Project: Windowpane Lace Inspired Wool Shawl/Throw

I asked one of friends the other day what her favourite colours were with a mind to weaving something for her.  "Ivory or beige or sort of a light grey" was her response.  I suspect she was thinking in terms of neutrals for a bed throw rather than a pop of colour for her wardrobe because her personality is definitely anything but beige. 

Armed with this description, I thought that when working with a more neutral wool there were more opportunities to play with texture that in some of my previous projects.  In an earlier sampler project I had quite liked the look of 3/1 Windowpane floats, which simply involve using a pickup stick threaded 1 up and 1 down across the loom, worked in 6 simple pattern rows:

Row 1: heddle up
Row 2: heddle neutral with pickup stick;
Row 3: heddle up
Row 4: heddle down
Row 5: heddle up with pickup stick forward;
Row 6: heddle down

It's just as easy as that.  The net result is a very pretty, delicate looking fabric suitable for a shawl or a bed throw as desired.  Or the world's least practical pocket square - - I don't try and tell people how to use my projects any more (!).  It's a rectangle, I know that.  After that, it's all on the recipient what they make of it. 

For this project I chose some W4 Worsted Weight 100% wool from Shelridge Yarns that I picked up at the Purple Purl, a local yarn store on Queen Street East by Carlaw.  While I prefer Romni Wools (on Queen Street West by Bathurst) for its ridiculously huge selection, I do like the Purple Purl because it is much easier to shop - - everything is visible and it's much less of a treasure hunt through narrow aisles overstuffed with exotic wools. 

My only complaint relating to this project is that somehow a single skein of Shelridge DK weight 100% wool was shelved in the same cubby, likely by mistake (since the Purple Purl organizes their yarns by weight) - - with the identical colour and virtually identical label - - and of course I snapped it up while picking out the wool for this project.  I only discovered the errant skein after I had wound it onto my warping board (fortunately, it was the first skein I chose).  Much cursing was heard when I discovered that mistake, I'll tell you.  On the good side, even though I had 1 fewer skein than I had intended, I was able to weave up the length I wanted with the W4 wool with 1 entire bobbin to spare.  Whew!

My setup was very straightforward, using only a single 10-dent heddle on my Kromski Harp loom along with a pickup stick.  Once again my little hand-held row counter was a lifesaver, as it was very easy to lose count, especially when I was distracted.   And we all know how easily I am distracted (!).

This wool warped up quickly and wove generally well, but it was prone to static and had a tendency to stick a bit in my heddle as a result.  Overall the wool was just that little bit fussy to work, but it wove up so nicely and washed so well I would happily use it again - - albeit after closely checking the labels next time!

I guarantee that I have woven in my trademark errors into the pattern, just so that people know it's my work.  But the pattern looks so nice overall it's easy to overlook the occasional strangeness.  And who's to say that the deviations are not part of the pattern, right?  Not me.

From start to finish this project took only 2 weeks.  I would have been a bit quicker (because the pattern really is quite fast to weave) but we had a guest from overseas staying in our living room for the past week and I have to confess that I felt a bit strange whipping out the loom and weaving in front of him.  Nothing to do with our guest - he was and is a lovely man - but rather from my own desire not to be a completely selfish hostess and entirely focused on my own project.  Plus, with the sofa bed in play the number of available seats in our living room was decreased by 50%, so I felt a bit self conscious about monopolizing one of our two remaining soft chairs with my loom.

Fresh off the loom the work measured 25 1/4" x 78 1/2", off of a 100" warp across 150 ends on my 10-dent heddle - - not quite the full width of my 32" Kromski loom (probably about 29" or so across the heddle).  After washing the finished work was about 23 1/4" x 75" - - a nice length for a shawl (or bedrunner or monster table runner or family-style placemat...).

As with my other shawls/bed runners/etc. I have finished the piece with a tiny "M" bead (with thanks again to Padge). 


I am quite pleased with the finished project, and really like how the texture turned out.