Wednesday, February 2, 2011

More in the Valentine’s mood

Actually the two scarves I just finished got their start last fall when I pulled what was a poorly chosen supplementary warp off my loom. The remaining ground warp became a couple of plain weave scarves, one with ombre blue and turquoise wefts that was featured in our 12 Scarves promo. The other, a short one with stripes on one end, I kept for myself.

Meanwhile, I couldn’t bear to waste the supplementary warp, a wonderful hand-dyed (by our friends at Just Our Yarn) fine, unspun cotton from Habu in gorgeous red violet shades. What can I say. I was seduced by the color. This dJaguar diamondselicate yarn makes a wonderful weft, but is challenging (to say the least) as warp.  No longer able to be anything but warp, the soft cotton was threaded onto my studio loom in an extended point twill, with a much wider sett and more open reed.

For the first scarf, I wove in a few differ wefts that just weren’t working. Then Barb pulled a cone of red Jaguar, a modal blend, from our stash of Silk City yarns. It was too fine to use singly, so I doubled it and, voila!, there were the lovely concentric diamonds. It washed up soft and cozy but still lightweight.

The second scarf on the warp had to weave faster, as I nefuzzy ombre-closeupeded the loom for a class this Friday with a group of girls from a local high school. I rummaged through my stash of sock yarns and found a deep red and a variegated purple with some mohair in it. I blended randomly sized bands of the colors into each other for more ombre effects. It finished up both wider and fuzzier than the first, but I wove it off in 2 1/2 hours.

Next up, when I’m not busy with school or homework, I’ll be sewing up some luscious yardage I wove last month into the long-planned “Akira” jacket, inspired by the work of potter Akira Satake, I’ve been a big fan of Akira since he joined the group of artists at CURVE studios & garden.

Speaking of CURVE, Barb and I have some exciting news that we’ll be  announcing soon. Big changes are ahead!

Karen