Luigi's Locks Grass-Green Bouclé Scarf

Dimensions: 8" wide by 72" long, plus 4" fringe at each end
Completed: February 2016

The raw material

I wove this scarf in a straightforward plain weave on my rigid heddle loom. I didn't think it was worth trying to do anything fancy with the weave because I thought the bouclé structure of the yarn would probably obliterate any pattern I attempted. And, more importantly, the yarn was so beautiful I really wanted it to be the focus here, not the weave.
 
The warp and weft are both done in the same yarn: a hand-dyed grass-green bouclé mohair yarn called "Luigi's Locks" from Yellow Dog Farm, which I bought at the Vermont Sheep and Woolcraft Fair last summer. The yarn has little streaks of darker green and lighter yellow-green throughout.

A sample I wove on a piece
of cardboard to see if the 7.5 epi
gauge would look all right

Luigi's Locks
on the loom

 

This scarf probably used about 400-425 yards of wool; I had two skeins of 225 yards each, and I ended up using roughly one and two-thirds of the skeins.

When I measured its gauge, it looked like Luigi's Locks was roughly a worsted weight  I used a 7.5 dent reed and tried to keep to roughly 7.5 ppi so that it could be a pretty loose, open weave; I did this both so the fabric wouldn't be so stiff, and also so there would be plenty of room for the little bouclé loops to poke out in all directions. I warped the loom with 62 ends of 8.5 yards each.

The scarf was about 8.25" wide on the loom, and about 8" off the loom. I wove the scarf out to about 74" long, which only ended up shrinking a tiny bit to about 72" long off the loom; maybe the bouclé loops helped it keep its size off the loom. I left 4" of fringe on both ends, which I tied off in groups of four warps each.

The final product (although this is
not what the color really looks like)

Close-up of the finished fabric

Purchases from the 2015 Vermont Sheep & Woolcraft Fair

I got a big treat this month: on Saturday, October 3, I went up to Tunbridge, Vermont, to attend the 27th annual Vermont Sheep & Wool Festival.

The festival, which I'd gone to once before, has all the usual fun wool festival things like sheepdog herding demonstrations and small ruminant lectures, as well as pens full of sheep, cashmere & mohair goats, alpacas, angora rabbits, and llamas. And they have loads and loads of vendors of beautiful yarn.

Since everything at this festival is tempting, I decided this year to stay away from the roving and just look at the prepared yarn. And, in particular, yarn that was unique, created by hand by small farmers and artisans in small quantities. I especially love it when the vendors have spun wool from their own animals and can tell you the animals' names.
I came away with some great stuff. Here's what I bought:



Luigi's Locks from Yellow Dog Farm,
dyed an intense grassy green

A beautiful charcoal gray and pale green hand-spun mohair yarn, variegated in both texture and color, from Dillner Hillside Farm. Two of their cute tiny goats were in a pen right next to their vendor tent.

Green & gray hand-spun mohair
from the Dillner Hillside Farm, 
variegated in both color and texture

Five vegetable-dyed sampler yarns from Tidal Yarn that I plan to use to practice tapestry weaving. The owner of Tidal Yarn says she gets her yarn from small New England sheep farms and dyes much of it using plants she grows in her own garden.

A bouclé mohair yarn called "Luigi's Locks" from Yellow Dog Farm. The fleece was specifically from Luigi the Goat, whose picture graces the label of the yarn. It is a FANTASTIC color of grass green with little streaks of yellow that the owner said that she had just dyed that week specifically for the show.

A beautiful hand-spun combination of jewel-toned pink, burgundy, and lime green from Wiseacres Farm. The vendor said people did seem to like her "crazy mixes" (of which this was one).

I only wish I'd been able to have a little bit of everything. You can find a full vendor list here.


My haul from the 2015 VT Sheep & Wool Festival

Big E Natural Brown Alpaca Scarf

Dimensions: 5 1/4" wide by 70" long
Completed: December 2011

In the fall of 2011, I went to The Big E. (For the uninitiated and/or non-New-Englanders out there: The Big E is like a state fair, except that it includes all of the New England states.)

At the Big E, in the Mallary Complex, which is where all the sheep, goats, llamas, alpacas, and other fleecy animals are housed, there is a small store called the Fiber Nook. There they demonstrate spinning and weaving, and they have yarns and hand-made woolen goods for sale.

There at the Fiber Nook I bought one skein of a soft, worsted-weight alpaca yarn. It looks like it's the natural shade of whatever alpaca it was taken from.

It knitted up quickly into this beautiful, soft, natural brown, k1p1 rib scarf.

I have no idea who produced the yarn, since I lost the label shortly after I made the scarf. I went back in subsequent years to see if the yarn would still be there, but so far it has not.

So this is truly a one-of-a-kind accessory.