Diagonals ‘n Arrowheads

by marcsmollindesigns

My moment of weaving obsessively continues, and I completed two more pieces since my last blog!  Each piece gets bigger (I’m up to about 300 threads in a 70cm-wide piece), and I’ve started honing in on a specific warp-based texture.

First came Diagonals.  I imagined a piece that was a series of diagonal warp-facing floats of different lengths.  The texture worked out great — it’s kind of like a twill, except “zoomed in.”  The warp is a multi-color Tosh sock yarn  that I picked up in Oregon at an awesome yarn shop called Twisted.  The weft is a solid brown Wollmeise, with a touch of Kito yellow alpaca thrown in at the end.

 

Next was Arrowheads.  The result of knitting top-down with short rows in stripes (a la Pterotactyl) is a series of Arrowheads.  I wanted to try and re-create this idea in a woven fabric.  So I employed the same two-thread warp float, only moving them away from each other every 4 rows.  The result is spectacular!

Again, the warp is made of two different multi-color Wollmeises, and the weft is a Blue Moon merino in dark green that is an good contrast.

In conclusion, weaving seems far superior than knitting right now.  A good-size knit shawl is usually around 1,200 yards of yarn, and it takes between 5 to 10 days to knit.  To weave the same size and quantity piece will only take between 1 to 2 days.  And this is just rigid-heddle weaving!  Imagine the possibilities with a 4-, 8-, or even 16-shaft loom!

So for now it’s multi-color warps, single-color contrast wefts, and discovering the range of texture possibilities within the rigid-heddle context.  Check back for the results!

-M