I've been weaving a lot of circles (see my previous post) and using a lot of colors of rayon chenille in small quantities. And it occurred to me, this isn't a problem, for me, because I dye my yarn. I even over-dye my yarn if I don't like the current color. But for many weavers, having a lot of colors of rayon chenille at your finger tips might be a pretty expensive proposition.
You can order chenille from the big yarn suppliers, but only on 1 pound cones. At upwards of $15-$20 per cone. Ouch. This is where my shameless plug comes in. I have a shop on Etsy where I sell hand-dyed and hand-painted rayon chenille, in addition to hand-painted tencel, bamboo and cotton yarns. In small quantities. I sell the bamboo and tencel in 2 and 3 ounce skeins. And I sell the rayon chenille in 4 ounce skeins. I could even dye to order if a request came my way.
I'm not the only indie dyer out there selling, but if you think about it, this is a real convenience that we provide. Folks needing small quantities should really look into this as a yarn source.
Ok. As I said, I've been weaving circles.
Circles in Diversified Plain Weave. The warp is alternating stripes of black and gray rayon chenille. The weft is (you guessed it) stripes of rayon chenille in bright colors. This is the prototype scarf for a project I'm hoping will land in a forthcoming issue of a weaving magazine. More about that later.
After I finished weaving my scarves I decided to push the circles idea further and came up with this:
This profile draft has 8 threading blocks, which means for a weave like Diversified Plain Weave or Summer and Winter, you will need 10 harnesses. It will weave in Crackle on 8 harnesses, but I like DPW or S&W better. I have a 12 harness table loom, where I may take this design, but not till I have more time to devote to it.
Pretty cool huh?
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