Weaving A Gem Of A Life

April and May are generally good months for wind. The weather is changing and with it comes, at the very least, breezes. It’s often time to take your kite to an open field, or go in your backyard with a pinwheel.

With that in mind (okay, not really, but it makes for good text) I decided to weave another warp of four 8-harness black & white pinwheels. They really are eye catching.

It’s pretty amazing how different the 8-harness vs. 4-harness pinwheels turned out.

Now, in addition to having more harnesses to do more twirls with the pattern, and having less contrast in the colors, I had sett the 4H scarves at 21 threads per inch. The 8H scarves are 18 threads per inch. I intended to sett them at 21, but when I pulled out my records from my prior 8H pinwheels I had sett them at 18 and they turned out fine (not too long floats, not too unstable cloth) so I did that again this time. Again I’m happy with them, so if I decide to do 4H pinwheels again I will sett them at 18, too.

Back to my first show of the season for the second day in just a few minutes. Hopefully we’ll be busier today.

I don’t recall ‘naming’ a series of scarves before, but this warp of four called its name out to me repeatedly: Fire in the Hills.

The Tencel warp only 3 colors: spice, curry, & gold. In between the solid colors I’ve tried the every-other-thread blending technique. I wasn’t sure I was crazy about it until I started weaving. Then I knew it worked well.

First I wove a scarf with a sienna weft. It created a lovely golden tone across the scarf. I like the fact that it works with each of the colors without exactly matching any of them.

That worked so well I went for another coordinating weft color, this time cayenne. I really love it – everything’s a lovely orange color. I liked it so much I wove two with this weft.

For the final scarf in the run I debated. Would I do another sienna or try something different? I opted to try a darker color. This time I used burgundy.

The sienna & cayenne scarves are relatively true to color; the burgundy looks much muddier in the photo than in real life. I tried several times with different settings and at different times of day. This is the best I could do.

I’m quite happy with my weaving progress during April. At the end of March I was 24 scarves behind the number I’d woven at that point last year. At the end of April I was only 6 scarves behind. Whoppee! Obviously I wove more than I blogged. You’ll see them all eventually.