9 posts tagged “scarf”
This is the end of my new scarf, finished today. It's much more warp-dominant than I was expecting, so the colour changes between the two weft yarns aren't as noticeable as I'd hoped, but it's very pretty, and much smarter and more sensible than the cherry pop scarf.
The finishing is a new thing I've learnt: hemstitching. All my previous scarves have had their fringes secured with knots, which are fine, but this is less bumpy, and the weft yarn makes it a decorative edge as well as a secure one.
And R complimented it without me even having to tell him it's new :-)
...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.)
... I've also spun batches two and three of the red leaf fibre (wildly varying weights because I changed my mind about how fine I wanted it to be after batch one, but never mind), and begun Henry for large-male-friend-R: I've completed the cast on plus two rows! Since each row is approximately five million and six stitches, this is quite a lot of work. I know I've only just started the push-me-pull-you socks, but I thought I could do with a larger-needle project as well, to save my hands. No photos yet, for either the spinning or the knitting (in Henry's case, because all that's visible at the moment is the waste-yarn cast on, which is Lorna's Laces rainbow (my go-to waste yarn for most purposes, since I've got a fair amount of it left hanging around), so a picture wouldn't be very informative anyway).
The second is a last-minute Christmas gift for R, which I partly wove in front of him on Christmas Eve, figuring (correctly, it turns out) that he pays no attention to what I'm making unless I talk to him about it. There are stripes in the weft - plain dark grey Jaeger merino and black tweed YSL - but they're much less obvious in the flesh than in the photo.
Next up (pictures three and four) is the finally-finished Clessidra. I don't think I'll use the riverbed sockitecture again, because I don't like how it fits me, but I love the socks and am going to wear them to a crafting date tomorrow :-)
Picture five is R's blue socks with a reknitted heel after he wore a massive hole in one of them. I think I've still got some of the blue, but I'm not sure where, and he didn't mind them being mended in black.
The last pic is my new sock project, double knit socks which I'm knitting wrong side out, so I don't have to move the yarn backwards and forwards (near side is English-style purl, far side is continental-style knit, so one strand in each hand, which is fun). The downside of knitting them this way around is that I can't read my knitting on the wrong side, so whether I'm increasing or not on any given row is a bit random but because I'm knitting them at the same time they'll match anyway so it doesn't matter, and I'm planning a short-row heel so there's no other increases or decreases to keep track of. I wanted to use different yarn to make it easier to keep track of which stitch belongs to which sock, so these will end up non-matching stripes - once I've finished the toe I'll break the yarn and swap them over, and keep swapping them at random intervals throughout (must remember to break yarn to do this, so I don't end up knitting the two together).
My first ever weaving project, in progress (made from Knitwitches sock yarn):
I have just derived a ridiculous amount of pleasure from recategorising two of my WIPs on Ravelry as hibernating instead of in progress. This means I officially now only have four WIPs, one of which (the scrap scarf) is deliberately a long-term project, so also doesn't count. Three things in progress! Hoorah!
Those things are:
- The Shadow and Ghost socks. I've made Shadow's sock and now have to cast on for Ghost's. I'm reasonably optimistic that it will go quickly once I begin - having the colours the other way round should solve some of my second sock syndrome, because I'll be watching eagerly to see how it looks reversed.
- The purple cable cardigan. No hurry on this - it's taken its time already, and at the moment my creative energy is going into spinning rather than designing. But the Harmony needles are calling me, so I'll probably take it up again soon.
- The red cardigan. I'm bored of this, which is ridiculous because (as I say every time I mention it), there's not long to go before the underarms, at which point it will become less unwieldy. More wieldly :-)
The second picture is the scrap scarf I mentioned below. It's been ongoing for ages, and probably will be for ages more, but it's shaping up nicely, and it means I only have to throw away leftover pieces that are too short to have two knots tied in them, which is good because I hate throwing away tiny bits of pretty (in the same vein, I'm keeping all my tiny wispy bits of spinning leftovers in a bowl next to my desk, with the thought of trying to spin them all together when I'm proficient enough to try it).
I have also knit a row or so of the goth space invaders (black and purple bmp), but I'm just not enjoying it. I need to persevere so I get the hang of the stranding, which will make it more fun, but at the moment it's just annoying and fiddly, and I'm channeling all of my perseverance and determination into trying to finish off my various academic assignments by the end of the semester, so the socks will have to wait.
