Sea Moods Scarf

This is a scarf that I have just made for a friend's birthday. She lives on the Great Ocean Road at Warrnambool - which is the most beautiful coastline in Victoria - and I wanted to create something that would reflect some of the moods of the ocean that you see along the road.

I used my Ashford knitting loom and a range of commercial fibres. The reed is 7.5dpi and I used the full width of the loom which allows a finished width of about 25cm or 10ins. Overall dimensions for this scarf are 1280cm or 4ft 2ins length with an additional 150cms/6ins of fringe each end and 25cms/10ins in width. The warp is a white cotton and acrylic mix with lots of slubby bits which I thought might enhance the range of blue and grays I wanted to use. It worked well to tone down some of the dark colours and added the appearance of white caps on top of waves to the overall effect. The weft was composed of blocks of colours and textures and fibres to better reflect the constantly changing moods of the ocean. The colours range from a bright cerulean blue to a deep almost black blue gray. The textures include feather and eyelash yarn, soft cotton ribbon yarn and thick chunky chenille.

This was a very quick scarf to make, the planning process and deciding on the yarns took nearly as long!!!! I'm very happy with finished product and the next project for the loom is a earth and sea vest so we'll see how that turns out.

Ist Posting

I feel a little pretentious calling my garage a workshop BUT that's what it is for me so I'm going to run with it! And with a little bit of help from the site supervisor, that's what it will be one day. OK, a lot of help from the site supervisor. My talents do not run to hammer and nails, my building skills are hard earned.

Truthfully I'm craft person, I like lots of different crafts, but at the moment I'm concentrating on hand spinning & weaving and crochet which is what this blog will focus on. There might be a bit of knitting thrown in now again as well.

The garage is where I do most of my weaving and where I have all my bits and pieces. The fleeces, top, dyes, commercial wool, the looms and the spinning wheels. I have fought long and hard for a place to work in and so I'm putting it to full use now I've got it. I have two Ashford spinning wheels, the traditional and the traveller. I also have the Ashford 20 inch knitting loom, which is a rigid heddle loom designed to use with all of the fancy new knitting yarns. I have two other looms, a Sheridan 4 shaft table loom and a big old countersink floor loom with four shafts and six peddles which I am slowly, veeerry sllllooowly restoring.

I'm still a beginning spinner, even though I first started spinning 10 years ago. I haven't had an accessible space to work in for a long time, but now I do so I've gone on a fibre binge! I'll be posting about all my adventures in the next few posts as I get more comfortable with the blogging process. I intend to use this blog as a fibre diary and a place to reflect on the processes involved in what I produce so we'll see how it goes.