Fiber Monday - the magic of wet blocking

I showed you last week how the scarf I was knitting with the natural dyed yarn was nearly finished. I might also have mentioned that I was glad I was nearly done with it because I didn't really care for it. 

Over the weekend I washed and blocked it. It is still probably not something that I would wear, but I don't hate it nearly as much as I did before. The blocking really, really makes a difference. Here it is all pinned out.


You'll notice that each color has a long end that I didn't weave in. That is because for the art show submission, each end will be attached to a picture of the plant or animal that it was dyed with. I got those nearly done as well this weekend. There is still some pen work I need to finish, but the hard part is done.


The last thing I have to do (before Friday!) is get it all put together so it can be displayed. In my head my idea will work, I hope in actuality it is successful. 

Then there are all the things I can't show you because they are gifts. 

But I can show you the progress I've made with my new inkle loom. 


Most of the band going across the bottom is what I wove. I'm very close to being done with this warp and am looking forward to putting something a little more complex on. I have a book from the library (of course) that has all sorts of inkle loom patterns that would be fun to try.

To get it weaving I had to remake all the string heddles. Here's the difference between the two.


The size of the heddle that it arrived with is on the left, the size of the heddles I made is on the right. For such a small loom that is an enormous difference. I honestly don't know how the previous owner wove as much as they did. 

I still have several projects left to finish, but I'm hopeful I have time to get them all done. Actually, when I stop and think about it, there are more than several projects on the list inside my head. I'm still going with having a reasonable amount of time to finish them because that's less stressful than unrealistic.

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