SPINNING FOR WEAVING

GREEN WOOL FIBER

The green wool fiber made by Crosspatch Creations arrived two weeks ago from The Bellwether. I finished up the orange fiber I was spinning and started spinning this.

I love this fiber It is made up of Corriedale crossbreds, tussah silk, and silk noils. Some of those silk noils are even orange.

WEAVING A SHAWL

I am beginning to think about weaving. Not the current crackle project but something quite different. I'm thinking about a shawl.

I want to combine this yarn I am currently spinning with the orange yarn I have just finished spinning (but have yet to ply).

COLOR-AND-WEAVE

I want to do some kind of color-and-weave with a twill warp. At first I had thought about shadow weave. I dearly love shadow weaver and would like to explore six- and eight-shaft shadow weave.

The problem with shadow weave is that it based on plain weave. Plain weave fabrics do not drape very well. Their drape can be improved by sett and beat as well as by yarn selection. But in essence, plain weave creates a relatively firm fabric. Twill drapes.

TWILL VERSUS PLAIN WEAVE

I could open up the plain weave sett to improve its drape. But then the resulting fabric becomes schlocky and threads will want to move around.

Since I want to weave a shawl (preferably) or a scarf, I really want a weave structure that will drape nicely but at the same time is not schlocky.

And there are all kinds of color-and-weave possibilities within a twill structure.

FAROESE KNITTED SHAWL

A couple of years ago I knit a Faroese shawl. The structure of the shawl creates a garment which is really all-bias and drapes beautifully around the shoulders. A woven twill shawl which is simply a rectangle will not drape this well. But it hopefully will drape more nicely than a shawl woven in plain weave.

So twill it will be.

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