Sizzling polyester scarf!!

"Sizzling" is the word for this scarf... it's almost too hot to touch!

With this scarf and the last few, my world has been flipped up-side down!

It's polyester.

POLYESTER!!!!!  From a consignment store (next step up from a thrift store!)

What the heck is wrong with me?!

Polyester wasn't even in my vocabulary for years.  I rid my whole yarn collection of polyester a few years ago.  I was a wool, cotton, and natural fiber fan.  I was a purist.  I was a naturalist.  I was a YARN SNOB!!!

But a different world exists around me, they have the money to fund my weaving adventures and they are not always fans of wool and cotton, or the prices of those either.


So I changed my perspectives.  Polyester is so cost effective and these scarves are so fast to warp and weave, why not lower my prices for my customers?  I'm already competing with stores like Old Navy and Wal-Mart, whether I like it or not.  But why can't I compete?  Why can't I cut my prices, too?  If I'm saving time and money by using polyester, I should pass those saving onto my customers.  Besides, if I sell more stuff, aren't I the one winning in the end?  Not only do I get more money to put back into the weaving, but I also end up with more things to weave!  A win, win scenario!!  I love weaving for work.

Welcome to my new world of polyester yarn.

There is a craft show coming up this fall and for the last 2 years I haven't been able to sell a single handwoven item... not a single one.  My biggest sale was 3 jars of apple jelly.  Things will be different this year.  This year, I hope to master the art of selling polyester scarves.... I shall officially name them "Not Your Grandma's Polyester Scarf".

My goal is to sell 10 scarves.

 I already have orders for 2 more, thanks to Facebook!

Oh, and my nephews LOVED the scarves!  And my sister LOVED the scarves!!  She threatened to steal one from the kids, so I promised her I would make her one so the kids didn't have to share 1 scarf for their birthdays.  Here they are modeling their lovely scarves! 

The one on the right has it pulled nearly to the floor, although I assure you it really isn't that long!  Silly guys!

Mental note to self: I LOVE the short color changes!!
 

They pack a much more powerful punch in this pattern than the long ones like on my rainbow hounds tooth scarf.  I will keep this in mind next time I dye some wool.

On The Good Ship Lollipop

Remember the rainbow yarn I dyed in mason jars in my pressure canner?

 

Well, with my new addiction to the giant hounds tooth pattern, I decided to give this yarn a try.  I figured it would probably work out, but if it was an epic disaster, it at least has super softness on its side.... And if all else failed, I was pretty sure my dad would accept it as a gift and at least hide it sight unseen under his jacket on his cold morning walks.  So, I figured I had nothing to lose!

Up close, it's a little confusing of a pattern and doesn't stand out real well.

 But from a distance, it looks really cool!

This was raw wool that came from eastern Washington state.  We checked it in our suitcase when we flew back to Arizona and we ended up with an inspection that trip!  I'm sure that the drug dogs found it because it smells so animal-like, and then I'm sure the TSA wondered what the heck was wrong with this passenger!  And our luggage smelled like a farm animal for a little while after.  It was super dirty, even though I washed it many times.  Finally, in this last wash it came out white.  Really white!  Like snow white!  There's a few bits of grass that's stuck here and there, but the more I work with it, the more that falls out.

  And it's SOOO soft! 

It's harder to see the hounds tooth pattern in this scarf, but it's still very pretty in its own way and also so colorful!  But most of all, I love how soft it is.

So much fun!!!

Not your Grandma’s Polyester Scarf in Road Construction Orange and Aqua

I have two nephews and their birthdays are 3 days apart.  Actually, they're 368 days in age from each other, but I treat them like twins and give them matching things, whether they like it or not.


One nephew is severely allergic to animals.

Any animal.

He can't even be around anything  made from animal hair!

Not even Zip and Scout, our cats.  When they visit, we sit on the porch or hang out at the mall.

This means wool is out.  :-(  Like, WAY out!!

Bummer.

Last year I tried making some cotton scarves for my nephews, but they turned out a bit on the small side, and they were a bit stiff.  As I was at the local hobby store, I decided to look through their polyester yarn.  I never go down the polyester yarn aisle, in fact, I run from it.  I also run from worsted weight yarns.  But I decided to give it a try this year for a scarf for my poor little animal-less nephew.

And I found just the right colors: Aqua and Super orangy Orange from Hobby Lobby

It's like road construction orange!

It's so orange, it almost hurts my eyes!!!

I decided to do an nice classy design like hounds tooth.  I love hounds tooth!!

Two hounds tooth scarves in aqua and road construction orange coming right up for the birthday boys!!







I have it sett at 9 in a #10 reed, and it was a bit tricky because the pattern repeat is every 8 threads... but it is weaving up to be 6" across.  You can see just how big this design is!

Maybe the size is better noted in this picture:

Isn't it great?!  It's not thick like a rug, it's super soft, the hounds tooth are HUGE, it's WAY cool, super orange, and it's ALL POLYESTER!!  Who knew cheap worsted weight polyester could be so much fun to play with!!!  And best of all, each skein was only $3.99... WOW!  I can make at least 2 scarves with 2 skeins!!!  Booya!!  I've never been this excited about polyester worsted weight yarn before!!!

 It was easy taking up close pictures this time because these are so big!

But alas, they're ready to send off to Utah!

My nephews are going to flip when they see these!!  I think these will be a huge hit this year!  And my sister is going to want one herself!  Her birthday is in November.  I guess I'd better go back to Hobby Lobby for more polyester yarn!

 

I love how quickly these weave up!!

A rainy day dye day

I have had this thought stuck in my head for awhile, and I finally decided to try it.  My thought was a new way to dye yarn.  

I started with measuring out 14 yards of hand-spun white wool on my warp board:

 

 This wool was straight from a sheep in eastern Washington State!  It was really soft, but still had debris in it.  Because of the debris that remained in it, I set it aside as rug wool.  In other words, it is ok if this project doesn't turn out!  It's great practice stuff.

I had the rainbow of Wilton's food coloring dyes, which I might point out are food safe.  (This is important in the next step!)

 And I filled up my pressure canner with 7 quart-sized jars.  I added a little dash of vinegar to each one.

Then added the rainbow of dyes, one to each jar.  I had 7 jars, so there are 2 shades of blue, a dark and a light one, plus all the other colors of the rainbow.

The hardest part was estimating how much yarn to put into each jar!  I ended up not putting enough in at first, so when I got to purple, there was a lot left over.  So, I just put a little bit in red, orange, and yellow again!  It's just for practice, anyway!  Next time, I'm going to put some yarn markers on the wool while it's on the warp board.  For example, if I had 14 warped yards and 7 colors, I'm going to mark every 2 yards with a little piece of yarn.  that way, I will know how much goes into each jar.

I wasn't too careful with the Wilton's food coloring, and dyed my hand a few different rainbow shades!  It's going to be a few days before it will wear off!

Over high heat, I raised the temperature until the water was simmering, not quite boiling, then I turned off the heat, put on the lid, and let it sit for a few hours to cool.  This is what it looked like after the dyes had a chance to wick up some dye in the white parts and then set! 

This all ended up being the perfect rainy day activity!  

We made our own rainbows inside with the Wilton's dyes!

And now, here are the results of my dyeing experiment:
 It's so colorful!

 

 This is going to be so much fun!!

The stripes are going to be long and I love the sections that fade to the next color!  I didn't get that when I spun already dyed wool, like before.





After the rainbows, I decided to do a dye bath of yellow-green, green, green-blue, and blue.  It was wound into a 2 yard skein, so the color changes are kind of short, not like the rainbow 14-yard warp.  I imagine it being a pretty little scarf mixed with the other white skeins, which are super white now because I washed them really well and shook out a lot of the debris.  I think more will fall out as I work with it on the loom and then wear the scarf.

I feel so excited to re-discover this wool!  It feels cool to find lost things in your stash!  

Now I need to weave up these dyed wool skeins so I can see which ones I like better, the longer stripes or the shorter stripes.

A game of dominoes anyone?

These are the borders I want to include in my next set of dominoes, and I think it will cut down the weird floats at the edges.  I just did a 1-2-3-4 or 4-3-2-1 run all the way around.  Now I just need to remember to center the design better, or just include a few repeats at the left hand edge so it looks better centered, and then I think it will be a really great looking scarf!  I can't wait to get started on the next one.  I also really want to do jitterbug!  It's a really cute design, too!
 

I pulled the dominoes off the loom.  They are really good, and I like them a lot, but I will like them even more with the few changes that I mentioned before.  I think they would make a stunning scarf, and be very warm in wool.

Here are some more shots:

 This is the pattern on the other side, which you actually see in Bertha's book:

And I tried a little bit in green:

And the other side, which is almost more stunning than the first side:

The rainbow portion:

I like the portions of the nature spun wool to the 20/2 wool.  Also, I think the red is even more stunning than the green, but I realize it's a matter of opinion:

The little stars between the designs really pop out!  They are cute!

I purposely made a smaller piece of the dominoes fabric 

so I could try felting it.  It happened to be the green:

 It's kind of neat looking and feeling when it's felted, 

but I think I truly like the original better:

I like this scarf idea a lot, but I think I am leaning towards Bertha Gray Hayes' jitterbug pattern.  It might be a neater overall pattern because it's less predictable.  The dominoes are very organized, and I think I want something that looks just a hair more chaotic!  

A new do

After I ran through one skein of kool-aide wool, I wanted to try something new with this project.  I went to my stash and Nature Spun fingering weight yarn by Brown Sheep company in the color Bordeaux, or a red wine color.  The texture is way better, the designs are more squarish, the edges are way better, and I really like this combination of red and white.  These little pieces will just end up being small runners for the tiny pieces of furniture we have, like the top of our very small bookshelf.
 

But at a later date, maybe my very next project, I would like to consider a scarf in overshot.  I have yet to see one around.  I think it's more decor fabric than wearable fabric, but I've been known many times for setting my own clothing styles.

In fact, I break most rules with clothing, so it doesn't really matter if I break yet another fashion rule!

Here is my list of Bertha Gray Hayes patterns I want to consider for the real scarf: 
Jitterbug, Dominoes, The Olive, Primrose, and Stagger (in this order)

For the overall scarf, I need to improve on:
1.  The edges!  I think a 1-2-3-4 rotation of a few rounds would look a lot better than what I have going on right now.
2. I need to center this design.

A mistake in the pattern

There was a mistake in the Dominoes pattern that I forgot about, until now!

It's down here at the bottom.  I had made a note about it on my page before, but missed the note.  Oops!  I made an even bigger (and harder to miss) note for next time!

All better!  It's amazing how those few shots make all the difference.

It's so colorful!

So... I think I'm going to skip the scarf and make it into a table runner instead!  I know my mom would love this project!  She loves table runners, and this one is so cheerful and colorful, too!

I can't believe this yarn was dyed with kool-aide!

I plan to explore more kool-aid dyes later!