Shetland Tweed Sampler Scarf

Completed: Spring 2014
Finished Size: 6" wide by 57" long (plus 3" fringe at each end)

Finished scarf under observation

I have just gotten into weaving relatively recently. I took a beginner's weaving class at the 2013 Vermont Sheep & Wool Festival, and we all got to keep the small (14" x 14") frame looms we used in the class. After playing with that for a couple months, it was so much fun that I bought a small (16") rigid heddle loom.

Of course, because I like to make everything more complicated, eventually plain weave wasn't enough and pick-up sticks were too labor-intensive for the designs I wanted to do. So I bought two more heddles and the book Weaving with Three Rigid Heddles by David B. McKinney, so I could make three- and four-harness tweed patterns on my rigid heddle loom.

This scarf is my first attempt to do a real garment this way. 

The pattern is a pretty basic diamond tweed repeat using four harnesses (or, in my case, three heddles).

The warp is two balls of Jamieson Shetland Spindrift in mooskit. There are 72 ends (including 2 selvedge ends) and I used three 10-dent reeds.

The diamond tweed pattern

The weft is a random collection of six balls of Jamieson Shetland DK (in grouse, moorland, pine, osprey, willow, and sage) I had lying around for years after finishing a fair isle vest. I figured this would be a good way of using them up. Not all of them were used in the vest, and I wasn't sure how they were going to go together, but, hey, it's a sampler. This is the color repeat I used:

Tweed pattern detail

6 picks grouse
30 picks moorland
6 picks pine
30 picks osprey
6 picks willow
30 picks sage

I figure it is inevitable that someday I will end up with a sixteen-harness loom.

The scarf in action