Lovely!
I initially wanted make a shawl for my daughter-in-law's birthday. We have a little handweaving shop in a very rural part of southern NM. Rosie Jones creates handwoven articles for sale, but also sells hand-dyed yarns.
In the summer of 2008 I purchased some lovely 50/50 alpaca/wool (Henry's Attic "Andee") for the warp and some of Rosie's hand-dyed 3-ply fingering weight 100% wool yarn for the weft in a lovely variegated sea green color.
One interesting note about Rosie. She is a local weaver in La Mesa, NM, and was a featured weaver in the Nov/Dec 2007 issue of Handwoven magazine.
I planned the shawl in a 2/2 twill (zig-zag over 6 picks). Rosie assured me that I had enough hand-dyed yarn for the project's weft. Part of the fault is mine - I should have pulled out my yarn balance and calculated what I had. Long story short - I did not have near enough for a shawl, and Rosie did not have any more of that particular batch of hand-dyed yarn.
The project then turned into fabric for a 20x20 pillow for my mother's birthday the following month. I used used 100% alpaca in a cream color for the weft to produce fabric the back of the pillow, and for the cording. I used a sett of 8; front weave structure was a 2/2 twill (vertical zigzag over 6 picks) and the back was a 2/2 twill (plain "S" diagonal).
One final note. The piping was quite interesting. I found the idea in the Nov/Dec 2008 issue of Handwoven (page 34) - it's basically a tube technique that is incredibly simple and clever.
