No Comparison

A friend asked me to weave her a custom alpaca scarf. As always, I’m happy to do so. She chose the colors to coordinate with a new jacket, and picked the specific pattern from some images I’d sent her.

The lime and forest yarns are an alpaca-silk blend from WEBS, the cream and black are 100% alpaca from Colourmart.

For me, plaid is a PITA to weave. In this case, 4 shuttles are needed. Since I only have 3, that meant changing bobbins every few minutes. Plaid also means either carrying lots of thread up the selvedge or having lots of ends. In the case of this plaid, I chose some of both, carrying only the cream color up the selvedge, deciding there was too much space between other colors for carrying.

So weaving was slow. A short, narrow scarf – my friend’s choices – should be a breeze to weave. But not in plaid. I quickly bored of the time it was taking, even though I really liked the look of the whole thing.

I decided I would not weave the 2nd scarf on this warp in plaid, but in a solid color. I went back to my weaving software & played with various patterns, deciding on an Ms & Ws treadling. That’s fine, but nothing else about the scarf is, in my opinion. I really kind of hate it. Don’t know that this well sell. I should have done another plaid. Poop.

The good news was that I got to weave this on my little counterbalance loom. We’ve been missing each other.