Twisp of Fate

I have had an almost finished small rug sitting on my Baby Mac loom since September, when I took the rug weaving workshop out in Forks, WA.  Last week I finished that rug, in which I was playing with clasped wefts and some pick-and-pick patterns.

I still had warp left on the loom, so I got out Peter Collingwood’s book, The Techniques of Rug Weaving, and found some ideas based on a broken twill tie-up and 4-shot sequence of pattern wefts.  I had some miscellaneous knitting yarn (discontinued Rowanspun Tweed) in decent colors, so although not rug wool, I thought it would work for something meant to become a cushion top.

I like it OK and learned something new, which is always a good thing!  Neither of these is very big, about 16″ x 20″, and I hope to use them as throw pillow tops.

So now the small loom is free and ready for something new.  I have been meaning to start an exploration of surface color based on a summer-and-winter threading, ever since taking a workshop from Margaret Roach Wheeler in Seattle over a year ago.  Our guild challenge project this year is “Summer and Winter” and I need to have something done by mid-April, so that dovetailed nicely with some ideas I have been meaning to pursue anyway.

So I put a warp on for about a 10″ wide scarf, 6 yds long so I have room for some sampling and hopefully 2 scarves.  I am using a 50/50 wool silk blend (18/2 Zephyr from Jaggerspun) and used 5 colors of bluegreen graduated across the width of the warp.  Also using Zephyr for the pattern wefts and tabby tie-downs.

Here is some color sampling I did before starting the first scarf.  I was just exploring what looked good against the blue-green warp.

Here’s the start of the patterns for the first scarf:

then I wanted it to go into more muted colors, blending into the background, before starting the plain weave section in the middle:

I’m working on the plain weave section now, and then will work the above patterns in reverse at the other end.  This is so much fun and I am quite excited about the possibilities!