On Being Resolute

As the year ends I’m feeling bogged down with unfinished and unused projects; I feel that before I can really move forward, I’d better shovel out what I have behind me! Today I took a look at my stash of unfinished weaving and have made some plans. I feel that if I put them down here, right out in the open, I may actually do them!

The first project that needs something is a colour and weave scarf in fine soft Merino wool, it’s in natural and peach about 70” long. What this scarf lacks is pizzazz, so I plan to do a beaded clasp or tassel or something to allow one side of the scarf to pass through on top of the other.

My next project is wool yardage that was woven in both plain weave and twill for the Guild of Canadian Weavers Basic test. The wool I used was 2 ply medium in natural, green, blue and magenta. I really do like these pieces, but have been stumped on what to do with the leftovers; now I’ve got it! The plan is to felt them and make them into nice big fat Christmas Stockings for my family. I think that they will look great with some fancy trims.
One of the projects from the GCW Senior test is an 8 shaft twill gamp. I chose 2/22 cottolin; the test requires contrasting warp and weft colours outlined by a different colour woven square. True to my love of blue, I chose navy, turquoise and hot pink. My first attempt worked perfectly, I did a Point Twill, Rosepath, M&W, Advancing Twill, Snowflake , Broken Twill, Dornik and Network. This piece looked wonderful on the right side, but the Network Twill caused some unacceptable floats on the reverse. I had to rethread and rearrange the sequence of blocks and replaced the Network with Straight Twill and promptly ran out of warp……so another lovely piece, but too short! Third time will be the charm and I tied on again, wove my sample and then tossed it in a box without ever inspecting it at all. I have never finished this piece and it is potentially a good test submission….Gotta get to that! The two other pieces will make nice tea towels for me.
My final problem child is this fine wool yardage. It is so soft and supple and has a wonderful sheen, but I really hate the orange stripe! I used 2/20 pure Scottish tartan wool in the Ancient line of blue, green and scarlet (read orange) and navy from a different supplier for the warp and navy for the weft. When I washed the yardage the navy completely puckered and waved! A commercial pressing fixed the problem, but it could not be used for my submission, now what? Guess a trip to Fabricland is in my future and maybe the catalogues will give me a garment idea.