A few months ago, I finally got the nerve to try my hand at weaving. I first was intrigued by weaving when Kelley started to prepare the samples for her Weaving with a Ridig Heddle video class. I don’t know why, but for some reason I had it set in my mind that weaving was complicated and time consuming. And don’t get me wrong – weaving isn’t something I am able to start on a whim as easily as casting on some stitches for a knitting project. The preparation is a bit time consuming and takes a bit of finessing, but once you are actually weaving the entire process goes along fairly fast.
You may remember my first attempt at weaving where I underestimated the length of yarn I needed for my warp, resulting in a pretty but rather short scarf. Well, I couldn’t let once false start get me down. If I had done that with my knitting, I don’t think I would have the amazing stockpiles of scarves, hats, and sweaters that I have now. Anyways, back to weaving. In addition to figuring out the length that I wanted my woven scarf to be, I added a couple of extra feet of yarn to either end just for safe measure and got to work. I spent a day measuring and warping my loom and by that evening, I was able to start weaving.
I finished my first project in just a week, and I spent about a week and a half on this project. I wasn’t sure if my mind was just playing tricks on me, but it seemed that I was weaving and weaving and weaving, with no end in sight. Finally, when I got to the end I carefully took my weaving off of the loom and laid it out to see how long it was. Well, it wasn’t my mind that was playing tricks on me – it was the fact that this scarf ended up being quite a bit longer than my last project. And quite a bit longer than I expected it to be! But I am glad that I ended up with more than not enough. It makes quite a good scarf for the winter, allowing myself to be wrapped up in fibery goodness.
And again, I cannot express enough how much I love the texture and color of woven fabric. I really am enjoying the learning process, and who knows – third time’s the charm, right? For this project, I used more of Stroll Tonal in Blue Yonder for the weft and Imagination in Sasquatch for the warp. In both this project and my first project, I used Blue Yonder for the weft, and I love seeing the different result simply by changing out the warp color.
Also, instead of braiding my ends, I created twisted cords. This was so easy and much faster than braiding. I held two ends together and twisted them about 20 times and taped them down on my desk. Next, I grabbed two more ends and twisted them about 20 times. Finally I held the two twisted stands together and tied them off with an overhand knot. This suggestion came from a reader comment on my first weaving project, and it was a brilliant solution to finishing off the ends – so, thank you!
Did you do any weaving for your holiday gifts? What new crafts are you looking forward to learning in the new year?
