Self-shading Warp

Day 292: Sometimes, you buy something on a whim and then have to ask yourself, "What in the world am I going to do with this?" That was the case when I ordered a cone of variegated thread, always a sucker for colour. I used a little of it as weft in some project, wasn't particularly impressed with how it turned out, and thus the cone migrated to the back of the storage cupboard. While I was working on the zanshiori placemats, my mind was on what to do next. I liked the way the doubled warp was working out to balance the changes in colour, and it occurred to me that warping with the variegated blues might be a way to use the cone to good advantage. I was not expecting it to "self-shade" like this, but I love the way it's working out to look almost like a hand-painted warp. Of course, I had to add a stripe for contrast, but I am using pale blue exclusively for the weft to create a "tidal" effect.

Fiber Adventures

Day 335: A friend recently remarked that she enjoys following my "fiber adventures," and the term "adventure" seemed particulary apt, given that I love to experiment with new techniques and colour treatments. Currently, I'm on a "shaded" binge which began with wanting to use up a small ball of space-dyed 8/2 cotton. The result was the lovely purple and blue scarf I featured here on September 6. A survey of my stash didn't yield any more variegated thread, so I grabbed three closely allied colours of #3 perle cotton and used them to make an inkle-woven band. By arranging the warp with the two medium-hued shades on either side of the darker colour, the finished band had the shimmery appearance of having been made with a variegated thread. I used the same principle to warp the "autumn" band shown in the lower image. The background is brown, and the floats are made with yellow, orange and rust. I must confess that this was not the pattern I originally intended to weave. I inadvertently wound on two extra warps, leaving 13 threads for the floats instead of 11. It would have been difficult to remove them, so I changed the pattern instead. The piece in the upper photo utilizes a fortuitous find for the stripes. Although I had no more space-dyed thread in my stash, as I walked out of the loom room, my eye fell on the bin where I keep my shuttles. One of them contained approximately 100 yards of perle cotton in a colourway called "Mexicali" which I had once used in a tablecloth. I've been trying to figure out how best to use it, and decided to align the colour changes as I'd done with the shaded scarf. However, the Mexicali was a hand-painted thread, so the transitions are more irregular, with the occasional fleck of odd colour appearing out of sequence. Even though the towels are a simple tabby weave, the excitement of "adventure" is held in those space-dyed threads.