Project: Doubleweave Windpwpane Shawl

Woven: January - February 2016
Fiber: 8/2 tencel
Reed/Sett: 8-dent/32 epi

This project was a further development on the doubleweave baby blanket, and one that finally delivered on the weaving porn on the front of Jennifer Moore's excellent Doubleweave book.  My plan was to use her table runner pattern and weave a shawl in 8/2 tencel. 

Before getting started I wove some samples to work on the technique.  Using 4 ends per slot in the reed (2 per layer) I started on the top with a 12-dent reed.  The finished product was so dense that it was almost rigid, which although fine for a very structured garment, was not ideal for a shawl.  The middle, long sample was woven with a 10-dent reed, and the bottom, widest sample was woven using the 8-dent reed.  For a shawl I thought the 8-dent sleyed at 4 ends per slot for 32 epi was the way to go.




For my colours I chose a lustrous bronze as my base, with rainbow colours as my contrast blocks.  The plan was to mirror the pattern throughout the shawl. 

 

 

I used a temple to maintain my selvedges because draw-in without the temple causes by warp threads to snap.  With the temple, the weaving was very straightforward on the 8-shaft Louet Jane table loom.  The shawl was finished with twisted tassels, and after wet finishing (hand wash and dry flat) the finished shawl (exclusive of tassels) measured 23.5" x 72.5". 

 

For more information check out my website at deftlyweft.com or my instagram page at @the_meglg and @DeftlyWeft.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

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. 

Project: Houndstooth Shawl in Merino Wool

It is no secret that I love houndstooth - - it's a beautiful pattern that is deceptively simple to make.  And if there's anything that I love more than the deceptively simple, I don't know what it is. 

For this project I chose Kollage Happiness fingering weight 100% superwash merino wool in black and lilac.  Each skein is 100g / 450 yards.  I estimated that I would require about 1050 yards of each colour, so for safety I picked up 3 skeins of each colour intending to try for a finished work that was 28" wide x 70+" long (I wasn't too fussy about the length so long as it was more than 70") using a 12-dent heddle. 

My challenges on this project came early.  My first 12-dent heddle was broken adjacent to one of the holes, something I discovered only as I was about to begin threading the holes in my heddle.  This required me to manually transfer the entire width of my warp to my second 12-dent heddle.  Many profanities were heard that afternoon, I will tell you.  Thank you weaving gods for my double-heddle setup, so that I had a backup heddle ready to go while the Nerd repaired the defective heddle. 

My next challenge was in threading the holes in my heddle.  I think that the 12-dent heddle was actually the right call for this particular wool, however it is very challenging threading my 12-dent heddle with the hook provided with my loom.  Because the hook itself barely fits through the heddle, let alone with wool, threading each hole was a challenge of wills requiring much to-ing and fro-ing, and I had more than half a dozen ends simply disintegrate as I was pulling them through a hole.  This left me with several extremely short ends amidst many longer ends, and I probably lost more than 2-3" of warp in evening everything out.

I also had 1 end come through the hole only 2/3 of the way, leaving a twist of fiber on the back end of the heddle, something I did not notice until I had been weaving for a few inches.  More cursing.  At the end of the day, however, this did not pose an insurmountable problem as I simply worked the tag end of the wool towards the back of the loom as I advanced the warp to prevent it from ratcheting up the tension on the one warp thread as it got caught on the heddle.  I can't even tell where it was in the finished piece, which is nice. 

Although I think the 12-dent heddle was the right call for this fingering weight wool it was a close thing, and I found the wool had a real tendency to stick together making it difficult to get a clean shed.  This was remedied by the judicious use of pick up sticks to help me manually force sticky warp threads apart, ensuring that my weaving errors were kept, if not to a minimum, to a dull roar. 

I didn't do anything too fancy with this shawl, just a plain hemstitch at each end with a moderate fringe, but the simplicity works for this pattern, I think.  I did add a little ceramic "M" at one corner as a signature (just in case the usual errors I included in the piece weren't enough to identify me!).

Right off the loom the finished piece was 26" x 74", and after washing and hanging to dry the shawl ended up being 24 1/2" x 72".  I was pretty happy with the length (although I do prefer longer shawls as a rule and would probably go even longer next time) and even though I had more draw-in and shrinkage than I expected on the width, I think I could happily have gone a little narrower on the width, so this was not a bad result. 

Like the baby llama, merino is another wool that sheds like a mother, but feels so soft in the hand that all is quickly forgiven.  So long as there is a lint roller close at hand, anyways!

I love how this piece turned out and am keeping it for myself.  I have rationalized that it's OK to be selfish some of the time.  Besides, my next project is a return to industrial scale tea towel fabrication as preparation for Christmas.  Those will all be given away, so everything balances out. 

Shawl with Edge Detailing in Silky Baby Llama Wool

I had dinner with a dear close friend of mine last month and her response when I told her that I had taken up weaving was to tell me that she would absolutely cherish a wrap in a dark charcoal colour.  Because I dislike making things for me and love making things for other people, this seemed like the perfect opportunity to try a larger project.  Challenge accepted!

After much consideration, I chose Illimani's Silky Baby Llama (70% baby llama and 30% mulberry silk) in a dark grey that looks almost black.  The Nerd and I went to Romni Wools on an expedition to find wool for this shawl and their selection is truly awe-inspiring.  They almost had too much wool, if such a thing can be said, because although their breadth of selection was wonderful, the depth in any given colourway was a little shallower.  I was able to pick up the 10 skeins I thought I would need for this project, however, so they had enough for me (which is all that counts). 

I tried to estimate how much wool I would need based on the size of my finished project.  I planned initially on using a 12-dent heddle across all 32" of my loom with 100" warp to try and get a total length of 70" and width of 28" after draw-in and shrinkage.  When I got home with the wool, however, I ended up using the 10-dent heddle instead, so I ended up with some skeins left over (rather than requiring around 2100 yards I probably only needed about 1700 - 1800 yards of wool when all was said in done due to the change in heedle).

This was my first experience using the absolute maximum width of my loom (in a single heddle configuration), and it worked pretty well, with a couple of things learned.

First, the warp was long enough that it was quite bulky on the back beam after I tensioned everything, and during weaving some of my outer warp threads on one side "fell off" the mass thereby causing a minor sudden loss of tension in one warp thread.  It was easily manually corrected, however, and did not appear to compromise the finished work.

Second, I discovered that all of my pick up sticks that came with my loom (or purchased separately) were just short of the full width of my reed.   This I discovered early on because my plan for this project was to incorporate a 1 x 1 leno with a Brooks Bouquet near each edge - -trying to set up the leno with two pick up sticks for length was tricky.  This was only a problem for the leading edge of the work, because by the time I reached the far end the Nerd had made me an absolutely beautiful pick up stick in red oak that was the perfect length.  Now I suddenly want to do a lot of projects with pick up sticks for some reason. 

The actual weaving of this project was pretty quick even with the fussiness on the edges because the majority of the work was done in a simple tabby weave.  All in all, it took less than a week to complete this project, although I did do a very late night on my final night because the Nerd and I were travelling to visit family the next day. 

The finished shawl after washing netted out to 29" wide (slightly wider than the planned 28") and 70" long for the body of the shawl not including several inches of fringe - - exactly on plan.  In hindsight that 70" feels a little short and I may go a bit longer for my next shawl as a result. 

This wool wove up smoothly and well, and the wool is aptly named because it feels very silky to the touch, but it also sheds quite a bit, at least initially, so I am uncertain of the utility of using this wool for a different project like a scarf that requires more durability.  But I would love to work with this wool again, so maybe I will use it regardless, just because.

 

 

All in all I love this shawl and I hope my friend enjoys it too.  It was very satisfying to weave up because the simple weave meant that I could weave up several inches a night - - a far cry from my knitting days, for sure!  Given that it took a week to make it was not quite immediate gratification, but it was immediate gratification enough for me.