Sunday, March 15, 2009

Handspun handwoven blue scarf






I would like to tell you the story about this scarf.










It began by carding fibres at Knotty by Nature with Josiane. We blended together some merino and silk noils with the hope of making some textured and very interesting yarn.










Then I found some silvery grey corriedale and spun a warp which Kitten kindly let me measure out on her warping mill. Warping mills are cool and I want one just like hers.










As I've been house bound most of the last few weeks, venturing out on occasion only to over do it, so dad rented me a Knitters Loom from Knotty by Nature.










This is my first time using a Knitters Loom, actually, this is my first time using a ridged huddle loom all by my self. (oh darn, look! It's snowing again. Has the ice age started? I'm told we missed the last one in these parts, so we are over due for a glacier or two.)










It wasn't love at first sight with the Knitters loom, but I think if we got to know each other better, we could become good friends. But, I do like the ridged heddle more than I thought I would. They really took advantage of the qualities of the yarn.










With this scarf, I didn't try to do things the right way. Actually, I did everything as wrong as I could and still make fabric. I didn't set the yarn, I didn't fuss over math, I didn't beat evenly, &c. But I did, or didn't do, all this for a reason. Partly because I wanted to show off the texture of the blue yarn but mostly because I tend to obsess over technical aspects of fibre arts. With both knitting and spinning I've learnt all I can about technique, structure, and different ways of doing things as I can get my hands on. I tend to do this. I try my hardest to get the technical aspects of the craft as perfect as possible. I deliberately didn't do this with weaving. I wanted to see what happens when I play around with this, an inherently a technically focused fibre art, and see what happens. I also wanted to see if I could overcome my perfectionism.






























2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The scarf is gorgeous! You did a fabulous job of doing things "wrong"!
I'm sorry to read you've got more snow (while it's still warm and sunny here, with very little snow left to melt), but at least it may give you the opportunity to wear the scarf without having to wait for next winter!

dahlofwool said...

I just got back into weaving, and i'm still not over the thrill of making Real Fabric! I take a studio class at a local arts center and it's expensive but wonderful. I'm going to try to use some handspun on the next session -- no idea what will result, whoo! I love letting it happen, but i don't trust my handspun for warp yet!