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Let’s face it: nobody knows how to rest like cats. They sleep something on the order of 16 hours per day. It’s a fact.
This is my kitty, Magic. Magic is, in fact, quite magical. He’s now pretty old — he’ll be 18 in a few months. According to the cat years calculator, that’s something like 89 in people years. He’s not as beautiful as he was in his prime, but he’s just at lovable, a real sweetheart. Magic has both claws and sharp teeth, but he almost never uses them. The only time he ever scratched me was when I was trying to shove some medicine down his throat. And that’s all in the past; he doesn’t like meds, but he takes them daily without fuss or argument — vitamin B, PB8, and digestive enzymes. And that’s on a good day.
Magic just dodged another bullet, one of many in his lifetime. There is no doubt in my mind he was just a few days from death. He was sleeping constantly, wasn’t eating, wasn’t purring, was lying in the ashes and bark next to the woodstove in the basement and didn’t care that he was filthy. But he’s now infinitely better. He’s eating, drinking, and interacting. He’s not 100%, but he’s back on his way to old-man wellness. Here he’s not really sleeping, just resting, gathering his energies. He’ll be back up soon, wanting another snack. And I’ll be happy to give it to him. Along with all the extra meds he’s now taking.
This picture is in response to Carmi’s thematic photo of the week – topic: at rest.
Your turn: tell me about your older pet. Or join in Carmi’s weekly game. Or just send your positive energy to Magic.
If you’re a Rachel Ray fan, you know that EVOO is extra virgin olive oil. And if you’re an olive oil lover, you know that the color ranges for a variety of reasons, but in general, high quality EVOO is a relatively dark green, but lighter colored oils are also lighter in flavor, and might be preferred at times.
I’m not suddenly switching to giving you recipes or food advice; all that is preface to this new batch of scarves.
Tammy calls this colorway Olive Oil, a fitting name. Â This shows the major difference that changing the weft yarn can make. Â These two handwoven scarves were made on the same warp, a handpainted bamboo-cotton blend. Â In the top scarf I used a solid green weft, the same color as the dark green in the variegation. Â The result is a dark, striped scarf. Â For the bottom scarf has the same weft as warp, creating a relatively uniform plaid.
For the last of this warp of three, I used a solid bronze weft, hand dyed in the same color as the the medium color of the variegation. Â I wove this one in a point twill, while the first two were both a tabby weave. Â Actually, I had tried both of those first wefts with a point twill, and really hated them. Â There was way too much going on with the combination of the colors and the weave pattern.
I was happy with the pink infinity scarf, so decided to make this bamboo-cotton twill into an infinity scarf as well. Â I’m working on getting some more feedback before I make too many of them, but I do think I like them.
By my count, these three handwoven scarves bring my count up to 14 for the month (8 placemats, 6 scarves) of February, so I’m right on target with Jan’s Scarf A Day challenge, particularly since we only count 5 days/week. Â But I fear Jan’s been ill and is falling behind. Â Hope she catches us up on her activity soon!
As planned, last night I removed the final Think Pink bamboo scarf from the loom. I also did the sewing needed to make it into an infinity scarf.
Infinity scarves are also called endless scarves, loop scarves, and other names, but I like infinity scarf the best, so that’s what I’m using. Basically, it’s a single length of fabric that is looped back onto itself so that there are no ends. This means you can loop it around your neck as you wish, with no worries that it’ll slide off or that you’ll accidently dip the end into your soup. The winter-weight scarves are often wide enough so that they can be pulled up over your head creating a cowled hood. For spring and summer, I didn’t think that was appropriate.
So I made this handwoven infinity scarf from a soft and supple bamboo-cotton blend of yarn. It’s lightweight and easy to care for.
Here’s what it looks like looped twice around my neck.
And here it is looped three times.
Your turn: too long or short? too wide or narrow? too trendy? just right?
 After consideration, I decided I’d weave my next three scarves for Jan’s Scarf A Day challenge out of bamboo-cotton. It’s lightweight enough to be good for spring and summer, and I recently got all those great new handpainted colors in from Tammy.
So I started by winding those lovely handpainted skeins into balls. Check out the yarn swift and ball winder process vs. the old one with two kindergarden chairs.
I got Tammy’s very girly Think Pink colorway wound on the back beam, and was so pleasantly reminded about how easy it is to work with compared to the rayon chenille I’ve been weaving with for months. It went SO QUICKLY I was ready to weave in no time. It also helped that I sett this yarn at 12 EPI vs. rayon chenille’s 16 EPI, and that, since I wanted spring and summer weight, I was making the scarves narrower. So 108 ends instead of 160 – lots less time threading heddles & reed and tying onto the front apron.
I wove the first scarf in tabby weave. Â I used Tammy’s yarns enough to know that this would produce a semi-regular plaid effect. Â The weaving moved along quickly and easily, but the scarf wasn’t quite as wide as I wanted it to be; I should have used 12 more warp threads for another inch. Â Oh well, too late now. Â Just move on to the second.
Having been threaded on a straight draw (1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4), I wove the second scarf in a 2/2 twill. I wove 12 rows to the left, then returned and did 12 to the right, for the length of the scarf. It’s really interesting how differently the colors interplay just by changing the weaving pattern, isn’t it? On to the third scarf.
I know what you’re thinking now, “Gee, that looks just like the first one.” Well, it is and it isn’t. It isn’t because this one has taken 6 hours at the loom instead of the 2 or so it should have taken. How is that possible? I decided to try something new.
First of all, this scarf will be different when it’s finished because I’m going to make it into an infinity scarf. I had tried a version of this previously with rayon chenille, making a scarf-hood combo, but I wasn’t overly happy with the results. I thought the seam was too bulky. This infinity scarf will be lighter weight fiber, narrower, and substantially longer. I THINK I can make the seam look good and lay nicely.
Because of this planned use, I really wanted the scarf to be a bit wider. Just one more inch would make me much happier. So I prepared 12 lengths of yarn, threaded 12 heddles and the reed at the left side, and tied them off and weighted them. Now, I’ve added plenty of warp threads before when something broke, or when I realized as I was threading that I’d inadvertently wound too few warp threads. So I figured I could handle this without a problem.
WRONG!! I tried and tried. First I wove about 12″ with the weighted 12 warp threads. Despite all the tricks I was trying in the weaving process and the various methods I used to weight the threads, the left edge was completely unacceptable. I unwove everything. I took those new threads out of the loom. I cut off the two completed scarves and unwound the remaining yarn on the back beam. I tied the 12 new threads onto the rear apron, sleyed the reed to keep them separate, and re-wound everything on the back beam. Threaded the heddles, re-sleyed the reed, and tied the yarns to the front apron. Started weaving.
It was pretty immediately clear that the 12 new threads, for reasons I wasn’t even going to try to figure out, were not the same tension as the initial 108. DAMN!!! At that point I’d wasted too much time, so I unwove the few inches I’d done and simply pulled them out of the heddles and reed, and started weaving with the 108. It would have to be wide enough.
I’ll get that scarf off the loom this evening, and I’ll let you know how it goes to make that double seam to turn it into an infinity scarf.
Your turn – Can you successfully add width to a warp that’s already wound? If so, please share your tricks.
I’ve decided to jump into Jan’s Scarf A Day challenge for the month of February. I may not be able to actually make a scarf a day, but what the heck, I may as well try. Besides, Jan only holds herself to 5 days a week, and does extend the completions to towels and other linens as well as scarves. I think I’m probably weaving almost that much without the challenge, so, I’m off, starting with the placemats I finished last weekend.
Last week I put on a warp, and yesterday I took three handwoven scarves off my beloved counterbalance loom. These will be the last three that I weave in rayon chenille for a while, since I need to get started on the spring and summer weights.
The three scarves are all made with rayon chenille that was handpainted by the wonderful Tammy of Yarntopia Treasures, in a colorway she calls Surreal. I’ve used this colorway before in rayon boucle, and folks really loved it. You’ll remember I also recently finished a handwoven shawl using this yarn. For the scarves, I put a thin stripe of solid purple along one edge.
I used different weft yarns for the three scarves.
 The first one was a solid purple that Tammy custom dyed to coordinate with the weft, creating a scarf that striped lengthwise.
 For the second scarf I used the variegated surreal yarn for both warp and weft, making the scarf darker and almost plaid looking.
 Finally, I used a rather bright blue solid weft, again custom dyed by Tammy. This scarf is overall the brightest of the three.
And now to see the three of them together for the comparison.
It’s much easier to see the differences when they’re side by side.
I’m off to start on some weaving with a bamboo-cotton blend. Spring scarves, here I come!
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