Thursday 29 November 2007

The sunset scarf

You know you're serious about your weaving when you move house so you can have a dedicated weaving room. From the cramped corner of the spare room in my previous flat, I now have this:

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

That's an image of my weaving studio as I was rebuilding my loom. What I can't believe is how I got that huge loom into the corner of the tiny spare room in the old house. It dominates this room! But at least I have my stash out on display so I can remember what's there and gain inspiration from it as I weave. The loom is now flanked by two of those sets of shelves. The second sits between the door and the loom, giving it its own little alcove and providing me with not only space for all of my books but also more storage space. Heaven.


I finished the cashmere and handspun silk scarf before moving.

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Despite being convinced that I never want to try warping with soft 1/10 yarn again, the scarf itself was lovely - and the weave really did look like little licks of flame.

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

This is it, off the loom, but before fringing:

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

As the draft was based on a twill and the cashmere was so soft, I was expecting this fabric to have a real drape when it came off the loom. I was surprised to find that it actually ended up being a quite crisp fabric, certainly as crisp as the plain-weave, all-silk 'Apple orchard' scarf that I made. Lovely all the same, but not what was expected, and I'm not entirely sure why yet. It may be that it's a result of the handwoven raw silk cap. I have another scarf on the loom at the moment which will mix the handspun browns I mentioned in the previous post with yellow 2/60 silk. That will come off the loom soon, and I'll know then whether that's the case. That scarf deserves a post all of its own - I've been learning how to handle 2/60 silk on this loom.


Now, in order to finish the flame scarf, I just have to figure out where it crawled off to hide in the process of unpacking in the new house....