Wednesday 13 June 2012

Weaving with 100% British Wool - handspun

With the latest YarnMaker at the printers (due to be published next week) I had time for some weaving last weekend.

I have a huge stash of handspun yarns. Most of these were spun in 2006.  The wools that went into the blanket include Black Welsh Mountain, Grey Welsh Mountain, Manx Loaghtan, Shetland, Jacob. Some were spun fairly thick like an aran weight yarn, others like a fine sock wool.  There was a good mix of colour, yarn weights and texture.



This photo shows the warp yarns ready to wind onto the cloth beam of my Ashford Knitters Loom, with a 10 dpi reed.


I found that I like using the Glimakra rug shuttle as it passes through the shed without friction.




Here is the new blanket when cut off the loom, before washing in hot and cold water to full the fabric, after which the loose ends and the tassels were trimmed.














3 comments:

Meg said...

For some reason I had imagined Jasper to be big, old and not cute, but he's lovely! Welcome back to weaving, Dot!!

Trapunto said...

Sweet! I can't tell you how much I love this idea. And how well it turned out! Perfect size for a small project, but also (barring a layer of shed cat hair, but who sees cat hair anymore) a natural context for display. Cat blanket sampling could be a new trend...

Unfortunately my cat needs a new wool sleeping-chair blanket sooner than I can weave one, so unlike lucky Jasper, he's going to have to put up with some old coatweight wool from my granny that the moths got to.

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