Blog for my weaving and horticulture avocations

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I am the proud granddaughter of Hungarian and Slovakian Immigrants.
This blog is where I share some insights about my avocations of Horticulture and Handweaving.


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Wednesday, October 2, 2019

WEAVING WITH HANDYED TENCEL






 I did some tencel weaving using a draft I had sitting around and used a couple times last year with solid colors. I loved how it worked out and decided this year to try some handdyed in the warp. Several weaver facebook friends had used mixed warps and the design looked worth trying.  
I had two skeins of Teresa Rush designs handdyed tencel I picked up last year at the Seattle Weaver's Guild sale that looked promising. Her dyeing techniques are just so very amazing with blended saturated colors. these were slightly different but both mainly in reds, charcoal and teals that were so dark they looked black. I haven't really woven much with reds so it was fun watching this develop. 

I had to do a lot of calculating to get the total length of the skeins to work out into the right number of threads for the pattern and still come up with the length I needed for a double cowl and a scarf while arranging the colors to pool together on the warping board.   I ended up removing an 8 thread section of the draft from the center of my reed to make it work. 

The facebook posts of my work in progress drew a lot of wonderful comments and  I'm so pleased with the weave structure - a plain weave /lace combo--using the handdyed yarns. 


5/2 Tencel fromTeresa Ruch designs
in process from skein, swift, ball winder, warping board to loom

double cowl 68" circumference x 9" wide
woven with 8/2 black tencel weft.
available

woven with 8/2 shale weft
72" plus 4" fringes in length x 9" wide.
Happy birthday, Danika.


Next up is a skein of Autumn colors 
in 10/2 Tencel this time. 

 





the cowl has a weft of Maroon so some of the blue and purple
colors are highlighted 

the scarf has a weft of Adobe color
so more of the coral and autumn colors
are emphasized.
CLOSE UP OF SCARF



















AUTUMN WEAVING TIME!

It's back to weaving time again! 
But what do raptors, dogs, and rodents have in common? 

Seahawks, Huskies, and Gophers had me on the chase for some scarf orders in team colors. But getting the right shades of color took some effort. 

After explaining over the phone to a dyer in Maine what I wanted I now own two skeins of sock yarn that will have to get used some other way. This is not Maroon and Gold and the yellow is not dyed in two places on the skein.
what shall I do with these? 
I even gave hand dying my own sock yarns a try. Let's just say I'll have to work on that more in the off season. 

But Serial Knitters shop in Kirkland came through with their in house dyeing.  
University of Minnesota Gophers -- some better colors to work with.

It's a match!


Serial  Knitters Dyehouse also made up some UW Husky colors. But I'll have to add pictures of those when I get a camera that will actualy show purple colors. --Ok, so Frank's phone is way better! 


"Woof!"
double cowl, merino, tencel and rayon chenille
67" circumference

merino, tencel, rayon chenille scarf
in colorway "Woof!"
74" plus fringes, 


meanwhile...............

I continue doing Seahawk colors using Frolicking Feet yarn:



a scarf and two cowls off the loom
I love how the colors lined up this time! 

a fancy fun cowl with sparkles for Cathy J 

a double cowl for Joanie

Scarf done in twill weave -
available