Saturday, October 16, 2010

Scarves















The cooler weather of Fall/Autumn brings out my desire to spin wool and make warm clothing items, mainly handwoven scarves and crocheted handwarmers. This year, I am spinning both llama and wool fibers. Taking a pile of freshly sheared wool through washing, carding, spinning, plying, and weaving is a pleasurable, but time-consuming task. This year, however, I found a wonderful company near Salt Lake City, called Spinderella, whom I hired to wash and card a black sheep fleece and some llama fleeces that were given to me. Eliminating those two steps in the processing feels very luxurious. I can now merely enjoy my favorite parts of the process: spinning and weaving.

I plied two handspun strands of the llama yarn together (plying the opposite direction from which the strands are spun) to make a stronger yarn to withstand warp tension on my loom, and wove two scarves. One is woven in a loose, soft, twill weave; the other is softly woven plain weave. Both have overhand knotted fringe. $45 each.

Earlier, I also wove a batch of mixed fiber sparkle scarves in a variety of colors. They've been selling quickly. The only two I have left are gold and red. The red one looks rather pink in the computer's color translation, but is really quite red. $30 each.