I don’t think I’ve used this colorway in the past, but I’m sure I’ll be going back to it in the [...]]]> The title of this post implies that I somehow used semi-precious gemstones in my handwoven scarves. That is misleading. Instead, I wove with a bamboo-cotton blend in a hand painted colorway Tammy calls Sapphires.

I don’t think I’ve used this colorway in the past, but I’m sure I’ll be going back to it in the future. Being a gemtones girl, these colors call to me.

When given a choice among three scarves on the same warp but with different wefts, I usually choose the one with the most purple first, and the one with the same variegated weft as warp last. But not this time.

The scarf on the bottom, with the lilac weft, is my least favorite of the three. I can’t decide if I prefer the middle scarf, woven with a teal weft, or the top one with that Sapphires weft.

I think it’s the enhancement of three warp colors that pushed me into appreciating the scarf with the variegated weft. But then, this is always true of those hand painted wefts. So what’s different about this blend that makes me like the faux plaid look? I really have no idea.

While I was weaving we had one of those interesting spring storms that produces lots of hail as well as rain. It might be the biggest hail I’ve ever personally experienced. You can see it piling up next to my propane tank as the pachysandra stands tall nearby.

Meanwhile, the gardens I’ve already weeded & mulched were getting their own sprinkling of white on the darker mulch.

It looked interesting, and didn’t make me worry about the plants since the temperature wasn’t too cold. As it turned out, nothing was harmed at my house. I was glad that my car was safely tucked in the garage, and heard that some people had lots of dings on their vehicles post-storm. Others never saw a bit of hail. All within a radius of just a few miles. It was very isolated, which is always interesting to me.

Your turn: what weather patterns choose tiny regions near you?

I’ve had some of Tammy’s hand painted rayon boucle yarn in my stash for a while, and decided now was the time to use it. I build little ‘treats’ for myself, something I’ll let myself do when I reach a certain point. In this case, I decided I wouldn’t let myself use all that [...]]]>

I’ve had some of Tammy’s hand painted rayon boucle yarn in my stash for a while, and decided now was the time to use it. I build little ‘treats’ for myself, something I’ll let myself do when I reach a certain point. In this case, I decided I wouldn’t let myself use all that delicious new hand painted bamboo cotton yarn till I’d used up the rayon boucle.

Tammy’s surreal colorway is one that has looked quite different depending on the fiber. Sometimes it really speaks to me, sometimes it’s too dark for my personal tastes. The latter was the case with the rayon boucle, which is why it sat for so long. “Make it better,” I told myself.

I played Goldilocks for a bit.
At the top I used the same warp as weft. Too dark.
At the bottom I used a hand painted wisteria weft. Too light.
In the middle I used a turquoise bamboo weft. Just right. Unfortunately, I didn’t think I had enough of the turquoise to weave the entire scarf, so I had to be creative. I wove with about 25″ of turquoise at each end of the scarf, with a navy in the center. I’ve not done this before, but I think I like it. At least this time.

Now I can start on the bamboo cotton!

Your turn: do you set yourself up with goals and give yourself treats when you reach them?

The scarf is wonderfully light and airy. It looks and feels like the picture my mind conjures up when I think the word [...]]]> Back in April I told you I was trying my hand at weaving with some VERY fine silk. Somehow time got away from me in showing you the finished handwoven silk scarf.

The scarf is wonderfully light and airy. It looks and feels like the picture my mind conjures up when I think the word ‘silk.’ Despite the fact that I have learned well over the years that there are many types of silk – many weights, many textures, many qualities of silk, this is the default type in my head. I think it’s a silk charmeuse. Isn’t that a great word? Charmeuse. I think it even sounds rich and luxurious. Comes from the French, meaning charming, which I certainly think this fabric is.

Or at least it would be — no, will be — once I have some more experience under my belt with it, and maybe a little help from a spinning friend to ply it for me. From the beginning, I considered this scarf to be a sample, a test piece, something that I was weaving to get the feel of the yarn and learn some of its ideosyncrasies. And I did learn some. Undoubtedly I’ll learn more in my future experimentation with it. And it will be different when it’s twisted and plied. Maybe I’ll love it, maybe not — only time will tell.

Anyway, this particular scarf won’t be sold. I haven’t yet decided if I’ll keep it for my own or gift it to a friend who’s not so fussy about its imperfections. Let me share them with you.

For reasons that are completely beyond me, there’s this ‘mushy’ section near one end. Although there doesn’t appear to be a treadling error or threads skipped with the shuttle, this imperfection sure didn’t come out in wet finishing and pressing. It looks like I took my thumb, pressed down really hard and forcibly pushed the threads into a rough elliptical shape. I suppose I could try again to wet finish, paying particular attention to this spot, but I don’t know that it would help.

Then there are the selvedges. This scarf has 72 threads per inch in both warp and weft. In order to achieve that, I used 2 threads together all the time. (Otherwise I would have had to have 144 threads per inch in each direction – an amount of work I wasn’t willing to contemplate.) Two threads went through each heddle, 2 threads were wound on the bobbin. As a result, there were plenty of times when one of those bobbin threads wasn’t pulled as tight as the other at the selvedge.

To the untrained eye, it might look like a very fine halo in places along the edge. Heck, the untrained eye might not even notice it. But I sure do.

Nonetheless, I’m pleased with this first attempt at using the tram silk, and eager to see how it looks after my spinning friend tries his hand at it.

First, you know all those newly-woven scarves and shawls I’ve been posting here on my blog since early January? Yeah, well, they were all sitting in nice, neat piles on my dining room table, waiting to be tagged and put [...]]]> I’ve just spent three days on tasks essential to my weaving business, but not actually weaving.

First, you know all those newly-woven scarves and shawls I’ve been posting here on my blog since early January? Yeah, well, they were all sitting in nice, neat piles on my dining room table, waiting to be tagged and put away.

Each scarf gets a tag that has my logo, identifies the fiber(s) it contains, care instructions, the size, and the color name(s). I hbelieve the law requires most of that information, just like any other garment you buy. Even if it didn’t, I know it’s appreciated by my customers. I haven’t made the transition to tags that have a whole list of fibers and care instructions and I just chedk the appropriate ones – all my tags include the information just about that particular scarf or shawl. So I make them all as needed on my computer. (Not one-by-one. I made a full page of each particular fiber or blend of fibers. I keep a little box with the extras so I don’t have to print every time.)

Then I have to measure each piece, write the size & name on the tag, make a little price tag, and pin them together on the bottom of the scarf. After that, I fold them roughly in half, roll them into a loose jelly roll, and carefully stack them sideways in a plastic bin.

Because I’d waited so long before doing this task, I had to go back into my yarn invoices and/or my blog posts to confirm the fibers on some of them. It was beyond me to tell by look or feel the difference between 100% bamboo, 100% tencel, and a bamboo-tencel blend. So that took more time than necessary. Certainly more time than if I’d tagged them as I went along.

I like the way they look in their little bedroll state. When I’m at a show, I have many scarves draped over rods and the like, some laid casually on tables, and still more on a hanging shelf system in one corner of my booth. I used to group them on those shelves by fiber, but last year another vendor suggested I group them by color, saying, “When you go into the store for towels, you want to look at the purple towels, not all the towels of a particular size or weight.” She was right. We are attracted by the colors that call to us. That being said, I’m still getting used to this, because my weaverly self prefers them grouped by fiber.

Once those scarves were all tagged, I had to face another task I’ve been putting off. Not a single one of those scarves one shawls was put up on my website. This meant I had to go back to my original photos, save it once in the ‘large’ size I use on the web, crop it for detail, and save it again in my ‘small’ size. Since, as I’ve mentioned, my internet speed isn’t really high, uploading photos, even ones that are relatively small and optimized for the web, is painful from home. I opted to spend hours in a little coffee shop that has free WiFi.

After I had all the photos loaded, I could go to my Dreamweaver program and start writing descriptions and laying out the pages. I’d wanted to update the organization of the site for a long time, and decided that if I didn’t do it now, another year would roll by with the same clumsy structure. Simplify, simplify, simplify. Don’t make your customers do a lot of work to see the results of your labor. At least not if you want them to buy from you!

Once again, my trusty MacBook worked just as hard as I did.

So I think I’ve got the pages done and uploaded. But it’s to the point that I can’t know anymore what I’ve already looked at and proofed and checked the links on. I’ll really appreciate it if you have the inclination to look at it and tell me where you find broken links, missing pictures, misspellings (I think I did spell check on them all), or bad grammar. Click around my website to your heart’s content (actually, don’t bother with any of the jewelry pages – they need to come down), then leave me a comment or send me an email (peg at handwovenscarves dot com) with your helpful suggestions. I’ll be grateful for your time and attention.

Now I’m going to get back to my loom!

I use so much of her hand painted yarn, but I think not everyone knows what that means, or how it happens. Here’s a mini-primer.

This time I remembered to make a simple threading pattern – just a large point twill.

First handwoven scarf (top)- yep, I stuck with the variegation for weft, too.

Green isn’t typically [...]]]> My last batch of the hand painted bamboo-tencel blend yarn is Tammy’s North Shore. Again, I’ve used this colorway before, and I like it.

This time I remembered to make a simple threading pattern – just a large point twill.

First handwoven scarf (top)- yep, I stuck with the variegation for weft, too.

Green isn’t typically one of my colors – it doesn’t usually work well with my skin tone. As a result, I forget that other people like it, and I don’t order it as often as I probably should. Since I always sell the green I do weave, I had Tammy dye me some solid green to coordinate with this North Shore yarn to please my customers. That’s the middle scarf.

For the last scarf, I returned to a color in my palette – a bright, medium blue. If you look closely you can see that I modified the treadling pattern at the beginning (and end) of the scarf for about 8″. I thought it was too busy, so changed to a straight draw treadling for the rest of the scarf.

Your turn: what colors dominate your wardrobe?

Of course this year, we had a week of summer [...]]]> This time of year, I just keep weaving, and weaving, and weaving to build up my inventory for the coming show season. It’s nice to weave light, lacy fabrics when it’s cold out – it makes spring seem right around the corner.

Of course this year, we had a week of summer before winter was even over. Despite my weather concerns, I’m still enjoying weaving scarves for spring and summer. I’m using up that hand painted yarn I ordered. And yeah, I’ve subsequently ordered two more batches of Tammy’s yummy yarn.

It’s no surprise that I like saturated colors, and gemtones, so it’s completely fitting that one of my personal favorites is Tammy’s Ocean Waves colorway. I’ve used it in rayon chenille, bamboo, bamboo-cotton, and tencel. It’s always successful, and always popular. So I ordered a bunch more. This time in a blend of bamboo & tencel.

I worked out a new lace design for my little 4-harness counterbalance loom, and warped for four scarves. I could vary the treadling and create two somewhat different lace designs – either an open cross of four lace squares or a mini checkerboard of five.

The two scarves on the right look the same color in real life – no idea why they look so different in this picture. For the first three scarves, I used the same variegated yarn for both warp and weft. For the fourth, on the left in the photo, I used a solid, bright turquoise bamboo. It really lightens those scarves up a lot. I wasn’t positive if I’d like it, but I do. I like them all.

After I twisted the fringes and wet finished these scarves, I wasn’t ready to be done with the watery-colored yarn. So I measured out another warp of three scarves, this time in a log cabin pattern with black bamboo.

Although weaving with two shuttles takes me more than twice the time of weaving with one, the end result in a log cabin weave makes the time investment worthwhile. It turns a plain weave into something that thrills the eye. At least it does for me. I will definitely have to weave some more log cabin for this season.

I have so many more things I want to weave, so many ideas. There’s no way I can build in time to weave everything I want to. At least not if I want to sleep. And I do love to sleep. Still, despite my long stretch of unproductive time due to the nasty virus, I’ve completed 67 handwoven scarves, plus the 10 towels and 3 baby blankets since the first of the year. 30 scarves in March alone. I’m threading a loom for a warp of 2 shawls right now, and I’m hoping I can add them to my list of March completions.

Can you tell I’m a bit obsessive-compulsive? But you knew that already, didn’t you.

Your turn: what’s one of your personal characteristics, or behaviors, if you prefer?

The delicate colors of Silver Linings call out to me for handwoven lace. [...]]]> I’ve worked with Tammy’s Silver Linings colorway before. I’ve woven rayon chenille scarves, tencel scarves, and bamboo scarves with it. It’s always a hit with customers. When it became available in a bamboo-tencel blend, I had to give it a try.

The delicate colors of Silver Linings call out to me for handwoven lace. I like weaving huck, but I’m trying to remember that recent lesson – simple pictures are best. I think huck works better with solid colors than variegations, so I went back to an old standby pattern — Swedish lace borders.

I warped the loom up for 4 scarves this time instead of my usual 3, because these scarves are always popular. I used the same warp as weft for the first 3 scarves, and decided to try something different for the 4th. I used a fine, 10/2, pale blue cotton.

The cotton weft gives the scarves more of a subtle striped appearance instead of the almost-plaid look of the variegated warp. I like it, and will definitely do it again. The bamboo-tencel warp is so soft, that even with a cotton weft this scarf still drapes and wraps nicely.

Despite my best efforts, both of these scarves look more gray in the picture than they do in real life. I’m never sure why sometimes it’s easy to get the colors right, and other times it’s impossible.