Color!

The Wabash Weavers' Guild is discussing color in warps this month. I decided that it was time for me to do a color gamp. I chose colors from my stash--mostly aiming to use yarns of similar sizes--and trying to cover lots of colors. The warp is threaded in an alternating basket weave/twill variants structure from the book "Twill Thrills". I only have three colors of weft so far, but they are so amazing! The twill patterns show up differently with each color of weft!

My guess is that this shawl won't be done by Friday for our guild meeting. It's 30" wide on loom--the widest piece I've done so far--and will hopefully be 72" long.

Like all projects it has it's challenges. The first inch or so of weaving was plauged with a mysterious weft-removal issue. The basket weave sections at each end were somehow being 'un-woven'! It took a few moments thought before I remembered that basket weave required a double shot of weft, and that since I wasn't doing anything to secure the weft between shots I was unintentionally unweaving with the second shot.

There is also the challenge of trying to get even tension on the warp with a random collection of warp threads. I think my blue stripe is 100% cotton (the others are springy and I think they are likely to be rayon or polyester) and it just doesn't stretch like the others. It's been easy to overtighten this yarn, which looked terrible once I started weaving. I think I finally have the tension even--at least close enough that I've declared it's weaving time!

"Weave like the wind, Bullseye!"
(modification on a quote from "Toy Story 2")