Weaving – Improvement

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 six. You can see my previous post here

By this time, after several recommendations, I had bought a second book -Inventive Weaving on a Little Loom.

I’m going to veer off on a tangent here but bear with me as this might be a cautionary tale for you all. My go to place for books is Amazon. I’m not proud of this. It’s lazy. I ought to shop around and at heart I don’t think I should be supporting global organisations. When I tried to buy Inventive Weaving I didn’t seem to able to get through check out without taking up a free three months membership of Prime. Maybe I should have jumped at the chance. After all what’s not to like about three months free but I was annoyed that this was being forced on me when I was simply trying to buy a book.

I searched around for another option and I found the same book at Abebooks.co.uk for £11.28 plus £2.80 postage. Amazon are selling it at £22.00.

Anyway back to the weaving.

My first two scarves were a bit short for my taste so I set up my two warping tables as far apart as I was able within the confines of my conservatory. I did a bit more walking up and down but it helped with my 10,000 steps!

I had one ball of yarn in a colourway I loved: Twilleys of Stamford, Freedom Spirit in variegated pinks, purples and greys. It’s 100% wool so probably from my foray into felted bags.

I was going to try a plaid but I hadn’t considered whether I had enough yarn. I warped the edges in two shades of grey and used the variegated for the middle panel. I finished the variegated section with only a yard or two of wool spare so didn’t have any left for the weft. No problem, I would used plain grey for the weft. My plaid would become stripes.

My iffy warp tension and dodgy separation of warp threads didn’t seem to affect my first two scarves but perhaps this was just beginners luck. Somewhere I’d read that dumbbells attached to the warp, whilst it was being wound onto the back beam, helped with tension. I didn’t have dumbbells to hand – not being the weight training type – but a rummage around in the tool box produced a hefty hammer which was a reasonable substitute.

The weaving went well but about three quarters of the way through, one of my variegated warp threads broke. I had spotted it getting thinner and more delicate and tried to be gentle but it gave up the struggle to survive. Luckily my new book had a section on broken warp threads so, crisis averted. I took a new piece of yarn: tied it to the broken warp thread at the back of the loom: threaded it through the heddle: attached it to the already woven cloth and away I went – very gently. Keeping the new thread at the same tension was tricky but doable, and as I was working in the variegated section, you can hardly see the join.

Being 100% wool when I started to muddle it in warm water the fringe matted together. I panicked, whipped the scarf out and untangled the fringe. The upshot of this was that the rest of the scarf wasn’t long in the bath and didn’t bloom as much as I would have wanted or expected. I’m still happy with end result and I think my selvedges are improving.