Weaving A Gem Of A Life

Alpaca Houndstooth

Continuing my custom weaving orders, I wove this handsome alpaca scarf. My customer has a forest green coat with brown trim, and wanted these colors in the pattern I’d woven earlier in the red, gray & black. Since both of the colors in the new scarf are a similar value, the houndstooth pattern doesn’t show up quite as well, but the scarf is really quite lovely, nonetheless.

Alpaca is very lightweight and yet quite warm. In fact, if you look very closely near the bottom center of the picture, you might even see a bit of the white background through the scarf. It’s woven with a moderate weave at 12 ends per inch for warp and 12 picks per inch for weft, making certain that the scarf retains a beautiful hand and drape. I believe it’s the hairiness that makes alpaca warm.

Like the red, black, & gray scarf, I wove this one on my rigid heddle loom. Why? Alpaca isn’t one of my big sellers, so I decided to buy just enough yarn for this special order. Once I’d made that decision, I wanted to make the weaving as efficient as possible for both use of yarn and motion. The rigid heddle wastes very little yarn and I’ve gotten better at warping it, so it seemed the logical decision.

My customer plans to order another skein of each color and have her mom knit her some mittens. I think they’ll look great, and hope she send me a photo of them.

Your turn: what are you wearing to stay warm when the cold winter winds blow?

New Soup

I tried a soup recipe from one of my Christmas presents: 400 Soups. It’s a Bacon Lentil soup, supposed to be more stew-like. I make a pretty good lentil soup, so thought I’d really like this. Bacon? Come on, how could that be bad?!

Well, I was disappointed. It was just ok. Not hearty enough for my tastes. My soups are my meals, not just one course of the meal.

The soup greatly benefitted from a rounded teaspoon of neufchatel cheese stirred into the bowl of hot soup.

But now I had was should have been a good, healthy lentil soup that had bacon & cheese in it — sort of ruined the low-fat healthiness of it all.

I made another new soup today – Beet, Carrot, Ginger soup. I’ll be serving it to my friends tomorrow. I’ll let you know how it tastes. And if it doesn’t seem too weird, I’ll take a picture of it with a swirl of Greek yogurt on top.

Regardless of whether these two particular soups make it into my personal must-do repertoire, I’m glad I tried them. They are one of my (non) resolutions.

Your turn: tried any new recipes lately?

White Bamboo Scarves Complete

Although it took a lot of talking to myself, out loud, I did get the white bamboo scarves woven.

I tried a few pictures of the finished scarf from different angles, but none of them showed the really lovely diamond pattern to its best advantage, although you can see it here in parts of this photo.

I didn’t have enough of the white bamboo to weave three scarves, which I usually do, I only had enough for two. In fact, although I could warp for two, I could only do white on white (both warp and weft) for one.

I have several other colors of the same weight and type of bamboo that I considered, but I ultimately decided on a yarn I’ve had in my stash for some time…a soy silk ribbon yarn. Â (FYI, soy silk is a yarn made from the waste products in the tofu manufacturing process. Â No idea how they actually do that. Â Ribbon yarn is wide & flat.)

I’d not used soy silk before, and had absolutely no idea how it would interplay with the bamboo in the wet finishing, but figured I’d live a little. I also didn’t know if I’d like using ribbon yarn for the weft, as it would elongate the diamonds, but again, thought I’d try a few inches; I could always unweave it if I didn’t like it.

Since I’m showing you a finished scarf here, obviously I did like it. The soy and bamboo wet finished the same — no distortion. The soft, deep sage green soy played nicely with the clear white of the bamboo, resulting in a pleasing combination of bright and muted. The dark weft made that diamond weaving pattern really pop, and I didn’t mind the fact that the pattern was much more elongated than if I’d used a weft yarn of the same size as the warp.

As I was weaving, I was a bit concerned…my one ball of the soy silk ribbon yarn of that color was fast getting depleted. Fortunately, I was able to make it to the end of the scarf. If the scarf had been any wider, it would have been a minor disaster. I would have had to either unweave the whole thing or settle for a shorter scarf than I usually make. Thankfully, I didn’t need to do either.

I’ll definitely use both soy silk and ribbon yarn again. But not immediately. I have one more custom weaving order to make before I can start my regular winter production.

Your turn: have you woven with or worn any soy fabrics?

If you can say it…

Moving forward on my third custom order, the same woman who wanted the rice bamboo scarf also wanted one in snow white. I wanted to give her some diversity – not the same weaving pattern in both scarves.

So I played with my weaving software, Fiberworks, to come up with a design that I liked. Here’s what I decided on.

While it may just look like an interesting design to many, this type of graphic tells a weaver how to thread and treadle her loom to achieve the pattern.

So I prepared the warp, dressed the loom, and was off and running.

Uh oh. It was IMPOSSIBLE for me to see the pattern in white on white as I was weaving.

I tried squinting, tilting my head, moving the light — all tricks I’ve used successfully with other weaving patterns. No luck.

The only way for me to see this pattern was to get up and walk about 3 feet from the loom, then catch the fabric at quite an angle.

Now it’s perfectly clear! And lovely, if I do say so myself.

But with 30 rows to a pattern repeat and no way to see it as I wove, the odds of making a treadling mistake were great.

So I reverted to a lesson from my original weaving teacher: “if you can say it, you can do it.” I sat there at my loom saying, “1, 2, 3, 4, 3, 4. 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4, 3, 4. 1, 2, 1. 4, 3, 4, 3, 2, 1, 2, 1. 4, 3, 4, 3, 2.” As I was saying those numbers, my feet were moving to those treadles.

Interestingly, if what my voice was saying (yep, I was saying it out loud) didn’t match what my feet were doing, some part of my head knew it, and made me stop. My voice was always right, my feet were always wrong. By saying it, I never had to go back more than 1 row.

I wonder how far that morsel of advice – if you can say it you can do it – applies. Will it work if I’m at the table and tempted to reach for a second helping I don’t need? Will it help me to express kindness more often? I’m going to give it a try!

Your turn: have you used advice given in one area of your life to improve another?

Eggshell Handwoven Bamboo Scarves

The second custom weaving order was for a handwoven bamboo scarf. Although most of us would call the color eggshell or natural, the yarn manufacturer calls it rice, so that’s what I call it, too. I’ve made this color before, but was out of it, so it turned into a special order.

My customer left the decisions regarding weaving pattern up to me, so I decided to use the Ms & Ws pattern I’d used before to good response. I knew it would look much different in all one color, but thought it would be nice.

As usual, I warped the loom for three scarves. I wove two of them with eggshell bamboo yarn for both warp and weft. For the third scarf, I used an acorn yarn, also in bamboo.

I’m really happy with both of them. And I like the fact that I can easily weave the interesting pattern on my 4-harness counterbalance loom — always my preferred loom.

I’ll be putting the two that weren’t special orders on my website soon. It’s always a balance between doing the weaving and getting the new items listed.

So many tasks, so little time.

Weaving A Gem Of A Life

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Alpaca Houndstooth

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If you can say it…

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