realized I’d measured for three. No problem. Put three on the loom, and if I can only get two done, that’s fine; I’ll just cut them off and weave the third when I return home.

OCD me of course got all three woven.

Two of them are an all-over huck lace pattern, one is a woven with huck spots. I’m less thrilled with the look of that one. Spot Bronson would be a much better choice for spots, but of course my loom was already threaded for huck. The lavender color is much nicer in person than in this picture, which makes them look more gray.

Ok, now you’ve seen them all, and I have to get ready to leave the house.

Your turn: is the weather as gorgeous where you are as it is here this September weekend? Sunny and warm – great!

September 11th, 2011 

Where does the time go?

 How is it possible that another 10 days have passed without a blog post? Answer: I’ve been really busy.

Last weekend I had another great show in Buffalo. People were particularly interested in my scarves on Sunday, when the weather was cooler.

And next weekend I have another big show – Clothesline in Rochester.. So now I have to weave, weave, WEAVE! I’ve gotten six scarves done in the last 4 days, and will put a warp for 3 more on my loom today. I’ve taken a few days off my paycheck job to give me more time. The new scarves are in the drying process, so haven’t been photo’d yet, but I can show you a few more things I finished before the Elmwood Ave. show last weekend.

First I finished the two purple & silver mohair scarves I’d put on the rigid heddle loom for the Chautauqua show. I do love how these scarves look, and am getting better at wet finishing them in soft-as-a-cloud delights. Many other people agreed, so I simp re-created the one I’d woven in May.

I knew I needed to stock up on some cashmere silk blend scarves, so I started with the light blue. I would have made 3 of them, as is my usual fashion, but I only had enough of the blue yarn to warp for 2.

I put a cream stripe down the center, and wove lace along both edges. I think they’re lovely. Interestingly, although I did sell four handwoven cashmere silk scarves last weekend, these were not among them. That’s not a problem, just a comment.

I also had some black cashmere silk yarn that I hadn’t used yet, so I could definitely warp for 3 of those. And did. (Warning to non-weavers: weaving terminology follows. Simply skip down to below the picture if you don’t want to read this part.)

I decided this was a great opportunity to try something I’d been wanting to do since the MAFA workshop in July – name drafting in overshot. Since I was only making a scarf and wanted to have a reasonable number of repeats, I didn’t want to use my entire business name – second wind weaving – so just used the first two words. I played with star fashion vs. rose fashion and an assortment of assignment strategies, ultimately choosing a standard arrangement in rose fashion. I really like the visual.

I used a gray silk for the pattern on the black cashmere, making a border that’s about 4′′ wide. The rest of the scarf is plain weave. I enjoyed weaving the border.

It is funny to me how I forget things. When I wove the first border on the first scarf, I was being very careful to follow the pattern correctly, and used a very light beat. After I got my border done I thought my beat was too light — the fibers weren’t packed in tightly enough — and the pattern was therefore more vertically oval than round. I had to make the other end of this scarf the same, so used the same light beat.

For the second scarf, I beat the pattern in more firmly, making the pattern more rounded. Looked great to me. Until, of course, I took them off the loom and wet finished. DUH!! Of course those vertical ovals on the loom reverted to circles when they were released from the tension of the loom, and circles on the loom became horizontal ovals. I think only a weaver would notice these details, it just made me chuckle.

So here are the two scarves.

I really like them, both on the loom and off, but can’t decide if they’re classy scarves or grandma scarves.

I had planned to make the 3rd scarf different – no border and a lace treadling. Unfortunately, I couldn’t do it. I found the black yarn to be problematic from the beginning. Lots of broken warp threads, something that hasn’t happened with any of the other colors I’ve used. However, I did have the same experience with black rayon chenille last year, and did some online research tha told me that black yarn can be troublesome. A solid black can be a challenging color to achieve in dyes, and as a result, it can sometimes weaken the fiber.

I was clearly having that problem. By the time I’d gotten to the end of the second scarf, I was fixing lots of warp threads. That was enough of a pain, but the yarn along the selvedges was become really troublesome. As a result my selvedges were thick and uneven. I tried several strategies to try to correct it, all unsuccessful. I ultimately decided it was better to cut off the 2 scarve and waste the rest of this lovely fiber than waste my time weaving a scarf I was not going to be happy with that was not going to be saleable.

After this frustration, I needed to weave something quick and easy. So I put on a narrow warp (42 ends) of cotton and wove 25 bookmarks. I used a periwinkle overshot threading, an assortment of weft yarns, and an array of treadling patterns.

September 2nd, 2011