Auditioning watery wefts

The watery hand painted silk is on the loom, and I’m trying out various wefts. The warp is 30/2 silk, with roughly 7,440 yards per pound (ypp). As a general rule I like my weft threads to be similarly sized to the warp. I don’t have much (any?) colored 30/2 silk, so I tried a number of options.

From the bottom:

• A rough tussah silk singles yarn in pale green with lots of nubblies, at 7,425 ypp .  You probably can’t see anything but the nubs.  I’ve had this yarn for almost 4 years now and have yet to find the right place for this yarn…this isn’t it.
• Next up is a silk frise in navy.  7,425 ypp, but again, not the right place for it.
• 3rd trial is a silk-linen blend, in medium blue, but only 2,400 ypp.  The color is ok, but I don’t like the size and the linen in it.
• 4th is  30/2 silk, at 4,900 ypp, in an interesting olive-y celery-ish green.  I like it.
• 5th is  30/2 silk in a silvery-blue.  A beautiful yarn, but too pale, I think.
• 6th is 30/2 silk in darker blue.  This might be nice.  Or it might be too dark.

Note that none of those wefts is packed/beat correctly.  It’s hard to do that when there’s nothing solid to weave against.  And I will fix the oddness on the left selvedge before I start weaving.

I’m going to stop auditioning here and weave the first scarf with the green.  Once I see a bunch of it I’ll have a better idea how to silvery-blue and the darker blue might look, and if I need to try out other options.

We’re off!

P.S.  If you’re a night owl, be sure to check out the sky tonight – the peak of the Perseids meteor shower.

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