Finally Some Color pt. 2…

When last we left off our weary traveler, desperate to get something, anything on one of her looms, it was a late Saturday night just a little over a week ago, and she threw on a four scarf warp, and managed to actually get the thing threaded and a couple inches woven after posting the blog that talked about getting something, anything on one of her floor looms…

I actually did manage to get the warp threaded, and sleyed, and I wove a quick couple of inches so I would know what it looked like before I left last weekend early Sunday morning, for Sievers.  I decided not to update the post for two reasons, the computer was already powered down and I was exhausted, and truthfully I didn’t like what I had woven.

I wasn’t sure what I didn’t like about it, and I was too tired and too rushed, having to get on a plane in a few hours and desperately needing sleep, so I decided to just not deal with it, and maybe things would look different when I returned.

I’m glad I waited.  I mulled over the options in my head while I was gone all week at Sievers, which probably accounts why I slept so poorly.  My brain was always humming something.  I wandered around Sievers’ shop and looked at some of the knitting yarns there, and found a couple of balls of stuff that might work for supplemental yarns with this warp.  After I unpacked Saturday, I looked at some of the stuff I bought, and decided that I really actually liked the warp, except for one part.  The lavender shiny broken checkerboards in the teal area and the purple area were too much.  Actually one area would have been fine.  It was two of them that caused a competition and the illusion of symmetry which was not what I was going for.  So I decided to leave the teal area intact, the value contrast wasn’t as strong and I actually liked the icy look, but I pulled out the shiny lavender yarns from the purple section and substituted a flat matte ribbon yarn, that picked up some of the colors from the right side of the warp.  First though, I un-wove everything I had done so far.  Thank goodness I hadn’t hem stitched the front end yet.

Since I had a second beam on this loom (which has helped me so many times over the 25 years I’ve owned this little Tools of the Trade wonder), I hand measured three 10+ yard warp ends and pulled them through the reed/heddles, and wound them onto the second warp beam for storage.

So I retied the warp onto the apron bar, tightened everything up, and started to weave all over again.  I put in the hemstitching this time, and then kept going.  Now I’m happy.  So happy I ordered a bunch more stuff from Webs for playing with in my color sandbox of yarns.  One of my late fall projects is to go through my dye cabinet, and make up a small amount of each of the colors in it, for a reference chart, and while I’m at it, dye or over-dye some of the white/pastel yarns I have that would work in these kinds of warps.  I don’t need much.  A 50 gram ball of knitting ribbon will do a bunch of scarves.  So I checked out Webs sale stuff and ordered away.  I love their discounts…