Lemon Chiffon handwoven scarves

 Like most weavers, I have quite a stash of yarns.

When I’m at a show (not very common for me) and I see yarn I like at a good price, I buy it. Then I come home and have to put away, and sometimes forget about it. Months later I’m looking in one of my boxes for something, and get a pleasant surprise at finding a yarn I’d forgotten about, particularly when the color & fiber still make me smile.

That was the case when I found 2 cones of 10/2 cotton in a color I was calling buttercream. After the scarves were woven I had to change the name – the color was richer yellow than what I think of as buttercream. I opted for lemon chiffon. (The color is much more yellow than it appears in the photos. I’d still call the color in the photos buttercream.)

I decided to weave some huck lace scarves from it. I love weaving lace, both huck and a variety of Swedish laces. I like the way they look on the loom, the way they wet finish, and the way they please and amaze my customers when they see them hanging at a show.

I decided on an overall huck threading for this cotton, warped up my little counterbalance loom, and set to weaving. The first two scarves were woven in what I think of as typical huck. (I know I don’t use the correct terms for these lace weaves. Unfortunately I didn’t know that when I started calling them by ‘my’ names, and somehow can’t seem to get the correct names planted in my brain.)

I’ve woven this pattern in 10/2, 8/2 and 5/2 cotton, cobweb weight cashmere-silk, 100% silk, and rayon. It never fails to please. think the cottons work best, but it’s pretty much always a winner.

This time I opted to weave the third scarf in what I call ‘windowpane’ huck. Same threading & treadling, just a different tie up.

For some reason (I don’t know why) I haven’t used this option in a while. It does seem a bit more fragile, more prone to snaggin a thread while wearing it, but it’s so lovely that people like it anyway.

The two scarves look so different, it really is magic that they’re so close in structure.

I took all three scarves to my show at Chautauqua Institute in July, and sold all three, bing, bang, boom. Shoulda bought more o that yarn when I saw it – buyer’s remorse in reverse.

Parting shot:
Mama Phoebe built her nest in the rafters underneath my porch. She’d just fed her babies and told them to be quiet since I was nearby.

July 24th, 2012 | 

I wove the lemon chiffon scarves with a 10/2 mercerized cotton. My notes tell me I sett the threads at 20 ends per inch (EPI). I generally use 12 EPI when I’m weaving lace with 5/2 cotton. I also looked up my records for what I’ve sett 8/2 at for cotton (or rayon) lace, and I generally use 18 EPI. I did just weave some 10/2 cotton lace (it’ll be my next post) at 18EPI because I hadn’t checked my records (hah!). It’s fine, too.

I don’t change the sett with the different treadlings – that is, whether I'm weaving traditional huck, huck lace (what I called huck windowpanes), huck bars, I use the same setts. 

Neck warmers

Trust me, I know it’s important to be consistent with my blogging. Important to my readers, important to my business, important t my structured-ness.

I try to be. I really do. Then I get so busy I barely have time to go to the bathroom, much less blog. And if that’s not bad enough, my sweet kids got me a Kindle for my birthday. Before I’d figured out how to download library books, I’d downloaded two word games when I registered it. Now there are real time thieves!

Like most people, I pop around the web. Most of my popping is related to weaving — looking for ‘the ideal’ loom, checking out my favorite weaving bloggers and sometimes looking at their favorite bloggers, etc. In doing so recently I stumbled on an idea that I thought I’d turn into a product in my inventory – on a small, trial basis – and see how my customers responded.

Introducing the neck cuff

These are 5/2 cotton & all have vintage buttons. I thought this new product was a great time to try a warping technique I’d read about but not tried – using multiple color threads without a warping paddle or other method to attempt to keep them in order. Instead, simply wind them as a group, then take them as they come rather randomly off the lease sticks.

I liked the ease of winding the warp, and the finished look, but I would not recommend this method for a warp any longer than a few yards. Those unorganized threads do a great amount of twisting themselves into tight, little bundles that require often tediou hand work to untwist in order to advance the warp. Maybe this would work better if I was a front-to-back warper and had spread the threads out in the reed as I warped, but I’m a back-to-front warper.

Anyway, I liked the way I could use multiple weft colors to achieve different looks. These two have a cranberry weft. Interesting how different a tabby/plain weave and a simple twill look, isn’t it?

I did leno with an E bead on one of the the cuffs with a lavender weft.

I for sure liked the final result of that beading, and for sure disliked the process of getting it beaded. Putting lots of beads on the yarn after I had it wound it on the shuttle, and then constantly pushing those beads back out of my way as I wove the areas of plain weave was a slow, tedious process. I only wove with beads one other time, inserting them rather randomly throughout the plain-weave scarf. I both loved the outcome & hated the process that time, too. This one used so many fewer beads and was so small, I thought it’d be fine, perhaps even fun. HAH!

I closed out the set with a 10/2 cotton in a sweet lemon chiffon color, with leno (no beads) along it’s length.

I’ve had the cuffs at two shows now, and have sold both lavenders. I don’t know how many more I’ll make, but a few, anyway. I’l do some more experimenting with colors, sizes, & buttons or other closures.

Parting shot...”Quit blogging and let’s go for a walk already!”

July 11th, 2012 |