Celtic Knots Silk Scarf

It has been a long time since I’ve blogged but summer is starting to wind down and there is more time for weaving.  It has been a busy summer with lots of guests and with that a lot of travelling up and down the island, showing off all the beauty and wonders.  This photo is one of the local beaches on the left is the mainland of BC and on the right is Hornby Island with Vancouver Island behind.  

To get back into the swing of things I put on one of my hand painted silk warps, they are always a favourite to weave.  This one is 2/22 silk and is half pink and half purple, the colours have variation of colour ranging from soft pinks and lavenders to dark purple and hot pink.

The pattern is a lovely plaited twill that looks like Celtic knots braid.  I went for a black 2/8 Tencel weft because I wanted the pattern to pop.

The weaving went quickly as the treadling is just a straight draw so very nice to do after being away from the loom for a while.  The finished scarf is fabulous.  For Sale.

The garden, like every year, has it heroes and its disasters.  The highlights this year are the ever bearing strawberries which means we get a harvest in the spring and a second larger harvest in the late summer.  They have been so prolific this year that we have froze some to make jam in the winter.

The raspberries have been wonderful this year.  We have eaten raspberries since June, this is a second flowering and the raspberries are as big as a thumb.  The bumblebees, honey bees and humming birds all really love the flowers the canes just hum from all the pollinators.

In the front garden we are changing the plantings to be more drought resistant and to have more shrubs.  The mass planting of the Rudbeckia is great and adds a cohesiveness to the garden and as a bonus they are a super low maintenance plant.

In the back garden the planting is also changing we are adding roses to give structure and elegance to the borders.  The favourite this year is the Waiheke rose, hidden behind the zinnias. 

Navy Blue and Yellow Tea Towels on 12 Shafts

It’s January, so it must be tea towels; that seems to be our slogan here at Dust Bunnies. As I was trying to figure out what tea towel pattern I wanted to do, I got a commission for 4 tea towels.  The colours are navy blue and yellow.  In the picture you can see that the tops of the tubes have been coloured.  When we get a new order of 2/8 cotton, we colour the tubes so that we can keep the different dye lots separated.  The bottom tube of navy is a slightly different colour and in the dark days of winter it could have been hard to notice when pulling the warp, so I'm glad I caught it.

The pattern for the tea towels is a point twill on 12 shafts, the pattern makes lovely shapes in the heddles.  It is one that we’ve done before in 2018 and 2020.

So far the hardest part of these tea towels is the actual weaving, this is the first attempt and I didn’t beat the weft hard enough and the left edge is a mouse nibbled mess; so  I pulled out the 5 inches that I have woven and began again.

The second attempt is much better.  I’m having to do a double beat to pack the weft in nicely and the pattern is showing up much crisper.  I also found that my hanging selvages had uneven weights, I had 7 pennies on the left and 10 pennies on the right and when I added the three extra pennies to the left my mouse nibbled edge magically disappeared.  Who knew it made such a difference?

I’ve finished one towel and I’m starting on the second out of the four yellow tea towels.  I’ve put on enough warp for 6 towels and I’m already thinking about what colours can I use for the last two towels!

We’ve had a very cold spell and then a big dump of snow so the garden is looking a little beat up.  There are no promising hints of green shoots showing today but by next week there could be as we are well above freezing.  Still, I'm longing for days when the sky isn't dull grey and fog isn't our constant companion.

Twelve Shaft Painted Silk Scarf

I have also put on one of the newly dyed silk warps onto the loom.  This warp is full of colour, moss green, plum purple, turquoise, royal blue and purple.  I’m not sure what I was thinking with this colourway but it is exciting! 

Picking out a weft colour proved to be quite difficult, I want a colour that highlights everything going on in the warp but doesn’t overpower.  I tried iris, amethyst, olive, navy and a denim blue all in Tencel.  The dark blues and purples seem to work the best. 

But I still wasn’t sure so for the second weft auditions I tried eggplant, navy, dark teal and amethyst.  I worried that the purples would fight against the plum in the warp so I went with the navy blue for the weft of the scarf.

For the pattern I went with a tried and true pattern, a 6 shaft crackle that has been used successfully with several painted warps before.  But this time the pattern and the weft seemed to hide the lovely painted warp.

So I unwove that woven four inches, unpicked the hem stitching, pulled the warp out of the reed then I remember that I should put the lease sticks back in.  So I found a sort of cross in the threading put the lease sticks in and pulled out the threading.  

I picked another pattern, this time a 12 shaft twill with lovely spiky diamonds.  I am weaving with the weft dominate side up but you can still see the streaks of colour moving through the warp.  It is a relief to find a pattern that is going to show off the warp.  It is a complicated treadling so it is weaving up slowly.

Final photos are from a botany walk at Miracle Beach Provincial Park.  The leaves of the big leaf maple are starting to turn colour but some are starting to drop leaves early due to drought stress.

There are several large fires burning in the mountains above us so there was a smoky haze combined with the sunlight piercing the tree canopy made for some spectacular photos.

Second Pink Silk Scarf

There was yet another batch of Debbie Bliss silk singles in the stash cupboard.  This time the yarn was a darker pink and there is less of it than I had to work with for the last silk scarf. 

I tried out a couple of different styles of stripes on the computer and I think that the best bet is to keep the dark pink silk as a large splash of colour.  So I ended up with two pink stripes with three smaller stripes of cream and chocolate brown silk.

For weft I went into the pink/rust range of Tencel.  I tried Adobe, Pompeii, Sea Coral and Spice.  I was surprised that I liked the darker colours best because they showed the pattern the best.

My final choice was the Pompeii, I like how it blended with the chocolate silk stripes and added a depth of colour and richness to the dark pink stripes.

The pattern is my new favourite, Stricklers #385.  I promise that this is the last time that I’ll use it for a while!  I have memorized the treadling, and because I like it so much the scarf wove up quite quickly.

I haven’t finished the scarf yet, it still needs the fringe twisted and a hard pressing but even on a cloudy day the scarf is lovely.

The monthly botany walk with the local nature club was last Monday, one of the highlights was the spawning herring seen from the parking lot of the park.  In the photo you can see a light blue ribbon of the roe, harder to see is the flocks of gulls, seals and sea lions feasting on the herring.  Those mountains in the background are the Coastal Mountains on the mainland of BC. 

The other highlight of the walk was the 500++ year old Douglas Fir; a massive tree that had lots of holes along the truck that later in the spring will have nesting birds.

8 Shaft Twill in Silk Part Two

The pink silk scarf quickly wove up, so fast that I don’t really have any photos.  The scarf is pink and is framed by silk in chocolate, silver and cream and the weft is dark purple Tencel called eggplant.  The pattern is is Stricklers #385.  It is 8 shaft with 12 treadles but the pattern repeat is only 20 which is amazing for such an intricate looking pattern.  

I again wove up to the last possible inch for the scarf, it is impressive how well a Louet Spring loom works.  The fact that you can get a usable shed with the warp rods so close to the heddles is astonishing and it makes the loom waste is so minimal.

The scarf is washed, the fringe twisted and pressed but it is waiting for some sun so I can take some photos.  Here is a sneak peek, the chocolate brown stripes almost take on a purple colour making for a really harmonious scarf.

For the next scarf I had some more Debbie Bliss silk singles in a darker pink.

It has been a cold start to spring but we still have to start spring tasks, there may be snow on the ground but we put the lemon tree outside for the day to start hardening up.  The temperature in the greenhouse was 18.9C which is pretty awesome for an unheated green house, especially since the outside temperature was only 8C. 

The daffodils in the viola pots are starting to pop up and there was an unexpected flower, a snow drop!  What a wonderful surprize.

Eight Shaft Twill in Silk

Another dip into the silk stash  and this time it is the turn of some pink Debbie Bliss silk singles.  I’m pretty sure that there won’t be enough pink silk so I also pulled out some silk in cream, silver, grey and chocolate.

The skein holder and ball winder are both back into action. 

For a single scarf I pull a warp 100 inches long, it gives me 10 inches for fringe in the front, 70 inches for the scarf and 20 inches for the second fringe, take up and loom waste.  I first pulled the warp using the pink silk singles and got 92 ends.  I want the scarf to be 8 inches wide so I need a total of 160 ends.  I used the cream, silver and chocolate silk to make a frame for the scarf.  Here is the scarf placed into the raddle at the top of the loom castle and it is ready to pull on. 

For the weft I knew that I wanted to use Tencel in Eggplant but I had no idea what the pattern I was going to use for this scarf.  I spent a lot of time on the computer trying out different patterns.  

I ended up using the same twill pattern as the smoke grey scarf, Stricklers #385.  I think that it looks like little rose buds in the pink centre of the scarf. The eggplant weft really, really works!

Mom and I joined the local nature group, they offer local field trips for birding and botany.  Last week was the monthly walk with the botany group, we went to a local park in a housing development that is also between two schools.  It is amazing how wild the forest still is, we were looking at different winter fungi and mosses.  

We saw a lot of little brown mushrooms but a highlight was the witch’s butter (Dacrymyces chrysospermus), an orange jelly fungus.

The final garden photo is daffodils and rhubarb, the photo is from last week because this week everything is covered in snow again!

Smoke Grey Silk Scarf

Sorry, I missed last Mondays post but I was gardening!  There was a Enkianthus campanulatus 'Red Bells' tree in the back garden that was very unhappy living under a Raywood Ash.   We dug it out and placed it in a newly expanded bed in the front garden.  Hopefully it will like its new, much sunnier spot, as it is one of my favourite flowering trees.  

I promised the final beauty shots of the coral pink sea silk scarf, and it is really pretty if I do say so myself.  The pattern is really charming and for a busy pattern it works so well with variegated warps.

Happily this coral pink sea silk scarf sold the day after I put it on Etsy.  I think it maybe the fastest item to have sold on Etsy for us.  Here is a photo of the scarf just before it was placed into the envelope; I like to wrap up the scarf like a present.

I had just started to weave the grey silk scarf last post and it is already off the loom.  It was a pleasure to weave, it may be 8 shafts with 12 treadles but the repeat is very simple.  The pattern is from Stricklers #385.

The scarf was washed and dried then it was ready for fringe twizzling.  I tried a couple of sizes of tassels, thick or thin.  

I went with thick but I didn’t like the candy cane affect on the second tassel on the left side so I treated the dark grey silk differently and went with a three strand tassel, as shown on the right side, the candy cane one is on the left and I did redo it!

There was some sunshine this week so I was able to take photos of the finished grey silk scarf.  It is quite charming in its dark and stormy way.  For sale.

Final garden photo is not actually from my garden but from outside the post office in town.  I just love seeing snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis), seeing them blooming it seems that spring is right around the corner.