Gobble, Gobble!

Can you say F-U-L-L?!

That would be me right now. :)

I jumped on here for a minute to update since there was some light out and I had the day off. I wanted to show y’all my first, surviving handwoven…right after I show you my swatch for my sock.

This was one of the cable yarns I spun with a set of duets from Sosae Caetano. Finally! It’s a challenge in Sosae’s Rav group to get some socks done for the month of November. You’ve got to pop over there and see some of those gorgeous socks! I hadn’t started yet and I have to get done before November is over. So, I had to choose from one of my precious skeins of handspun I made from her collection of fiber. You know those are my faves in my stash, right? I was kinda stuck, lol! But, since I had two cable yarns, I figured, I would still have one of those left in the end. ;)

I really didn’t know what to expect from knitting a sock with a cable yarn. See the structure?

But I have to say, I love how this is knitting up already!

Okay, back to the handwoven.

It’s done. And I don’t know where I read I would get that done in three hours, but, as you can see, it didn’t work for me, lol.

SO. It’s time to inspect.

Let me first start by saying, whenever I learn something new, I make a million mistakes. It’s just my way of learning. So, y’all saw me flounder into spinning. Now I get to do it all over again with weaving. Sigh. I don’t know why I do this to myself. LOL!

I did get a little better from when I first started this project…

See that edge up there? That’s one of the things that was holding me up. Looks like a dog chewed on it. It’s also really tightly woven in the beginning. I had a problem with that. Uknown stressors? I dunno. But, there it was.

Toward the end, just when I was getting a good rhythm, I loosened up a bit and the edges came together a little better. Not perfect yet. But, I think they’ll pass.

And the weave (or web, I think it’s called sometimes) got a little more open. I like that much better! I noticed toward the end of the weaving, I was using a significant amount of tension on the warp…much more than I had in the beginning. Part of the issue was that there was a break in the yarn on the warp yarn. I never would have known it was there coming out of the ball that came with the loom. Because it was my first weaving project (almost), I didn’t know what kind of problems, if any, that would present. So, I decided to warp right along through it. When it came up into the shed, moving the reed over it was an issue. It kept snagging-which was a bug. But beyond that, it also kept loosening unbeknownst to me, until it came apart. Picture me putting that back together while trying to finish! But I did it. See?

That’s what it looks like when you have a break and you weave through it. I’m sure I’m not the first with this problem. Have you ever seen a woven piece with a little bit that looks like the yarn is a little thicker in that area? That’s probably where a break is. Apparently, if you weave through it, it won’t unravel, so it’s a non-issue. I think aesthetically, it adds a little character too.

Nevertheless, after that, I started using more tension. Somehow, I liked that bit of tightening a LOT better. And the weaving went faster too. I kept going until the weft yarn ran out. I really think that increased tension helped on the edges and the web as a whole.

There’s something really yummy about the folds of a handwoven. :)