Last night I finished weaving the first of the Ocean-Born Mary scarves. This one is for the mother of a friend, an elderly Cuban poet who requested a scarf from me. I'm very honored to be asked to make this scarf for her.
Here it is, fresh from the loom, not even wet-finished yet.
I was going to make the three further scarves on this warp with a variety of wefts, but the teal silk was so successful that I'm going to take the time to dye more of the skeins set aside for weft also in teal.
I'm also totally jazzed...this was my first advancing twill draft and I am delighted with it. Only eight of possible sixteen harnesses.
Towards the end there was a spate of broken warp threads. Something about the way I beamed the sectional warp - there were also a few loose threads. Indicates the need for more care in both the beaming of the warp and also in tensioning the warp when tying onto the front apron. The loose threads were not so bad really, but it bugged me that they were not perfect.
Also, for the next scarf, I am going to use a temple. Although I was able to weave the first without a temple, it entailed keeping the tension much softer than I ordinarily would in order to not keep exploding selvedge threads. There was a net narrowing of about 1/4 inch, hardly noticeable but still annoying to me. Moving the temple will slow down weaving and will be its own kind of annoyance, but for the weaving of silks I prefer to be able to beat the weft in firmly to avoid a sleazily-woven web. In order to be able to use this higher tension on the warp I have to use the temple too.
Before the next scarves can proceed, I have to fix the several broken warp threads, and re-tying on will definitely help with the two loose threads. And I want to weave a yard or so of this warp with the flat 24k gold thread I got from John Marshall.
All in all I am pretty pleased with this project. With the improvements of better tension, use of the temple, and a slightly firmer beat, the other three scarves should be quite nice...
