Experiments!

I had a really fun opportunity to help out at one of our fabulous LYS's. The Eugene Textile Center caters more to spinners and weavers and dyers (but also has knitting supplies and books and classes). It is an amazing resource and also happens to be very convenient to my home. I end up there a lot.

While helping out, I carded up a batt as a demo and then spun it into this yarn:


And then I was left with figuring out what to do with it!

I wanted to keep it as an entire gradient. I thought a bag would be fun. So I grabbed up a skein of Lamb's Pride (a wool and mohair blend in a singles yarn) in lightly variegated yellow, and then eventually went back and got a second skein in red. I figured, let's try doubleweave! Let's make a bag.

Only I didn't bother to do the math very carefully.

The tube came out really interesting. The gradient is obvious. But the "bag" (if it gets that far) is long and skinny. I'd rather it be about half that and wider, but I got what I got.

I did have fun cutting it off the loom. I cut strands from each side of the warp and wove them into the remaining warp to get little triangles and then braided the last of it. It's a fun effect.

The whole thing is an amusing sample. I washed and dried it mechanically, so it's lightly felted, but if I want it to firm up more I'm going to have to beat it by hand.

It was a fun project, but I'd advise those wanting to "sample" that planning ahead a bit more than I did here might actually yield something usable, rather than something funky you have to scratch your head over to figure out how to use.