Further Adventures in Saori Weaving

Since my last post I have been busy at my loom playing with yarn and what a jolly time I've had! It is amazing how many balls of yarn I have collected over the years, some my own hand spun and some left over from knitting or weaving projects. I decided to heap them in to piles of four main colour groups and use that as a starting point and go from there. I had set my loom up with a black 18/2 wool warp sett at 20 epi and threaded in a Rosepath twill using four shafts. I wasn't thinking of a finished project but just wanted to play with colours and textures and create a sampler for future ideas. I began with the largest heap which was blues/purples/pinks.

 

The yarns I used were a mixture of some hand dyed and hand spun yarns that I did over 20 years ago, some commercially spun mohair loop yarn, wool roving and fleece. I used the Rosepath Twill to help the thicker yarns show up and after washing it helped with the texture too. Then I moved on to the greens and yellows.

 

 

Then I moved on to reds/oranges/gingers.

 

 

And finally I tried natural greys and whites.

 

 

During the weaving of these samplers I played around with the many weaving techniques suggested in the Saori book such as clasped weft with 2 and 3 colours, inlay, looping the yarn with a knitting pin or just pulling it out as well as using locks of fleece or snippets of yarn to add texture. After a fairly rigorous hand wash I was pleased to see that the locks of fleece had felted enough to stay in the cloth but not so much that they lost the fleecey look. I must say that I enjoyed the whole thing immensely. Two more Saori books have arrived in the post and I am now weaving some Saori cloth to make a skirt with. Having been very sceptical about this form of weaving before I can know understand why people do it......it's fun and liberating! My big fault is that I dither. The number of times I have gone into my workroom with ideas for projects but came away feeling frustrated that I couldn't decide what to do first and felt like putting all my stuff in a huge pile and burning it! Choices of what yarn, what pattern, what colour, have I got enough yarn etc. etc. etc. But with this form of weaving I just played and I think that is sometimes difficult to do especially when you have been brought up as a child not to waste anything. Everything you make has to "be" something. Why have I got a humungous pile of "stuff" if I never do anything with it? I also think that the Saori idea will help with my more traditional style of weaving and that I will not get too indecisive in future. We will have to see!