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Monday, October 20, 2008

A Milestone!

Just realized that the blog is now a little over 2 years old, and the visitor counter reached 28,000 yesterday! Here's a chart from StatCounter showing where recent visitors are located:



Welcome, Guatemala! It's always fun to see where you folks come from.

On a more directly fiber-related note, I've managed to wet-finish the last two faux seersucker scarves, and am very pleased with the hand of the finished cloth. These two weight in at 2.5 and 2.3 ounces (71 and 66-ish grams) respectively, and are soft and cozy to wear.





The upper scarf was woven entirely in a 2/2 broken twill with a silk weft, and at the beginning and the end, and every 4 inches between, I wove 12 picks with a wool-lycra yarn. That gave a nice irregular texture to the finished cloth.

The lower scarf had 2/2 broken twill in the dark wool stripes, and plain weave in the silk/tencel stripes, and 12 picks of the dark wool at beginning and end, and the texture is quite different from the previous one.

Weaving with a wool or wool-blend yarn at beginning and end secures the fell of the cloth nicely so no knotting or plying or hemstitching is necessary. Once the scarf is felted in the washing machine, it'll never fray at the ends. There are a few picks of a waste yarn in there to hold things in place during washing, and then I pull those out after the scarf is dry.

Plus, I made inroads into the pile of unfinished scarves that have been waiting to have their fringes plied. There were two Fire Series scarves and one Wood Series scarf in the pile. I must confess that some of the others have been waiting a really long time, so it's a huge relief to finally get 'em done! More fodder for the booth at the upcoming pre-holiday shows.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It's comforting to know that someone else's pile of "to be fringe-twisted" scarves and shawls sometimes grows almost beyond being manageable. It's my least favorite task in weaving, so I end up as I am now, with seven shawls whose fringes must be twisted to prepare for pre-holiday shows.