It’s been another year and my sister is having another birthday. Funny how that works, eh? Every year I find myself plumbing the depths of my Ravelry queue, pinterest boards and various craft stashes to come up with a gift that she’ll both like and wear. Some years I’m more successful than others and this year I hope will be one of those. I spent so much time dilly dallying around the internet for inspiration
that when I finally surfaced with an idea I only had three days to
finish it! I wasn’t too worried though because I had chosen a weaving project. I’ve been spending quite a bit of time with the 32 inch Kromski Harp Loom that we have at the office over the past few weeks and have come to love how quickly I can weave up a scarf or shawl compared to knitting.

When my sister was visiting over the holidays, she brought a bunch of those giant, jersey fabric infinity scarves that seem to be popping up in stores these days. They keep you warm like regular scarves without the hassle of keeping track of all those ends. Plus you can wear them long or short depending upon how many times you twist them around your neck. Bingo! I knew I wanted something in the coral/salmon/pink range of colors, a fingering weight yarn with washability as an added bonus.

I settled on Stroll Tonal in Queen Anne because it’s a soft pink with shots of yellow and falls right in the middle of the color range I was looking for.
To figure out how long I needed to make the scarf, I took a regular scarf that I wear often and pinned the two ends together so
that the scarf formed a temporary loop that ended at hip height,
level with the button on my jeans. I experimented with wrapping the loop
around my neck to make sure I had enough length then I unpinned the
scarf and measured the length, about 54 inches. I
grabbed two skeins of Queen Anne and wound them into cakes. I warped the
loom so that I would wind up with a 6.5 inch wide piece of fabric and
added 12 extra inches of length to compensate for waste, etc.

I watched Liz Gipson’s DVD Slots and Holes and tried out the “direct warping” technique for this project and couldn’t believe how quickly I was able to finish this normally quite lengthy process. I used my phone to time my progress for this project. From setting up the loom to starting to weave took only 25 minutes which is much faster than using a warping board. From start to finish, this project took 4.5 hours and only 3/4 of a skein. I love how soft and firm the fabric is. I even did a few rows of white stripes from a little miscellaneous ball of yarn I had rolling around my apartment in the middle to spice things up.

I did have some trouble trying to figure out how to finish it. I couldn’t find any helpful resources online over the weekend so I decided to jump into the deep end and figure things out by myself. I first did a very tight running stitch with my sewing machine right along the two ends to secure the fabric. Then I trimmed off the fringe along the first edges of the woven sections. Then I took a piece of lace I’ve had in my sewing box for ages and hand stitched it over the two ends, trapping the cut edges under the lace material. That way I’m hoping to avoid frayed edges and it nicely covers up my guess work on the ends. I definitely want to find a better way of doing it for next time. If any of you delightful weavers have some suggestions, I’d love to hear them!

I just sent the package off on its voyage to the “other” coast and can’t wait to see if she likes it!