On to Scarf Four

In a comment on an earlier post, Christine said she was " in awe of how quickly you weave these. You just seem to zip right through them. I am sure it is more difficult than that and you spend a lot of hours on them, but I am very impressed with your output."

Actually, I can't take much credit for speed. It's all due to the AVL equipment. With a CompuDobby II (one of the Old Reliables in my experience) and a motor shaft lifting system (designed and made by DH, not AVL), it's easy to weave fast. It's all in the timing. When to throw the shuttle, when to change sheds, when to beat. Once I've got that in muscle memory, it's really easy.

I've pretty much given up the fly-shuttle. It had really aggravated the osteo-arthritis in my right hand, because I never got into the habit of changing hands on a regular basis. (Bad, Sandra, Bad.) But with an end-delivery hand shuttle (I use both Bluster Bay and Schacht), I can weave almost as many picks per minute as with the fly-shuttle, and it's an equal load on both hands.

After running a bunch of errands, I went up to the studio and finished scarf #3 and began scarf #4.



This one uses a navy weft of 60/2 silk, and 4 shots of merino/lycra blend yarn in a dark navy every 4 inches or so. Here's a closeup, in which you can just make out the slightly darker band in the weft, which is the 2/2 broken twill of the lycra-blend yarn.:



And the 20-shaft draft: Oelsner figure 988, and handweaving.net draft #34624.