What a fun project! I LOVE SAORI WEAVING!
For years I have approached weaving by carefully planning and calculating and by learning different weave structures. This project was pure joy.
It took very little time to wind a 5” warp but I didn’t know how wide it was until I threaded the reed -- I wound about 6 yards (didn’t measure) of a variety of yarns in my stash. The majority of the warp yarns were wool of different weights and textures… worsted weight, singles, boucle and then I added some cotton 5/2 in black just to see what would happen when wet finished.
I have been spinning for about 38 years and some of the handspun I used in the weft were from that long ago! Some of it was spun from fiber I picked up when I visited a woolen mill in Wales 35 years ago! Each yarn has a story behind it! I used some beautiful white alpaca roving that a friend just gave me as textural accents. I used various lengths that I pulled off the balls randomly and wove them into the web by hand playing with clasped weft tapestry and experimented with multiple threads in the same shed. I PLAYED!
Part of what made it so much fun and so "freeing" was turning my 8 shaft Mighty Wolf into a 4 shaft directly tied up loom. I dropped the tie-up cords on the treadles on either side of the 4 center treadles so that I could easily find the treadles I wanted to use with my feet. I tied each treadle up to one shaft only. (direct tie-up) That way I could treadle one or two at a time and dance with my feet.
I can’t wait to work on the 2nd scarf on this warp.
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