More Leftovers

Who said that leftovers can't be wonderful!  Here's the second scarf in the leftovers project.

The warp is peacock blue Fun Fur, Trendsetter Murano railroad track yarn, and a little black sock yarn. The weft is very fine kid mohair, beat very, very gently to make an open fabric.


The resulting fabric is a little bit fuzzy, a little bit shiny and drapes beautifully.

The thing about yarn...

My most recent project is a scarf for a silent auction at my church.  I have a lot of designer yarns left over from previous projects, so my goal is to use some of them up making these scarves.  I figure that more than one large Rubbermaid tub of leftover yarns is too many.  (Don't think that I'm slacking, my stash of non-leftover yarns fills several large tubs.)

For this project I picked a couple of different yarns to mix in the warp.  And I used them up! Yes, all the way up. But I couldn't find yarn for the weft in my stash that was just right.  Time for a trip to the yarn store.

So here's the first thing about yarn.  Remember the old potato chip ad "bet you can't eat just one"?  Well, for yarn, it's "bet you can't buy just one."   Because the shop did have the perfect yarn for the weft.  And it had some really great designer yarns on sale for half price.  So I had to get some - really it was too good to pass up.

And that's the other thing about yarn.  You can never use it all up.  Because that perfect weft - half of the skein is left.  So into the Rubbermaid tub it goes.

I'm really happy about how the scarf came out.  It was soft, elegant and drapes nicely.  Buying the perfect weft yarn - even with the left overs - was definitely worth it.

Orange Day

This weekend was the time to dye weft for the second Orange Colored Sky shawl.  I'm a little bemused by the orange color choice.  It's probably my least favorite color (after lime green).  It's certainly not a color I would normally choose to wear.  Not since 8th grade and gym suits at Orange Grove Jr. High, anyway.  But there was something about that sky....

As usual, I rely on the color sample cards from the SOAR workshop with Sarah Lamb.  I'm always anxious about the results, but, also as usual, they were spot on:

The skein matches the color (lower left corner) perfectly! 

Thank you, Sarah!

Out of an Orange Colored Sky

“I was walking along minding my business

When love came and hit me in the eye

Flash, bam, alacazam,

Out of the orange colored, purple stripes,

Pretty green polka-dot sky

Flash, bam, alacazam,

Went the sky.”

One of my daily tasks is to take the mail from my office to the post box across the street. On my way to the post box, I have a view of the Topa Topa mountain range. On the way back, if the day is clear, I can see, across the farm fields, the Pacific Ocean, and, in the distance, the Channel Islands.

One day last winter there were thunder clouds over the mountains, and a rainbow cast by the setting sun. Directly overhead the sky was a brilliant, glowing orange. On the horizion, the islands were a purple shadow above green seas.

These shawls remind me - just a bit - of the sky that day.

More Fiber in 2010!

In keeping with my Near Year’s resolution – More Fiber in 2010 – Ercil and I had our third-annual Christmas break fiber play date on January 2nd. I tom-sawyered Ercil into helping to measure the warp for my new project, a pair of shawls in mohair and silk. So, with help and persistence, the reed is sleyed and half the heddles threaded: