So Tess finished her third scarf on the Ashford Knitter's Loom back in January. She put the finishing touches on it while I was having a spinning lesson from a friend. We had brought our Knitter's Loom over to our friend's house to show her how portable and easy it is to use. My friend has been spinning for years but as she doesn't enjoy knitting or crochet, she seemed keen to take a look at this small and portable loom. Perhaps she'd be able to use the products of her 30 years of spinning and weave something with her yarn.
I was at first a bit bemused about her not using the yarn that she spins but she explained that it is spinning that she loves. It relaxes her and she loves the soothing process of spinning fleece into balls of yarn. I'm happy to report that I found spinning a 'potentially' relaxing activity. But that is a report for another day.
Meanwhile, back at the loom...
We had used the beautiful blue hand dyed wool that we bought in this yarn and sack club.
On the shuttle we mixed two different mohair bobbly wools. This loom is designed to take a funky, bobbly wool - which works for us. The mohair made the scarf quite soft and fluffy.
We had planned to make this scarf as a gift for a family member, but once it was finished we both really cooled on that plan. Tess does work very quickly (at all things - homework, craft, family activities) and sometimes she doesn't necessarily fuss over the details. Anyway, in the early parts of the weaving she clearly was racing through it. Whereas about half way through, she started attending to the process of actually weaving and tried to keep her edges neat and made sure she used the shuttle to push the yarn down into the fabric.
So the first half is disturbingly loose but more importantly it's just really different to the second half of the scarf. Unfortunately it doesn't look like a design feature, so we are chalking this up to skill development. We do wear it around the house and use it play with the cats, who love nothing better than chasing a blue tail. In summary we love the colours, the feel, and the wool, but think we'd better be a bit more even in our weaving if we want to make gifts on the loom.
I think it's my turn next on the loom....but I said that after she finished scarf number two. I didn't move quickly enough and before too long she'd got started on the warp and weft for this scarf. I might need to put the loom away in a cupboard so she forgets about it and gets on with practicing spinning. Since December we now have two spinning wheels. One that works and one that was gifted to us from a family member and doesn't work. We both need to put some practice hours into the spinning to make anything at all. Obviously, practice on weaving would make a more perfect object, but you can just leap in and make something without needing to be some kind of hugely eye-hand-and-foot coordinated master. Spinning was not so forgiving. Our first few efforts were completely unusable. Again, though, that's a story for another day.
Previous posts
Weaving with the Ashford's Knitters Loom - update on the blue scarf (May 2011)
Our new weaving loom (April 2011)