All the scarves

I continue to adore the loom. I wanted to make my wonderful friend Beth a beautiful scarf for the holidays, and decided I needed some practice with weaving colorwork before I broke out the Plucky primo sport. So one day when Kellee was over, we rooted around in my scraps bin to find something that would look good together.

This being my house, of course, the “scrap yarn” was Handmaiden Lady Godiva (also available here) and Blue Sky Alpacas Melange. (Yes. I have expensive taste in yarn. It really was quite crucial for me to figure out how to make sweaters that I love, because each and every one costs the earth.)

We measured my favorite scarf, stretched the warping peg halfway across the living room, made a few calculations, and set to it.

People, every single thing that could go wrong, did go wrong. We forgot to divide by 2 in those little calculations (I hang my head in shame), and ran out of warping yarn halfway through. Thus ensued a period of tying new bits on, unraveling swatches, starting with the weft yarn and promising myself I’d just order another hank of the Lady Godiva in the same colorway to make up for it. The warping took so long, what with all of the knot tying and trying to figure out where we went wrong, that I needed to stop halfway through, clear everything away, and serve dinner. Then set everything back up and try to finish.

This all worked about as well as you’d expect, and while weaving the scarf itself I had ample opportunity to figure out how to correct all sorts of mistakes. Like an early knitting project, dealing with all of these snafus taught me tons and I’m a much more comfortable, confident weaver now. I can fix a warp string breaking. Several times. I can blend in colors when the replacement yarn is from a different dye lot and, let’s just say, a different color. I can pick up and put down a project for a couple of weeks (“time OUT for that one, Mommy!”, Daniel said) with no ill effect. And it all wound up coming out just fine.

Beth’s scarf, which I did not get pictures of (boo), went smooth as a breeze. I did the calculations correctly, my warping was much more even, the color pattern was exactly what I intended.

The houndstooth scarf is not without its problems. I vastly overshot length, and it’s now somewhat Dr. Who in proportion. On the flip side, this means I can easily wrap it twice around my neck. It is very very soft, and keeps me very very warm.

The houndstooth was magical to watch. The warp and weft are simple–two rows / columns of one color, then two of the next–and this glorious, amazing pattern just comes out automatically. I loved the look of the subtly shaded Lady Godiva against the solid of the Melange.

Of course, when you’re knitting a scarf that’s rather a lot taller than you are, with several time-outs, it’s easy to forget what kind of pattern you did to start the thing off. At which point you guess (wrong), and proudly wear your mismatched scarf through the coldest of days.