Weaving – random scarf

I’m not going to tell you how to weave using a rigid heddle loom. There are plenty of blogs and YouTube videos out there. I’m going to share my triumphs and disasters, my frustrations and accomplishments, my silly mistakes and my happy ones as I discover the mysteries of loom and fibre.

This is post number seven. You can see my previous posts below.

This scarf was woven on 21st November 2018.

My orderly nature stops me from being very spontaneous so my next project was a bit of a departure for me. 

This was the first time I had someone in mind for the finished scarf – my granddaughter – she is eight years old and is a bit of a rock chick. Well, she was last week but things might have changed by now! The yarn that had given me this idea was originally bought as hair for dolls. Cloth dolls are another of my crafting loves.  I find making them demanding and worth it but they take so long.  

Anyway this means that my wool stash has a lot of wild yarns – witches, fairies and elves have extraordinary hair. 

Once again I didn’t think about measurements and went gung ho at my warping with a plain black acrylic. I chose a tangle of black, left over ‘hair’ for my weft. There were thick and thin yarns: fluffy and smooth yarns: metallic and mat yarns. I’m no maverick and tend towards working with rules. I like there to be a right way and a wrong way and I had to resist the urge to make the scarf uniform. I forced myself to go with whatever fibre came to hand and the finished piece was random, but in a good way. Perhaps my bohemian side is peeping out. 

In the true spirit of my story so far the finished piece is not quite perfect. I didn’t need to worry about selvedges because the edges are intended to be haphazard. My uneven beating doesn’t show. Any skipped stitches are disguised. All good you might say but this scarf is too short (80cm) – even for an eight year old. It’s also a little too wide (20cm). 

When my granddaughter visited I asked her if she liked it. She said she did, but apparently not enough to remember to take it home with her. It’s still here and she hasn’t mentioned it since.

Ah well, it was a good exercise in going with the flow and reinforces the need to consider size before starting a project.

So far I’ve just been playing around. Apart from the loom itself I have spent no money.  I’ve been able to practice using wool I already had and I’m working with the 8.5 dent heddle that came with the loom. 

I feel ready to for my first properly planned project now, but before then, my hubby has asked me to weave four scarves as Christmas presents for his friends.

Weaving – My first scarf

It is not my intention to instruct you on how to weave using a rigid heddle loom. There are plently of blogs and YouTube videos out there which will do that. I’m going to tell you about my triumphs and disasters, my frustrations and accomplishments, my silly mistakes and my happy ones.

This is my second post about weaving. You can see my first post here

Warping a loom takes space which I’m a bit short of. If you want to weave a scarf that’s, say, 1.5 metres long you need a couple of metres to stretch your yarn out. A big table is useful here but I don’t have one.

I hadn’t thought this through. Would I have to go out to buy a new table – Ikea? second hand?  Ahh but why does it have to be one table? All that I needed was two ends to which I could attach clamps. So with a flimsy folding pinic table at one end of the conservatory and our ‘Christmas’ table at the other I was ready to go. (Our Christmas table is a white melamine affair with screw in legs that we put together at Christmas to be piled up with goodies).

My loom came with a booklet explaining how to weave a scarf and at 3.30pm on 2nd November (I know this because my camera tells me what time I took the photo) I was starting to warp for the first time. 

I used yarn (aran 25% wool 75% acrylic) I bought from John Lewis several years ago to knit some cushion covers. The cushions are still waiting for covers and now the wool had a new use. I didn’t know whether the yarn was the right ply for my heddle but it went through the holes and didn’t seem too loose so I ploughed on.

All went well until I was told to get a friend to help me. I didn’t have a pal within reach but luckily there is a video here to cover this situation. 

After I had wound the warp around the back beam I had to cut the yarn and let it go! This was the most nervewracking moment so far. Maybe the wool would spring round the beam and disappear in a tangled mess of ends. As it was it just gently sank onto the table. I tied the ends onto the front beam, settled the loom against the edge of the table and the exciting part began.

 I finished the scarf within a few hours and triumphantly waved it in front of my husband who declared it as ‘great’ and claimed it for his own.

It’s a little too short and the selvedges are a bit wonky. I’ve spotted a mistake where the weft has passed over two threads instead of over and under.

The rows are uneven which, I assume, is because I don’t beat evenly and maybe my warp tension isn’t consistent. I actually quite like the variation.

On the plus side it’s the same width all the way along, and all in all, I’m happy.

I didn’t think it bloomed much after washing but the low wool content probably affected this. 

This must be one of the easiest crafts I have tried. Easy to start, but I suspect, very difficult to master. Wool is fluffy and stretchy and because of this covers a multitude of sins. I have aspirations to weave with cotton and linen which, I think, will be challenging.

For now I will keep practising with plain weave scarves.