Scarves For Massachusetts

Day 266: Weaving on a floor loom generates a lot of  "too short to use, but too long to throw away" ends. The technical jargon for this potential waste material is "thrums," an interesting word in and of itself. Its origins are Norse, rooted in the same word which also gives us "term" in the sense of "a limited time." In any event, my thrum pile was threatening to overwhelm my craft room, so I determined to terminate it (clever etymologist that you are, you see what I did there, I'm sure). That said, I was sure I could find order in chaos if I worked at it hard enough, so with the addition of balls of yarn not large enough for a project but too large to toss, I began making scarves on my 10" rigid heddle. A lot of planning goes into each one of these in order to find a pleasant mix of colours as well as a balance between them; even so, there are many possibilities for variation in the width of the stripes and in their order. I suspect that by the time COVID-19 has run its course and I am again able to get out to the post office, I will have sufficient scarves ready to send to the Joppa Flats Education Center to keep half the state of Massachusetts warm through the winter. I might also have a little more space in my yarn storage bins.