March Madness

Good weather for the March meeting, but schedule conflicts made it a small group. However, we had a great time with enough show and tell and discussion topics to keep us occupied.

Above you see a triangle shawl woven by Sue R. This wool shawl was woven with a commercial knitting yarn with long color repeats. Sue calculated the amount needed for the shawl, but then found that she had calculated only enough for 1/2 of a shawl once she had started weaving -- oops! But Sue is a spinner as well as a weaver and she went to work copying the commercial yarn and its colors. That meant getting out the dyepot in addition to spinning the yarn.

We all agreed that she had done a masterful job of matching the original yarn, since none of us could detect the commercial from the handspun. Sue has decided to leave the fringe in slightly irregular lengths which is more in keeping with the artistic appearance of the shawl.


I brought in my latest shawl woven with wool, alpaca and textured silk. Since I discovered the bumberet draft several months ago, I haven't been able to stop using it. The draft really lends itself to the use of multiple kinds of yarns and this piece made good use of yarns that had been in my stash for years. Originally I planned for a lap robe and the warp was 40" wide. After fulling, the shawl measured 31" and it seemed that it was a more appropriate width for a shawl.

Ingrid has been experimenting with her new 24 shaft loom. For her first samples, she warped the loom on 16 shafts with a point threading. She found a draft for this sample in 8,12...20: An Introduction to Multishaft Weaving (page 65) by Kathryn Wertenberger. We all agreed that this was a terrific pattern; the photo doesn't do justice to the embossed appearance of the actual sample.

Her next sample is on the cover of Rural Pennsylvania German Weaving 1833-1857 The Christian Frey and Henry Small, Jr. Pattern Books by Tandy & Charles Hersch. This is a very striking pattern and several people decided they would love to own napkins from this design. (Hint, hint)

Diana wasn't able to make the meeting but had been busy planning napkins for the upcoming exchange. She was very taken with the celtic border design recently featured in Weavezine. Here is a sample she cut off the loom and washed to get a good idea if the celtic knots were going to show up. I think the napkins are going to be spectacular.

If you are part of the weaving group, we have decided to put off the napkin exchange until the June meeting. The rules are a minimum of two napkins that are alike and between 16" to 20" square. It seems like most in the group are not making more than two duplicates of their napkins, so there should be a great variety in the exchange.

See everyone in April!