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!

Dominoes #21 REPEATED!

I really like Bertha Gray Hayes' miniature patterns in overshot.  They are amazing!!  I have done quite a few of them already, and it's my goal to do the whole book someday.  Back in June 2011, I already did the dominoes pattern with some potholders, but I wanted to see what it looked like with other yarn, maybe even a scarf.













I decided to break out my rainbow kool-aid dyed yarn.  What made me decide?  Working on the scarf for yoppie.  Mine was navajo plied, and it's much scratchier than the other yarn, so it's not quite the same.  And I'm doing an overshot pattern with it, but this was still inspired from that scarf!


















My warp threads are 20/2 wool, which after getting to work with it, it's terrible stuff.   It breaks so easily because of how small it is!  I just have to learn to be even more gentle than ever before.  Cotton is so robust...














This is Bertha Gray Hayes Dominoes #21... Love it!  I love anything Bertha Gray Hayes!!  Her patterns are SOOOO awesome!  I have displayed this stuff on Ravelry and have sold quite a few copies of her book for her, because of all my work!  I wouldn't be surprised if this sold a few more copies...

Stats: 20/2 wool sett at 24 epi, 2 threads per dent on #12 reed.  Pattern weft: 3-ply yarn that smells delicious, like fruit.

Luck!!!

They're done!

 These pinwheels look especially pretty with this special hand-spun yarn!

These scarves just weave up in a breeze compared to the bookmark project!!

 And now, off to Ohio...

 ...to be loved in the cold, bitter, frosty winter!!

My friend in Ohio was kind enough to share some of her hand-spun collection with me!

I am such a LUCKY weaver!!!!!

I don't mean to brag, and I hate when people brag around me, but I guess I just can't help my excitement!!!  Look what I have waiting for me:

I can't even decide which one to use first!!!  They are ALL calling to me, "Amanda!"
"Over here, Amanda!"
"Choose me!!!"
"Pick me!!!"
"I want to be next!!"
"Put ME on your loom!!!"
"AAAAAmandaaaaa!!!"