I have finished my weaving project, and I’m pleased to report that everything went a lot more smoothly once I had my loom warped correctly (and the 2-year-old was napping).

I’m pretty pleased with how the fabric turned out.  I used a mystery teal wool (maybe Cascade 220?) for the warp and some beige-y Knit Picks Alpaca Cloud DK for the weft.  The finished project (I guess it’s a scarf) is lovely and drape-y and soft.  It’s probably not the color combo I would have reached for in an ideal world, but it’s pretty enough, and used up yarn that has been sitting in my stash since (probably) the last decade.

However, this process had taught me a few things:

1. READ THE INSTRUCTIONS.  Still kicking myself about the warp situation.  (I’m not going to read the instructions next time.)
2. Weaving goes so much faster than knitting!  I made a whole scarf in, like 2 days.
3. Weaving burns through yarn so much faster than knitting!  I used up 3 whole skeins (sure, 2 of them were fairly small, but still!).  Definitely something to think about when trying to downsize my stash!
4. I really like the edging stitch/tassel combo on this one.  I’ve never done an edging stitch before, and like how it turned out.  It was real satisfying, and made the scarf look nice and professional (unlike the rest of the piece).
5. I’m not great at weaving.  Like, I know the basics and was able to make a chunk of fabric, but it’s certainly not even row-to-row, and it has a weird curve to the left.  My current guess is that I did something funky (obviously) when warping, and made the yarn too tight on one side.
6. I realized that I don’t really know what to do with woven fabric (other than make scarves).  I mean… table runners (scarves for furniture), place mats (short scarves for furniture), coasters (tiny scarves for furniture), and bookmarks (even tinier scarves, but for books), but other than that… I’m not sure.  Can you cut this kind of woven fabric and sew it?  Would it fall apart?  Any ideas or resources would be greatly appreciated!

Well, it was a fun little project, and definitely something I need more practice with.  I should go digging in my stash to find more forgotten yarn.  Maybe everyone gets woven scarves for Christmas this year…

Have you tried any new projects during lockdown?