UNproductive

With 10 days or so to myself over the Christmas break, I'd thought I'd get somewhere around half a dozen or so items woven, if I concentrated on weaving. I was so looking forward to it. Instead I picked up my third bug for December (I've now been constantly sick sonce November the 27th), and accomplished precisely one. One woven item, just off the loom this past weekend and not yet finished.

OK, so a treadle-controlled undulating twill woven with two shuttles in 60/2 silk with regular stops for broken ends isn't going to be a fast weave, but that's slow by anyone's standards. Anyway, here's a preview:


The warp is the random assortment of pinks, purples and peaches in my previous post and the weft is alternating picks of purple solid-dyed 60/2 and a random-dyed, spun silk cap in shades of pinks and purples:


Weaving into the old 60/2 was quite a challenge, as it turned out. Because there was such a random assortment of ends, it turned out that not all of the silks were the same weight, and some there different ages than others. Some of the very old, and probably acid-dyed, silks are quite rotten and broke very very easily. Swapping them out for other ends would have proven difficult if not impossible, because they were usually the feature ends, such as the dark purples you see on the right of the scarf above. They occur in a defined pattern which isn't substitutable, so I just had to be patient and replace ends when they broke. There will be a lot of sewing to get them even in this pattern. Fortunately each one will only be a few picks, because I was very vigilant.

The end result is a softly sheening scarf, with highlights shining out from the warp. I'm looking forward to wet finishing this one and seeing how it turns out, but that will have to wait for a couple of weeks.

It's perhaps appropriate, considering I coughed and spluttered all the way through the weaving of this scarf, that it's intended for the mother of the twins who gave me this latest cold!