It’s Surreal

I’ve decided to jump into Jan’s Scarf A Day challenge for the month of February. I may not be able to actually make a scarf a day, but what the heck, I may as well try. Besides, Jan only holds herself to 5 days a week, and does extend the completions to towels and other linens as well as scarves. I think I’m probably weaving almost that much without the challenge, so, I’m off, starting with the placemats I finished last weekend.

Last week I put on a warp, and yesterday I took three handwoven scarves off my beloved counterbalance loom. These will be the last three that I weave in rayon chenille for a while, since I need to get started on the spring and summer weights.

The three scarves are all made with rayon chenille that was handpainted by the wonderful Tammy of Yarntopia Treasures, in a colorway she calls Surreal. I’ve used this colorway before in rayon boucle, and folks really loved it. You’ll remember I also recently finished a handwoven shawl using this yarn. For the scarves, I put a thin stripe of solid purple along one edge.

I used different weft yarns for the three scarves.
The first one was a solid purple that Tammy custom dyed to coordinate with the weft, creating a scarf that striped lengthwise.

For the second scarf I used the variegated surreal yarn for both warp and weft, making the scarf darker and almost plaid looking.

Finally, I used a rather bright blue solid weft, again custom dyed by Tammy. This scarf is overall the brightest of the three.

And now to see the three of them together for the comparison.

It’s much easier to see the differences when they’re side by side.

I’m off to start on some weaving with a bamboo-cotton blend. Spring scarves, here I come!