kitty: bleck, I hate murphy's law

Give a girl a day or two off from work and see how productive she can be! Things have been really really crazy with deadline the last couple of months. Thinking back to March, it was a total blur and I can honestly say I have no idea where the month went. So M and I took off this past friday and the weekend for just us. Of course murphy law hit and M got really sick thursday night and is still under the weather. So we were not able to get away for the weekend after all. So I spent most of friday night and today spinning. I feel so productive in my output. The two spools on the left are California Romney and the white is Blue Face Leicester. The California Romney is fairly course, but spins up beautifully. What I am finding is that the courser the fiber the nicer my finished product is and better the control. The BFL still feels the best, but my threads are a lot more uneven. But Practice Makes Perfect. I also have dyed up 4 oz of the California Romney so we will see how that turns out. It is soaking in Vinegar right now to set the colour.

I was talking to an old friend who had been studying all the fall runway collections for 2006 and she kept seeing all these loopy scarfs that kind of looked like fake fur tacked down to suit collars or wild and crazy versions in what looked like handspun creations. So she started to describe the scarfs and collars on coats to me and I knew exactly what she was talking about. The loop technique was actually done a lot on Victorian garments for trims on a much smaller scale.(Usually no wider than an inch but normally only around a half of an inch.) So the modern adaptation she was seeing were much larger somewhere around 4-6 inches and then several chains twisted together to form the scarf or the trim. So I promised her that I would try to come up with a how to so she could make her own loop chains. I unfortunately don't really have any fake fur yarns in my stash or any wild hand spuns. So you will have to use your imagination.

1) Decide on how big you want the finished width of your scarf to be. For the purpose of these instructions I used a 4"*4" loom to wrap my yarns around. So that works out to 1" on each side and 2" in the middle.

2) Start out by creating a single chain stitch while catching the fancy yarn (white yarn) between the first loop of your chain and the hook. The green yarn is held to the back and below the fancy yarn. Then wrap the fancy yarn under the left hand side of the cardboard, then wrapping it over the top, and then under the right hand side and over the top. Continue to wrap the fancy yarn to the end of the loom.

3) Continue the chain stitch over each of the fancy yarns.

4) When you have worked to the end you will then want to thread a needle and work a back stitch over each of the fancy yarns between the slip knots of the chain stitch.

5) The finished line will look much like this on the front and back.

6) After you have finished the back stitch all the way up the loom pull the threads off and start over again. You need to always make sure that the green yarn is below the fancy yarn.