Twelve Shaft Silk Scarf and Travel

In mid September I put a warp on the loom using 2/20 silk that I had dyed a year or so ago.  The warp was painted an all over light blue and then mid toned pink splotches were added.  My goal was to get a bit of randomness into the scarf I intended to weave.  I have an immense love for pattern and I really wanted to feature some spontaneity in my colour choices to offset the pattern.

I chose a twelve shaft pattern with a geometric motif that is not quite perfectly linear.  There is a slight flaring and thickening of the diamonds that tend to make it a bit more interesting I think. I found the pattern in a book and had to make a number of corrections to fix very long floats.

After my usual pfaffing around with wefts I chose to weave the silk with tencel weft in grey blue.  I warped the loom and started weave a few inches and before I knew it, it was the end of September and the beginning of what I think of as ~ trip time!

At the end of September we were off to Italy on a three week holiday.  We were headed to Puglia, Basilicata and Calabria, so we really were going to see Italy from heel to toe!  Our flights were enough to put me off travel forever!  We seemed to have to transfer planes constantly and had really tight connections ... so very stressful!

Italy was magical as always and this part of Italy is moderately less travelled.  Our trip was archaeology and architecture focused and we saw everything from Roman ruins to Baroque churches in Puglia.  I cannot begin to tell you how wonderful it was, with amazing food and wine and weather, but I’ll share a few photos.

These are the Roman ruins of Egnazia which is still being excavated, it was a stop on the via Appia and this part of Puglia has 1000 year old olive trees which are amazing.

Alberobello Puglia is a Unesco site and home to the Trulli architecture which was stunning.

We moved on to Mattera in Basilicata which is the Unesco European City of Culture 2019.  Happily we were there before it hits it really big.  It was once known as the shame of Italy as people were living in hill caves right up until 1952 without any plumbing or electricity.   When we were there they were using the old village for a Bollywood movie!

Calabria was my least favourite part of the trip and frankly it was only because it was studded with piles of garbage and plastic floating in the wind.  The highlight was seeing the Riace Bronzes in Reggio, luckily we got there early in the day and had the Museo Nazionale almost to ourselves.

Now that I’m back home and our annual Guild sale is behind me, I am going to sit at the loom and finish that scarf! Well... and bake... when I come home all I want to do is bake and enjoy being home, this is Martha Stewarts Marbelized Roulade before baking, I took it to a dinner party and what a hit!

Very Fine Cotton Scarves in 12 Shaft Crackle

I pulled this two scarf warp way back before Christmas last year and it has sat in the yarn cupboard ever since.  It is 2/30 cotton in white.  I didn’t have a weaving plan before I pulled the warp and I think that it why it has languished for so long.  It also isn’t very inspiring especially when Mum is weaving painted warps in bright and beautiful jewel tones!

I was able to do a 12 shaft crackle because the fine grist of the warp meant that the large and complicated motifs are more manageable in scale.  I choose a very fine gold cotton as the weft for the first scarf.  And it was a disaster, the white and gold blah-ed out each other and the fine grist of the weft made the pattern really hard to see.

Unfortunately I then had to wind the gold cotton from the pirn back on the little cardboard tube.

I then tried 2/20 black cotton/Tencel; it was a safe choice but it was boring.

The weft that I went with is very much a surprise.  It is a thick and thin singles silk in lime green.  The crackle pattern is a little obscured by the texture of the silk but it is very interesting.

For the second scarf I went with fine grist of silk in a silvery blue.  The crackle motifs are very much more visible.

The lime green scarf is light, bright and cheerful.  For Sale.

The silvery blue scarf is lovely.  The crackle pattern really pops on this scarf.  For Sale.

Final Garden Shot is a Hallowe'en pumpkin!  Happy Hallowe'en!

Painted Silk Warps in 12 Shaft Twills

Mum and I both have a very large Ziploc bag filled with painted silk warps so we are on a quest to weave them all up.  The first warp that I put on the loom was painted in warm autumnal colours of golden yellow, warm bronze and raspberry red.

For weft colours I tried to stay in the autumnal theme, and I tried all the reds, oranges and browns that we have.  They didn’t work there wasn’t enough contrast.

I went with black, it really highlighted the colour and made the 12 twelve shaft twill really pop.

The finished scarf is truly spectacular; the colours are warm and glowing.  The graphic punch of the twill pattern is really interesting.  For Sale.

The second warp that I put on was painted in a raspberry red and a moss green.  I don’t have a good shot of the warp because painted warps are so exciting that they don’t sit on the loom for very long!

I tried a lot of weft colours.  The first bunch of colours was antique gold, amethyst, light navy and gold.  The amethyst was OK so I left it and tried two more colours next.

The two new colours on top were olive green and black.  The black overwhelmed the colours and the olive was boring.

Next I tried some reds to warm up the warp.  Well they just made the warp muddy.

I told you I tried a lot of weft colours.  This next batch I tried anything and everything that could remotely work.  Nope, nothing there.

The last try I looked at some previous choices, maybe I was too hasty in rejecting them.  I tried the amethyst, gold and a different darker navy.  Yup the darker navy is the one.

The pattern is a 12 shaft twill; it is actually the same tie up as the previous scarf.  I changed the threading and the treadling.

This scarf just glows.  There are two distinct sides to the scarf one is more navy and the other highlights the painted warp.  For Sale.

Final Garden Shot is the roof top visitors that we had this summer on our neighbours roof.  First is a bald eagle and the other is a raccoon.  Needless to say I preferred seeing the eagle!

The Last of the Fine Cotton Projects

There are two little balls of fine cotton leftover from one of our dye days, one is a silvery blue leftover from Mum’s blue ombre shawls and the other small one is purple leftover from Mum’s Echo Shawls (which she hasn't blogged about yet).

The original plan was to make a shawl using both balls but after I had pulled the blue ball there was more than enough for a single shawl.  The blue colour of the warp really reminds me of blue jeans so I thought the perfect colour for the weft would be the gold stitching used for jeans.

The gold I picked was antique gold Tencel which has a slight green tone.  It really overwhelmed the pale silvery blue warp, so I ditched that one.

Next I tried a warmer deep yellow gold colour and finally a gorgeous silver yarn.

The silver was the clear winner.  The pattern is a lovely undulating twill that either looks like X’s or lovely diamond shapes.

The shawl has a stunning shimmer and shine to it.  The silver weft really highlights the pretty pattern.  For Sale.

With the purple ball there was only enough warp for a single scarf.  I am really pleased that I am finishing using up all the fine cotton that we had dyed as it fits into my 'stash busting' pledge.

The weft for the purple scarf is a greyed teal and the pattern is a crackle, always a favourite weave structure in the Lynch household.  The pattern is fun to weave and vaguely looks like trees.

The scarf is wonderfully lightweight and the interplay of the matte finish of the purple cotton and the shine of the teal Tencel is fantastic.

For Sale.

Final garden shot is a hardy fuchsia that I have growing beside the hosta, the colour is just amazing!