Crackle Weave Scarf

Sometime ago, I downloaded a crackle weave draft from www.handweaving.net and played around with it a little bit, by changing the colors, adding a thread or two to balance the draft, etc.  Periodically, I would pull it up in Fiberworks and look at it, think about what fiber to use to make a scarf out of this rather interesting draft.  Trying to be a bit frugal, I looked at all the cones I had available to me at home and decided upon two chenille cones I'd purchased quite a few years ago, that I thought might work for this pattern.

Draft with Yarns

Now, this draft looked gorgeous on paper, but I had never woven crackle before, nor tried it with chenille, which I hadn't woven with in years.  This was a 1300 ypp rayon chenille from Webs.

As I began to weave this drawdown, I was really disappointed, because it was quite difficult to actually see a pattern in the fuzzy chenille, but I decided to finish up the scarf and, then, maybe try this drawdown with a different fiber, like cotton or silk or a wool/silk blend.

Closeup of Scarf - Note Collapsed Structure in Center

I also forgot to weave an inch or two of plain weave that I could have picked out after wet-finishing, so I gently tied the fringe ends in several overhand knots for wet-finishing and put it in my front-loading washer on the handwash cycle and then into the dryer for about 15 minutes on the lowest setting.  To my surprise, the weave structure collapsed.

I liked the new texture, a little like seersucker, but I was surprised, since both the warp and weft are the same fiber, although different colors.

Then, I had an "aha" moment and realized the reason I'd created a collapsed weave structure was because of the different lengths of the floats, much like waffle weave.

Scarf on Patio Chair

At any rate, I decided to gently press the entire scarf on a low heat setting of my iron.  After finishing that process, I noticed there is still a slightly collapsed structure, but the pattern is much more readily discernible.  So I'm happy with it, after all.

Weaving is so fascinating, because there is always something you learn from every project.

Mini Mochi Flower Garden Scarf

I happened to go to The Yarn Lady in Lake Forest a couple of weeks ago (Dec. '09) -- really cute shop, friendly and helpful staff, with lots of natural fiber yarns. This was not my first time there, but I went there that day to pick up some Kureyon sock yarn to do a machine knitted scarf pattern that was in the last issue of Knitwords Magazine. Anyway, I saw a beautiful crocheted scarf on a mannequin right by the front door, done in Crystal Palace's Mini Mochi yarn and asked about the pattern. Turns out the pattern is free at Crystal Palace's website, http://www.straw.com/. It's the Flower Garden Shawl pattern. I purchased four balls of Mini Mochi in colorway 110, Jungle, guessing at how much I'd need to do the scarf. I was off by one ball; I only needed three. I made 30 flower squares, which after the edgings, brought the scarf to about 75 inches. You could add squares to make it longer or crochet less squares to make it shorter. This was such fun and almost addictive, crocheting these squares. I hadn't crocheted more than an edging or two in over 30 years, but one doesn't really forget the process. Fingers got a tad tired at first, but only the first night. After that, it went smoothly.

I finished all the squares in just a few nights and, then, attached them to each other with an overhand stitch in two evenings. The two rows of double crochet around the entire edge took a couple of evenings but, again, was fun just trying to guess as to which colors would end up where. Mini Mochi comes in a really wild colorway called "Intense Rainbow," which would really be fun to crochet up, just to see the color changes.