Bits and bobs
Feb. 10th, 2026 08:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
merrileemakes posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
everykindofcraft**Cross posted from my journal, some weaving and knitting patter.**
So it's been over a month since I posted any thing crafty. I've certainly been crafting, I just haven't had any big finishes. I often think of my crafting approach as "kicking the can down the road." Lots of little steps, sometimes without significant progress.
I borrowed this Kromski Weaver's Choice heddle from a friend at my spinners and weavers group. Typical rigid heddles are a solid piece of plastic, with same size slots and holes all the way along. The Weaver's Choice heddle is different in that it's made up of tiny sections of heddle that you click together, kinda like a puzzle. This sounds cool, but it's actually very fiddly and frustrating. This heddle does let you mix and match slots and holes of different sizes though, so you can wear with yarns of very different thicknesses.
To really push the limits of this borrowed heddle I warped up 2 very different yarns, some bulky handspun art yarn and some very fine tencel. I started with the art yarn, warping up a stripe pattern.
Then filled in the rest of the design with 8/2 tencel in silver. Very pretty!
But also, a very bad idea. The art yarn was super stretchy and the tencel was super not. I tried winding on the warp in increasingly pedantic and careful ways but I just couldn't get these 2 very different yarns to play nicely together. So I took the warp off and found a silver-grey sock yarn to use instead.
I then didn't take any pictures at all of the weaving, but this worked. Combining the very stretchy wool art yarn with the kinda stretchy wool sock yarn made the warp (and me) much happier.
I'm quite pleased with the final result. I used leftover art you to make random stripes in the weft, for a not-quite plaid look.
Upon looking at these photos I just realised I made 2 huge errors wearing this scarf. Normally this would make me hide the scarf away, maybe use it for sewing instead. But I'm on these new mood stabiliser meds and my perfectionist streak has just... evaporated. It's weird, that a fundamental part of my personality can just disappear. But also, it's really fucking nice. I'm leaning in to it. I'll put the scarf as is in the upcoming exhibition shop and if it sells, yay. If not, I'll then think about other options.
The left-over art yarn then went into an Emotional Support Chicken, along with some other handspun and the ends of the beaded scarf that I knotted together to turn back into yarn. The little tufts in some parts of the chicken are the ends of the knotted yarn, which I used as a feature. I felted the chook lightly, to make it extra soft and fuzzy.
Emotional Support Chickens are a whooooole thing. The pattern went viral a few years back, with good reason. It's adorable, easy to follow and very satisfying. This is Emotional Support Chicken #14,136 entered on knitting database Ravelry.
I'll knit at least one more ESC as I have another pair of beady black safety eyes left. I make a small modification to the pattern in that I sew on the wattle (the fleshy bit under the beak) folded in half rather than just hanging down like the pattern says. Just because that's how chickens actually are!
So it's been over a month since I posted any thing crafty. I've certainly been crafting, I just haven't had any big finishes. I often think of my crafting approach as "kicking the can down the road." Lots of little steps, sometimes without significant progress.
I borrowed this Kromski Weaver's Choice heddle from a friend at my spinners and weavers group. Typical rigid heddles are a solid piece of plastic, with same size slots and holes all the way along. The Weaver's Choice heddle is different in that it's made up of tiny sections of heddle that you click together, kinda like a puzzle. This sounds cool, but it's actually very fiddly and frustrating. This heddle does let you mix and match slots and holes of different sizes though, so you can wear with yarns of very different thicknesses.
To really push the limits of this borrowed heddle I warped up 2 very different yarns, some bulky handspun art yarn and some very fine tencel. I started with the art yarn, warping up a stripe pattern.
Then filled in the rest of the design with 8/2 tencel in silver. Very pretty!
But also, a very bad idea. The art yarn was super stretchy and the tencel was super not. I tried winding on the warp in increasingly pedantic and careful ways but I just couldn't get these 2 very different yarns to play nicely together. So I took the warp off and found a silver-grey sock yarn to use instead.
I then didn't take any pictures at all of the weaving, but this worked. Combining the very stretchy wool art yarn with the kinda stretchy wool sock yarn made the warp (and me) much happier.
I'm quite pleased with the final result. I used leftover art you to make random stripes in the weft, for a not-quite plaid look.
Upon looking at these photos I just realised I made 2 huge errors wearing this scarf. Normally this would make me hide the scarf away, maybe use it for sewing instead. But I'm on these new mood stabiliser meds and my perfectionist streak has just... evaporated. It's weird, that a fundamental part of my personality can just disappear. But also, it's really fucking nice. I'm leaning in to it. I'll put the scarf as is in the upcoming exhibition shop and if it sells, yay. If not, I'll then think about other options.
The left-over art yarn then went into an Emotional Support Chicken, along with some other handspun and the ends of the beaded scarf that I knotted together to turn back into yarn. The little tufts in some parts of the chicken are the ends of the knotted yarn, which I used as a feature. I felted the chook lightly, to make it extra soft and fuzzy.
Emotional Support Chickens are a whooooole thing. The pattern went viral a few years back, with good reason. It's adorable, easy to follow and very satisfying. This is Emotional Support Chicken #14,136 entered on knitting database Ravelry.
I'll knit at least one more ESC as I have another pair of beady black safety eyes left. I make a small modification to the pattern in that I sew on the wattle (the fleshy bit under the beak) folded in half rather than just hanging down like the pattern says. Just because that's how chickens actually are!
