Saturday, July 13, 2013

One of the finished projects

This scarf is knitted with a lovely rayon warp (think silky soft without the price) and sock yarn.  The sock yarn is self-striping.  I get the yarn in a more or less monthly installment of the yarn club from Knitterly Things.  Each month I look at the skein of yarn and think "There's no way she can make a prettier skein next month" and somehow she does.

I also decided that after getting 6 or so pairs of striped socks, that I did need the yarn to do something else, so I experimented in weaving with it.  The name of this colorway is Dancing Waters, And to be honest, it took me back to a story I wrote in undergrad about my Native American great (many times) grandmother who I named Singing Rain.  I knew that the weaving pattern needed to somehow evoke a Native American theme, so I chose a simple broken twill (that's the zig-zag pattern you see that doesn't quite match at the top and bottom) and let the stripes and the lovely deep red warp do the work.

I'm very happy with this project, and also a little sad that I didn't have quite enough yarn to make a second scarf for sale, because this ones mine.  Mineminemineminemine.

[a little technical weaving talk here...if you want to, skip ahead to the picture]

And, for the record, the drape is wonderful, and it's amazingly soft.  If you want to weave with sock yarn, I always recommend something soft and silky for the warp (or weft whichever is the opposite of the where you have the sock yarn) and then setting the project just a tad looser than would be "obvious" based on wraps per inch.  This project was sett at 10epi for a twill pattern.  The rayon (which is a 10/2 yarn) is pretty skinny, so I actually doubled it in each dent and heddle.

If you're working on a rigid heddle loom, I think you could probably use a 10epi sett as long as you didn't beat too hard.  On the loom it looks a little loosey-goosey, but as soon as you take it off, the springy-ness of the sock yarn draws the project in and everything looks just right. This allows the scarf to be drapey and not stiff.  Once washed, the yarn blooms and everything gets all snuggly and the end result is a very pretty scarf that I can hardly wait to wear.


1 comment:

  1. WOW that looks gorgeous. I would never guess it was Vesper sock yarn - talk about flexibility (yours and its!)

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