Pohutukawa Knit blanket

 What do you do with your thrums?

For the uninitiated thrums are the waste yarn left at the end of every project warp, the 10 to 15 inches of yarn left from cut off point to back rod.

When I weave blankets the warps are all a double knit or 8 ply thickness and I keep tying one warp to the next until I can't get a full 8 metre length on the back beam.  I then take all the waste off the loom and start again.

But what to do with the waste; all lovely had dyed yarn in about 3 metre lengths.  So I keep them in reasonable order and start winding it into a ball tying the next length as I go.  I've probably said before I live about 50 minutes from the nearest city so if Pete is driving that's a lot of knitting time each way to say nothing of sitting outside the "Men" shops, Bunnings, Mitre 10 etc.  I'm not a great traveler but can manage garter stitch without having to look at it.

Aren't the patterns in the lighter strips wonderful - pure fluke.  Each of those strips had 40 stitches, the dark reds had 20 stitches and I think the centre panel had 60 stitches but that wasn't so good for travel especially getting to the end of the 400 rows.  It got heavy and awkward to work.

This organic side with all the knots reminds me of a cloak or korowai.
Now available at Pauanesia shop.

What's on the looms

Well its January 1, 2012 and time to reveal what's on the looms again.

First up is my table loom with the remainder of the double weave warp from here where the blue part of the warp ran into the white.  I'm in the process of taking both warp chains off the loom and I'll try soaking the blue warp in a salt solution.  If that doesn't work I'll discard the threads.

The 16 shaft compu dobby has a warp ready to weave another Kete blanket and an order for more colourways but my yarn supply company didn't come through with my order for wool before Christmas so will have to wait till mid January.  Its possibly held up by the Auckland wharfies strike ... grrr!

The 8 shaft Nitschke has a cotton warp sett at 30 epi and I'm doing an experiment in shibori.  So far the samples are promising some excitement but I want to repeat some samples and try others before revealing what I'm doing.

So three looms full of potential for the new year.