Network Twill Spots and Fixing a Funky Fringe!

TaDa!!!! My first network scarf is finished and I’m in love with this weave structure! My understanding of network is that it's all about tonal values. Twills in general will give one tonal value over the entire cloth; networking the twill you can get 3 tonal values, light, dark, and mid tone. As you can see, the spots are light on one side and dark on the other, so cute!

A real bonus for me is the amazing circles! I love the fact that I can get a circle from what is in fact a series of right angles – boggles the mind!On my last post I had planned to weave my first scarf in this series with navy weft; but in the tradition of 'best laid plans' – when I opened my Tencel bin, the first thing I saw was a beautiful shiney, tightly wound pirn of this lovely slate grey! Serendipitously beautiful I think! This is the photo with the truest sunlight colour, I have noticed that this scarf looks different according to the light it's in. I can't wait to see the navy scarf completed!

A Bit Of A Problem and how I fixed it, with a tutorial of the process.

A very interesting problem arose after washing the Azure Canvas Weave Block scarf. The fringe that Ngaire had so carefully and beautifully fish tail braided completely buckled after the intense washing I gave the scarf to encourage shrinking. The end result is a very short, squiggly ratty looking fringe! My first thought was to macramé the fringe to see if that would improve the look, and although it does look nice, it’s much too stiff for the lovely soft scarf – deep six that idea. This is what it looked like when I undid the braid, arrrragggghhhh!I wet down one fringe bout to make sure that I had enough for a nice looking fringe and I still had 6 inches to work with.My idea was to add 8 Tencel threads to each fringe bout to fill them out and to stabelize the curl still left in the bout. I cut groups of threads twice as long as I needed and had them ready to add to each bout.I first attached them to the fringe through the hem stitching and with a snitch knot. I then twisted the additional threads with the wool that was in each bout. Then twisted the two bouts together. It’s a bit candy cane but still looks good and has kept a decent length. My new problem was that if I finished with an overhand knot, I’d lose precious length and I needed every inch, so I decided to wrap the ends.You start this process by taking about 5 inches of yarn and making a loop which you hold against the fringe with your left hand in the spot you would normally place your overhand knot.Using your dominant hand wrap the long end of the yarn around the bout; in this case I did it 6 times.
When you have wrapped enough times you then take the wrapping end and pull it thought the loop. You then take the other end of the yarn that was laying against the bout and pull gently; the top loop will be pulled under the wrapping and out the bottom of the wrap. You can use a darning needle to help increase the size of the hole so you can get the yarn tight. You may have to needle weave the other end back through the wrap to finish it off, it depends on how many wraps you do and how tightly you do it. The end result looks good to me, and gave me 6 inches of soft bouncy fringe that compliments the scarf. Now on to the beading - but that's another story!