A close up before wet finishing

A close up before wet finishing

A close up before wet finishing

A close up before wet finishing

A close up before wet finishing

A close up before wet finishing

My go to scarf is a plain old charcoal gray wool number that goes with pretty much everything. Not a difficult task, I mean what doesn't go with charcoal gray. There are several things I like about this scarf. It's long - I can double wrap it around my neck and still have plenty of tail to tie it in place. It's wide - I can pull it up over my mouth, and nose if necessary, which is a big plus come February. It's fairly thin - when I'm all wrapped up the layers keep me warm without making me look like Ralphie's kid brother. The one thing I don't like is that it's machine made. So I've decided to make something similar in dimension, but in a fun color.  

Enter the Schacht destash. When I was working at Schacht, Jane decided to destash some yarn that had been sitting around the factory for who knows how long. I hauled quite a bit of yarn home on my bike that week, including this orange-y red finely spun stuff. This is not a color I would normally wear, but there was just something about it that I couldn't put down, and now it's going to be my next scarf.  

In retrospect, I think I avoided orange because it reminded me of hunting season. The L.L. Bean Hunting catalog, one of many we received, was full of models either dressed in orange or dressed in outfits to make them look like shrubbery. It was all very confusing. Like most kids who grew up in the woods of Maine, we simply were not allowed out of the house for most of the month of November unless we were decked out head to toe in orange. All of the fun places to play were inevitably banned, and we were forced to stay within the confines of the yard.  Bor-ing.     

So here's the no no part of the scarf. Check out the second photo. This is what happened when I did your basic is-it-strong-enough-to-be-a-warp test. For those of you not familiar with this, when choosing your warp, you want to take a length of any material you are considering and give it a good tug to see if it breaks. My yarn snapped under a reasonable amount of tension.  But I am stubborn, and also not a fan of rules, and I am determined to make this work. My plan is to wind the warp gently. I was planning on weaving this very lightly to create an airy weave, so this is a bit of an experiment all around. I may be sharing a dramatic failure. We'll see.

My mystery fiber weighed in at 25 wraps per inch. I wanted my end result to measure 16" x 90". Based on that information, here are the project details:

Warp length: 4 yards

Width in reed: 19 inches

Sett: 12 ends per inch = 228 ends

Total length of material needed: 912 warp yards + 910 weft yards = 1,822 yards

Pre-washed finished dimensions: 17 3/4" x 110"

Washed finished dimensions: 17 1/4" x 108"

So.  Very little shrinkage.  Not a problem.  A longer scarf is far more desirable than a too short scarf.

There are many challenges in weaving. Some fuzzier than others. This is Kickapoo. She is my English angora rabbit, and she is clearly a weaver at heart. She especially likes to help treadle, though I suspect I might find one or two tie up cords with some nibble marks if I took a closer look.

So considering the delicacy of the warp, I used very little tension both when winding and advancing the warp. You can see that when the shuttle and a full bobbin are placed on the woven cloth, their weight depresses the material. I also used very little force when beating. It was actually a good exercise for me to weave in such a relaxed manner.  

When I removed the scarf from the loom, I tied long fringe in 12 thread segments.  I then hand washed it, and, since the end result will have to survive a bit of abuse anyway, popped it in the washing machine on the spin cycle to get rid of most of the water.  Finally I hung the scarf to dry before steam pressing it and giving the fringe a final trim.  I must say I'm quite pleased with the end result.  I'll share a photo shortly.