I was given a loom by a friend of mine from Ravelry that she was unable to use. It hadn't been assembled in nearly a decade and needed some serious TLC. I got it put together, which took days. I'd never been so up close and person with a loom before other than my homemade inkle (I'm a woodworker too) and the little cardboard looms of my childhood. After assembly, the loom just sat. I had no idea what to do with it. Then, cleaning my flat I found some of my first hand dyed yarn from summer 2009 when I was first learning to dye. I've tried knitting it into several different projects, but it just doesn't seem to work quite right for any of them as it's color changes are a bit too abrupt.
Everyone has been giving me the "you need to take lots of classes" talk or just the side eye when I talk about learning to weave as though I couldn't. I figured I'd use up this beautiful hand dyed yarn and make a show stopping first weaving project to prove them all wrong, both folks online and for show-and-tell at the next guild meeting. Originally, I'd thought to do a tabby with a solid color for the warp using the hand dye for the weft. I found a ball of black wool in my yarn not yet dedicated to a projects bin and set it aside to use. Briefly, I thought of using some hand dye and some black for both warp and weft for a plaid type project. That got me thinking about twills. I decided that a herringbone 2/2 twill with black warp and the hand dye for the weft would be perfect. The draft I've sketched up looks like small chevrons would in knitting and I think that will help break up the abrupt color changes in the hand dye that bothered me so much while trying to knit with it. How I never thought to stripe this yarn with a solid in a chevron pattern while knitting I don't know.
Anyhow, I've decided a scarf would be nice for a first project. If it doesn't come out great as a scarf (the yarns are both a bit scratchy for my taste) then I'll felt it and stitch something cute from the resulting fabric. Either way, I'm about to go warp up my loom and prove to everone (including myself of course) that with a stack of books from the library and youtube, I CAN teach myself to weave just fine. Of course if I could afford it I'd be taking classes too ;)