8-harness symphony

My most recent weaving project at the Columbus Cultural Arts Center is this two tone Swedish geometric weaving. It will be a very long scarf for me. It was meant to be double the width but my counting was off since I was working double stranded. It'll happen, setting up a weaving loom is one of the more difficult crafts I have done in my life so far. It is much more involved then smocking or my knitting machines. Once it is set up and you are weaving it is a little of bliss and a lot of satisfaction knowing that you set up this complex pattern (unless of course you find mistakes).

A  close up of my pattern being tested. You can see how amazing it is with every single strand in place. The yarn on this is also a cotton flake so I am excited to see how the different textures are going to turn out while I weave.

These pedal however are the guts to this pattern more so then the heddles that the yarn is fed through. It took me a total of about 6 hours to get just the pedals set up and tested properly. I had to make around 36 tie ups for this pattern. Previously I had never chosen a pattern that involved any tie ups what so ever so this was a BIG change for me. I pretty much jumped right into the fire with this project.

This is the belly of the beast where I laid on a yoga mat on my back staring for those 6 hours. The first time I tested it I was really sad when I found out I had done some of these tie ups wrong and had to undo half of them to get them set up again and yet more time on the floor on my back.

Once it was done right and I tested it again after a hiatus I was so happy! You can see where I messed up from the first test after all the tie-ups to testing it to just weave. I like on this picture you can also see some of the texture variances from the flake yarn being used.

Just another close up for posterity so you can see the mistake I made at the bottom a little better and just how lovely this pattern is. I am really happy I chose these colors. I was a little concerned that they would be too close to each other and not give enough impact but they are looking just lovely as they are.  I have about 2ft woven and I am hoping to get at least 5ft to make this extra long scarf for myself. Perhaps even some place mats that I can give someone for Christmas like my Mother in law.

The only problem with weaving is that I want a loom of my own pretty badly now.