Saturday, October 10, 2009


This was the first weekend of teaching for me in a while and getting closer to the date I was getting really excited.
Four students had signed up - for a scarf weaving weekend - and all but one went home with a beautiful scarf, but .....










She wasn't left out in the cold, for she wove herself 3 teatowels by sticking to it and being very focused - most of the time =-)

And I bet you didn't know that you can actually wear teatowels, but you can - especially when they haven't yet been cut apart are are hot of the loom with everyone still attached to each other.

Kathleen hadn't ever woven before and as her work progressed she gasped at several things.
First, she didn't realize until her moments by the loom, how time consuming and involved one gets when creating a woven piece on a loom.
Second, she discovered how she could do twill patterns using more than just the two tabby treadles . Also it worked great for her to do double picks in each shed + in the end she wove her last little towel with a heavy multi-coloured crochet cotton. Her joy was great.

This student worked in woolen texture - fairly fine yarns, it was all set up at 12 ends per inch (epi) at first but when the boucle was really sticky and the handspun red single was hard to maneuver so we ended up changing the reed to a 6epi reed.
The fine yarn, a nice alpaca/wool blend went in at 2 to a dent for 12epi, but the boucle and the handspun single went in at 6epi, which left them with more breathing room and less chance of sticking to themselves.
For part of the weft Claudia used some of her own handspun wool from the flock of sheep she used to work with in Germany


She made alternating bands of grey handspun, seperated by two picks of red single handspun and another band of wool boucle yarn. It ended up looking very stylish and warm. We didn't have time to get it washed up and wetfinished, however, Claudia had woven before and knew where to go from here.















Claudia's daughter Birgit worked the brightest warp of all. It was all wool in very bright and bouncy colours. Birgit had never woven before but had taken to rug-hooking the previous weekend like a duck to water -


The sparkle in the colour choice of the warp was fun to watch as it was wound onto the warping mill and seeing it all stretched out on the loom didn't hurt the expression of joy in the least.
Ping effect in weaving is most desirable!




Birgit managed to do a few samplers as well, here is one, playing with treadling and seeing what will happen next.






Rolling off a very long, very bright and very warm woolen scarf, which Birgit was thrilled to have designed and woven - from scratch.
She has the right to say she knew this scarf when it was just a ball of wool!












Suzanne played with a mix of an acrylic novelty yarn, two-ply hand dyed wool and cotton chenille - going for optimum effect in texture when weaving is great fun.









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Suzanne actually managed to do both a sampler and her warp was long enough to make a second scarf, quite different from the first one she wove. Proof that when you play with your weft yarns you can get fun, funky and amazing results and big smiles on people's faces.











And here they are, all the warped ones of last weekend, wearing their woven creations - hooked on doing more, or wiser in the knowledge that weaving not only takes time, it is also gratifying and brings lots and lots of happiness to the person involved in said activity.
Come visit my studio and take part in one of these most involved, focused and fun workshops =-)