Off the Loom: Texture Sampler

One of the joys of a short warp is that it's on and off the loom rather quickly! I'd forgotten about that!


I have a mixture of yarns in this sampler: cotton, wool, acrylic, novelty, linen, rug yarn, boucle. Considering the variety of setts, textures and personalities, I was surprised that these yarns could actually be woven. At the start of this project, I half expected to end up with a big snarl.


The only yarns that caused me real difficulty were some knitting yarns I purchased at WEBS. I secretly long to make a scarf with these yarns as warp - so they'll be longways through the scarf.


But these two yarns cannot be warp on my Baby Wolf. (I wonder if they'd do better on my Toika with its Texsolv heddles....or maybe it would be possible on a rigid heddle loom. Or if there's some other solution to the trouble I had with them - because I did learn that I would love the scarf I originally envisioned, if only I could figure out how to weave it!)


The Cascade Yarns Jazz is unplied and very loosely spun. Not surprisingly, it felted to whatever yarn it was near, making it impossible to get a clean shed. Every few shots, I'd snip the felted fibers with scissors and remove them. OK to do on this warp with only 2 strands of Jazz, but on anything with more of this yarn, I really would end up with a snarl! (Or I'd be snarling!!)


This photo shows a good example of the texture of Jazz - with its wide and narrow sections. It also illustrates the other problem yarn in this warp: Stacy Charles Sabrina. You can see how it blooms into thick and thin multi-colored sections. The thick sections bunched up and caught in the reed. I had to resort to clipping some of them out with scissors to be able to beat.


Here is the sampler in its unfinished state. Soon I hope to finish it and analyze it a bit!


It is so cool that I got this project on and off the loom in the same month!! I'm making progress in my quest to get more projects done. (Often, I just like starting projects.)