Saori workshop with Louise Cook

I was lucky enough to attend a Saori workshop at the Waikato Area Education Day. I've spent many hours looking at Saori weaving on the net and this style has influenced the scarves I wove in May and June where I used lots of different weft yarns. One of the tenets of the Saori style is to decide what to do with the weaving after it is finished - that is a very different approach to my usual one. Saori is a free style of weaving and one becomes absorbed and immersed in the process. For more see Saori philosophy  Louise is the sole accredited Saori tutor in New Zealand.

Samples of Saori weaving from the course.

And a rich brown scarf

Here the warp threads included corespun natural dark brown alpaca with red and gold silk. I dyed the mohair weft to match.

 You can see the effect of the extra twist in the corespun alpaca. It gives an interesting wiggly effect.

Blue green lacy scarf

This is my favourite. I love the colours.

Spaced warp and weft scarves

I wanted a way to highlight my handspinning and this is one solution. I spaced the handspun warp and then spaced the mohair weft. In the above image you can see the paper spacers placed across the scarf. The fibres used in the warp were merino, alpaca and silk. You can see some pink merino trapped in alpaca and also a fine pink boucle plyed around a thick white merino yarn.

 To further strengthen the interweaving of the warp and weft I gently felted the mohair with warm soapy water. the result was a lovely lacy scarf that is very light and soft to wear.

Dramatic red and black mobius scarf

A acarf to keep away the winter chills.

I'm finding that as soon as I weave one scarf I have ideas for the next  and the next with the result that my couch is covered in trays of yarns grouped by colour. I keep spinning more to add to the trays.
This one is was on the loom ready to weave when I thought of adding one strand of white boucle yarn to the mix to give the scarf an accent.


The thickest handspun warp is a pinkish red one with coils of black all spun from soft merino. Almost all the yarns are hand dyed including the finer 2 ply yarns which subtely change in colour from red to grey to black.
 

In places I have the black coils floating above the scarf. There's one at the bottom of the picture.

Autumn colours Mobius Scarf

I'm in two minds whether this is a scarf or a cowl. I've used different shades of mohair for the weft interspersed with tailspun Suri locks that I spun and dyed. It is wonderfully soft. The scarf is very versatile as it can be worn with the interwoven ends in front, on the shoulder of at the back. The cowl can also be deepened so that the fringed ends are mostly hidden.

 Here are the tailspun locks I used in the weft together with some 2 ply Suri that I used in the warp.

WOW mobius woven scarf

Having seen a mobius woven scarf  woven in Saori style by Jill Nikolene, I decided I wanted to make one. The scarf has no end as the threads from the front tie up are released to be used as weft at the other scarf end.
I put a 2.5m warp used an Ashford Knitters loom. The warp was a mix of handspun, hand dyed yarns and commercial yarns most of which I had overdyed. If you want to make one yourself follow Jill's instructions.
The length of the actual weaving was 1.9 m. Even though I thought I was following her method, when I cut the scarf from the back of the loom I found I had given it two twists. This doesn't matter as the scarf is long enough to accomodate the two.

Tailspun yarn,  fleece locks and spun beehives give a dynamic texture.

Here is the warp before weaving.

The scarf has been undone from the front beam, twisted, folded, wound back around the front beam. In the image on the right I have woven most of the front warp threads through the remaining warp attached to the back beam.


The colours are fiery like a brilliant sunset.




The result is a matrix of threads that can be worn in front, on the side or wherever.