Moving Right Along

Having finished That Which Must Not Be Shown (quite successfully, too!), I was so hopped up on weaving, I wanted to started another weaving project right away. So I did!

Once upon a time, long, long ago - yes, get your tea now, it'll be cold by the time I'm done - I went to my first SOAR. This was in the Poconos in 2007? 2008? My workshop that year was Abby's Spinning for a Purpose. After taking us through various exercises in the beginning, Abby set out the last task: Decide on A Purpose and sample for it. I decided I would sample for something woven, and I spun maybe half an ounce of Spunky BFL in the Thunderstorm colorway into a light fingering-weight 2-ply. Then I scrounged up a loom facsimile (if I remember correctly, I wound the warp around a book or something, and wove it off with a threaded needle) and made this sample:

I loved this. It is so smooth and silky, so flexible, yet has substance. I decided I would spin up the rest of the 8 ounces of BFL and weave myself a weft-faced shawl.

Time passes...

I finish the 8 ounces, do some math, and figure out I need more yarn. I get 8 more ounces from Spunky - a slightly different dyelot, not surprisingly, and spun more 2-ply.

Time passes...

Finally, the full pound is done - yay! Here's the proof:

The cones at the top of that photo are Harrisville Shetland; I figured I'd use that for the warp.

So, I wound the warp and dressed the loom. Then I undressed the loom. When I tried using the handspun as weft, I realized it wasn't going to work. I don't even remember why now - this was sometime late last summer, I think - but I think it was because hard-packed weft-faced fabric does not make for a good shawl.

Finally, something Sara Lamb said somewhere (SOAR? Rav? her writings?) FINALLY sunk in: Warp-faced fabric makes good garments.

So, last Saturday I wound a warp of the Thunderstorm BFL. The yarn is about 27-28 wpi, so I sett it at 30 epi, 3 ends per dent in a 10-dent reed, for a warp-faced plainweave shawl. After I got the warp sleyed (I warp front to back), I decided it needed some definition along the border, so I added borders of dark purple Woolen Rabbit Merino/angora/silk, moving the BFL outward to accommodate the Woolen Rabbit handspun. Like so:

I'm weaving this off with the Harrisville Shetland, and I LOVE how it's turning out - look!

That's only about a third of the width (which totals about 22 inches in the reed), but I wanted you to see how beautiful simple plainweave can be with a yarn spun from handpainted fiber. This won't be an incredibly drapy shawl; I think it will be more like one of the Peruvian mantas Abby has shown us - sturdy and warm. The sett seems perfect - the ends are very close, but I'm not having much trouble at all getting a clean shed.

I've woven only about 10 inches of this so far, but I'll post more photos when it's finished.