Weaving for color and texture
For me this journey started over 25 years ago. I had just taken my first weaving class, and was at a fiber play date at a friend’s house. An experienced weaver was there, and she brought the handwoven Christmas gifts she’d made for her family - she had a stack of beautiful shawls and throws. They were so very different from the pattern samplers we’d woven in class - the weaving was simple, but the yarns! They were fluffy, shiny, thick, thin, bumpy and smooth - even ribbon - all different colors, all mixed together to make something wonderful. I asked the weaver how she designed them and she said “oh, I just used up yarn from my stash.” There was my first problem - as a new weaver I didn’t have a stash (yet).
Years passed, and my weaving focused on pattern and structure. Then I was asked to donate an item for a charity auction. I didn’t have much time, and I didn’t want to spend anything out of pocket. By now I had a stash - yarn I’d bought for future use, odds and ends from previous weaving and knitting projects, yarn I’d inherited from my mother. I started pulling them out - these odds and ends - and remembering the beautiful shawls I saw twenty years earlier, I planned my project.
I called the shawl “Fuzzy Pink” because the foundation yarn for this project was some inherited vintage pink mohair - evidently originally intended for a sweater that never got made. Also included in the warp was a skein of handspun blended wool/silk/angora, some pink and white thick/thin yarn from the sale table at Ben Franklin’s, even some ribbon!
The result was everything I hoped for.
