On 30 December, I decided it was cold...

...and that the viscose pashminas I'd been using as scarves were not up to the job. Then I realised that I hadn't woven anything for me (the first scarf doesn't count, because it was just a trying-it-out project, and isn't up to being a warm scarf for a number of reasons). My next thought was that the Cherry Pop yarn which had briefly been a mini-cardigan was soft and warm and looking for something to be. So on New Year's Eve, I wove this. All 212cm of it, in one afternoon. Weaving is quick.

Weaving is also good for my stash levels. When I was just knitting, my stash was fairly well under control. Then I started spinning, and my stash started to run away from me: I had fibre to stash now as well as yarn, I was spending less time knitting, and - even worse - the time I wasn't spending knitting, I was spending creating more yarn. Which then went into the stash, sometimes never to come out again. Weaving, on the other hand, uses up yarn. Not only that, it uses it up more quickly than knitting, and in smaller batches - well suited to the relatively small batches of handspun I've been producing.

So the Cherry Pop is now out of the stash and into my wardrobe, and very warm it is, too.

Christmas presents from my parents and from myself (!) have given me new toys heddles to use with the loom, allowing me to weave finer fabric, and do some simple patterning, so currently OTL (on the loom) is another stash-busting project - a purple scarf (also for me :-) made from three different sock yarns - the semi-solid lavender Ripples I bought at Ally Pally, the purple CTH leftover from Clessidra, and the purple-variegated Filcolana leftover from Bellatrix. I'm finding wielding two heddles to be fiddly - it's difficult to get a clear shed (space between lifted and lowered warp threads, through which to pass the weft), so I've temporarily shelved plans for patterning until I get the hang of producing plain weave this way. When starting to weave it, I wasn't entirely happy with how the colours were blending, but then I caught sight of it while glancing past, when I wasn't thinking about it, and suddenly it looks lovely :-) The warp is Ripples, each end is going to have the CTH as weft, and the middle section will be Filcolana.

(The red flower-patterned thing in the background is my ironing board. Almost never used for ironing, but often used as a crafting table - it's wide enough for the loom to rest against, and it's height adjustable, which makes warping the loom, and using my sewing machine, much easier.)