Monday, September 19, 2011

A Little Punch of Red

You saw a preview a while back- here's the finished product:


 I fell in love with this color combo back in the spring and was itching to knit something with my Amethyst Heather and Garnet yarns.   The lace weight yarn was doubled in both the warp and weft.  Unfortunately, I ran out of yarn and the scarf was a little shorter than I originally planned.  There must be some secret weaver's formula I don't know about yet for this sort of thing.   Anyone out there know the proper way to figure out yardage for weaving?

What this meant is I had a ton of extra yarn on the loom that was going to go to waste (fortunately I whipped up some braids to create a headband- we'll see if it actually gets use or not).

Warp and Weft: Cascade Alpaca Lace in Amethyst Heather with a touch of Garnet (held double)

3 comments:

  1. There are lots of sites with warp calculators, but my quick easy tip... If you have a limited amount of yarn, divide it in half. Use half for warp & half for weft. In even weave (on a rigid heddle) the warp takes slightly more than half the total yardage.
    Also, cute scarf! I love the idea of doubled lace weight for weaving.

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  2. From what I can remember:
    Warp = desired length + 10 inches for stringing on loom, etc + 10% of total to accomodate for the stretch
    Weft = depends on how what wpi your yarn has, also need to accomodate for stretch (as in, when you remove from the loom, it will be smaller than it was on the loom because the yarn will be 'wrinkled' up and down due to weave)

    I'd suggest looking in your local library for a book with a template to help calculate. I know Learning to Weave, by Deborah Chandler has one.

    So jealous of your weaving! I bought a loom this summer and haven't been able to use it yet

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  3. warp calculation:
    desired length + fringe length + loom waste (usually 20" will include take up and tie-ons). Yards is always good since most yarn is measured that way in skeins.
    ex: 60" scarf + 15" fringe + 20" loom waste = 95" length x ends per inch in reed ~ say 12 = total number of ends needed. divide this number by 36 to get warp yardage.
    weft calculations:
    width of project in loom + number of picks per inch (how many yarn pics get woven) x length of project.
    ex: 8" wide x 12 pics per inch x 60" length = weft needed (also divide this number by 36 to get yardage).
    welcome to weaving. i've been doing it for 15 years and love it!

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