Weaving Fails Part 1

As a novice weaver, I expect to make mistakes. Lots of mistakes. One learns by making mistakes, and judging from the number and magnitude of the mistakes I made on weaving project #2, I learned a lot. How much I learned remains to be seen, but how much I screwed up is documented in pictures, so I will tell the tale with pictures and captions.

This yarn had been in my stash for at least 6 years. It’s Knit Picks Imagination, a wool/alpaca/Nylon blend fingering weight sock yarn in the color way “Looking Glass.” It’s a tonal yarn with beautiful shades of blue ranging from almost green to almost purple. I thought it would make a gorgeous scarf.

I dug out my old Knit Picks yarn swift…

and wound the three skeins of yarn using my ball winder and my indispensable mashed potato stool, which I also use to hold my warping peg.

I set the mashed potato stool in position to wind a 3-yard warp.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures while I was direct-warping the loom, but here is a shot from the back of the loom after I was all done warping and threading the heddle. There is a big red flag here that I, as a total newbie, didn’t notice, but it is definitely visible in the picture. More on that later.

I tied the warp onto the front apron. Everything looked good to me. Time to get started with the weaving.

With the header done–that’s the thicker white yarn that I wove in to spread out the warp, I wove a few inches, then hemstitched the bottom of the scarf. This was my first time hemstitching. It’s easy to do and although it is a bit tedious, it’s a nice looking way to secure the end of the scarf.

So far, so good. You can see all the difference shades of blue in the yarn. They look lovely together. And my selvedges (the far edges) are quite spectacular, if I do say so myself.

So far, everything look great, but soon disaster will strike. Stay tune for the second part of the saga.