Wednesday, August 16, 2017

Orange Scarves

I have a lot of sock yarn I acquired with the idea of weaving scarves.  Although I have woven quite a few scarves, the yarn pile doesn't seem to be dented.  So as I contemplated this year's County Fair, I decided to make a scarf for the category of Nevada County Inspiration.  After reviewing the colors of yarns I had, I picked several orange/red variegated yarns to use in creating a scarf that was inspired by fire.

The warp yarn was Pagewood Farms Denali sock yarn in Orange Spice and the weft was Tough Love Sock in Blood Orange.  I added a narrow stripe of the Tough Love Sock in the warp to give me the width I was looking for.   


Fire Scarf Weft and Warp Yarns 


I picked an extended point twill as the design.  The tie-up almost a 2-2 twill, with some plain weave bits thrown in.  

Fire Scarf Drawdown 
I dressed the loom with enough yarn for two scarves.  I initially sett the scarves at 10 epi.  After finishing the first scarf, I realized it was sett too widely.  So I cut it off and resleyed the warp at 15 epi.  The second scarf was woven using Tosh Sock in a medium red for the weft.

Both scarves were wet finished in my front loader washing machine on a gentle settling and dried flat.  The fringes were finished by twisting and I added some beads.  


Fringing in Progress



Fire Scarf Fringe Detail

Even though the scarf sett at 10 epi was fine, the second scarf had a much better hand.  

The scarves are different widths, because of the different sett.

Both Scarves
Scarf Submitted to the Fair


In the spirit of using up yarn and having yarn left over from these two scarves, decided to create a warp from left over orange and red yarns from this and previous projects.  These were also sock weight yarns.  

The warp was wound with two yarns at a time so that the different colors could be spread across the warp rather than having stripes of the different orange or red variations.  I decided to use a different point twill.  The tie-up was a 1-1-1-1-2-2 twill.  It was sett at 15 epi. The scarf was woven with the Tosh Sock used in the second scarf above tromp as writ.




Although the variegations in the yarn obscured the pattern in spots, there is a definite pattern that can be seen across the scarf.



The scarf was wet finished and then fringe was twisted as above, although I didn't add any beads.  This scarf is a little more dramatic that the two others and I like the pattern design that comes through.  I am planning to use the draft or something like it again.  


There's more sock yarn in my stash that will be transformed to scarves, hopefully soon.