A Cool Blue Ombre

Rebecca

Jun 20

I finished two things this month, both involving ombres and the colour blue.

First, the cloth. This started as a gift from my mom. For my birthday one year, she put together a "club" of unique spinning experiences for me to open throughout the year.

The original birthday box, from when Dooner was a TINY TINY SQUISHY BABY.

One of them was a Loop batt, which was sort of on my bucket list of spins. It was an ombre between three very cool shades of blue, and the gradient repeated four times. As a 50/25/25 merino/cashmere/silk blend, it's extremely luxurious.

I spun the four repeats in such a way that I made two skeins of two ply with one gradient on each. In one skein, the colours lined up almost perfectly, and this skein had more yardage. The other had more barber poling, and slightly less yardage. On the topic of yardage, by the way, this yarn is pretty off the hook. It's 2170 YPP, and over 550 yards in 4.4 oz. The WPI is kind of all over the place, but suffice it to say, this yarn is very light and full of air. As a carded prep, spun very intentionally with no smoothing, it was the airiest I could get a yarn at that time.

I didn't have a super specific plan for these skeins, but when I started weaving a couple years later, I thought these would be perfect. With one skein for warp and one for weft, I could get the gradient in both. It took me a few years to get around to realizing that plan - I have lots of great ideas, and though it takes me a while to finish most of them, let it be said that I do hang on pretty tenaciously to complete some of them.

I wound the warp up a couple years ago, along with a bunch of other warps I wound. The idea was to lower the bar of entry, so I'd actually throw warps on the loom and get them done. It didn't really work; the warps are mostly still bagged up under my bed. But after successfully finishing that green twill, I decided to throw this one on. This yarn is very loved and worthy, and it's about time it realized its destiny.

Since this is nominally a heavy fingering weight, which I re-measured at 20 WPI, I used my medium heddle, which is about 10.5 epi. I knew how airy this yarn was, and I could have set it closer, but I preferred to have a larger quantity of more open fabric. Besides, my smallest heddle is a pain in the butt to thread.

The weft skein just fit onto six bobbins. Even for smaller, simpler projects like this, I'm really in love with my boat shuttle. I would like to get more of them, if anyone has ashford weaving shuttles they are willing to let go of on the cheap.

The real challenge of this weave was beating gently enough. For the first few inches, I beat too heavily, and got a slightly weft-faced fabric. I remained pretty even for the remainder, though I got almost too light at the end. I ran out of weft with a good yard of warp left, which was a real bummer. But I accepted that it's better to have a short, finished piece than an unfinished piece that sits for months while I try to mcgyver more yarn to extend it, or a piece I'm unhappy with because the end doesn't match. I sucked it up and cut it off. And this time, I got lucky.

I maximized length with a knotted fringe, which was surprisingly fun to do, and only took me a couple hours.

And behold, it is a perfectly suitable length for a decorate scarf that will go just fine with a clerical collar.

Here you can see the lighter end, where I started, is beat a little more closely. In layman's terms, I'm saying that the fabric is denser because the yarns that go horizontally are closer together, because I literally pushed them too hard. My selvages (the edges) are a bit squiggly on that end too. But before long, I got the hang of a very even sett and some pretty perfect selvedges, which are more evident below.

And, of course, the ombre.

The scarf goes from light to dark both from end to end, and from side to side. I'd say the side-to-side is a little more obvious, especially when I'm wearing it, but I like that you can see both.