Warp for Ravelry Weave A Long

Written March 3rd for posting on April 11, 2011 

Dedicated to my sister Jackie, Happy Birthday Jack.  Rest in peace.  She always told me how creative I was.  I used to laugh at her and say, "not creative, just poor, I have to make the best use of what I have".  In hind site, she was a pretty smart cookie.  I miss her something awful.

I warped up my Mini Wave today with a 8 1/2 ft. warp. I double stranded the entire thing. It is 75 warps wide…which means 74 heddles that have 2 strands in each. So at 150 per shed it is 300 threads. It is 4 in. wide and I have woven about an inch so far. Gives me about 75 threads to the inch.

I used #10 mercerized cotton crochet thread, doubled, 15 heddles wide in forrest green.
Then #3 mercerized cotton crochet thread in warm teal, stranded together with #5 perle cotton in baby blue, 46 heddles. Then another 15 in doubled forrest green.

I ran out of the forrest green before I got done, so one side only has 13 instead of 15. Thus 74 heddles/warps that are double stranded wide. By doubling all of the threads I get a streaky effect of the two blues together. I also get the choice when I do my pick ups of using either the perle or the #3 for my picks ups. So considering this…I can get lifts in green when I want to, then I can also do lifts in #3 warm teal and also in #5 perle, or use both blues at the same time. So I get 4 choices of pick up colors instead of the usual two when using the horizontal stripe background. I will say that it is a bear to wind the warp with two crosses using 4 cones at once. grrrr

I will be doing what Laverne calls ‘Simple Warp Floats’ (click here if you want to see the tutorial), on her blog.

I will be doing my own designs and making them up as I go along. For those of you who don’t know me this is how I usually do my weaving. I like to make my designs up as I go. I do sometimes look at pics of other folks designs for inspiration, but I rarely follow someone else’s pattern, and I hardly ever chart mine. I find the proportions off when charting…so I just use my eyes as I go along. Sometimes I have to do quite a bit of un-weaving, but I have had great successes so far and I like to experiment to see what I can accomplish.

Here is the start of the warp.

Here is the first design.  Go figure?  I did indeed follow someone else's pattern.  This one comes from Mary Atwater's, "Byways in Handweaving".