Weaving with sock yarns

A couple of weeks ago I wearily escaped from the work on Friday afternoon just before the shops were closing, and there across the street was the wool shop. I could walk past and go and find my car.. or I could walk in the shop. Hmm. I walked in and bought some sock yarn because I liked the colours. They are Noro Kureyon and Sirdar Town & Country.

I just looked at the combination of yarns and thought "point twill weave scarf" - yeah!

This was woven over the weekend on my new Leclerc Voyageur loom.

I found it easy to warp and weave. I used the 1/4" raddle I made for my floor loom and a couple of home-made lease sticks to get the warp on neatly.

This next photo is one I took to show something that's very different about the table loom, compared to my Toika countermarch floor loom. When the shafts are at rest, they actually pull down on the warp threads.

Half the shed is already there, before any shafts are raised, here's another photo with a shaft raised, ready to put the shuttle through:

Its a neat little loom and a neat shed, but I have found I need to wind on about every 1 1/2 woven. I don't mind this, as I kind wind on without having to walk around the loom, but all the same I've got a pivoting beater on order so that I'll be able weave a bit further from the shafts.

The Kureyon yarn kept twisting around itself, I wondered if this would cause a problem, but the finished scarf shows no evidence of unbalanced yarn, although the fringes twist gently.

Most of the scarf is woven with shaft lift 1-2-3-4, it's a 1/3 twill. The threading includes straight sections and points. I tried some diamond sections, but don't think they worked well. the face of the scarf is o.k., but on the back it's made a bumpy texture.

Here's a section of the face of the scarf with no diamonds:

What the photos don't show is how lovely it feels, smooth and soft. Being sock yarns I know it's practical to put this in the washing machine on a 30 degrees wool-wash setting. I washed it by hand when it was finished, and then pressed it.

I think these photos should have been the other way around, this one is showing the front of a pattern section.

I am very happy with my new scarf, and so last Friday afternoon I went back to the wool shop - wearing it. The lady in the shop greeted me and asked how I'd got on with the socks - so I had to confess that I'd made something else - I took my scarf off and handed it to her. I watched her face as she suddenly saw that this scarf was those same yarns, she broke into a sudden big smile of amazement. The owner was there and she called him over, they loved it. What fun it is to surprise people like this - I should explain that weaving is an extremely unusual hobby in the UK.

It just so happened that they'd been to their annual trade show recently, and taken advantage of an offer to buy 50 different balls of sock wool (normally sold in packs of ten balls all the same). They tipped several bags out onto the counter and helped me with the following selections:

The last is possibly my favourite, not sure, I like the browns as well - oh actually I like them all, but I chose to use these next. And this weekend, another warp on the loom, another twill weave. Having learnt from the previous scarf I choose to use a balanced 2/2 twill so there is no face/back to this scarf, and I wanted long points as I looked at the orange weft yarn and thought of flames.

Here it is on the loom this morning, with spring sunshine coming in the window to pick out those rich colours.

And what is this? Another loom?
I'd better explain what I'm up to. I am intending to weave some rugs on the floor loom, linen warp and carpet wool weft. However, I'm not sure whether to sett the warp at 4 ends per inch or 5. I wove a sampler a couple of years ago at 4 and it drew in more than I thought it should, so think I might use 5 (I do have both 4 & 5 epi reeds). I decided the easiest way to test would be to use a tapestry loom and see how the weft settles into the warp. The cross piece is a tension bar - the warp warps around this and then it is separately lashed to the frame, the lashing to the frame can be loosened to compensate for warp take up. This avoids the tapestry piece being narrower at the top than the bottom. At least, that's how I expect it to work, not done this before!

p.s. the weave pictures in this post can be enlarged if you double click on them.