crush...

hi there,

Back with another weaverly post.  I'll be back to knitterly posting soon, but in the meantime...I've been doing some experimenting, and I want to introduce you to my new love...

Okay, I know it's a bit funky. It may even the kind of thing that only a weaver could love.  But I do—I love it.  It's felted merino wool and recycled sari silk {the thrums (loom waste) from weaving sari fabric in a textile mill in Nepal are collected and spun together to make this yarn}.  The yarn I used here has been around a while.  I bought over a decade ago and loved it, but it was really overspun, almost elastic, and was utterly unusable as a knitting yarn.  So when I decided to use it for this project I gave it  a backward trip through my spinning wheel and "unspun" it a little {maybe a little too much—hence the wooly texture of it here}.

It really is a work in progress, but I kind of love it.  I've been wearing for two days straight to see how it holds up.  The fabric is soft and warm and makes me smile every time I catch a glimpse of it in a window or mirror.  You can't tell here, but it's actually a little lacey.  And the colors...they just sing and shimmer.  These pictures do not do that sari silk justice.  It really does just glow.  And can I say how much I love the symmetry of weaving with a yarn that was once on a loom halfway across the world?...love.

The night it came off the loom I was convinced it was a disaster.  I was sitting at our coffee table with a fork in hand trying {with no success} to will the thing into submission—never a good sign when you take cutlery to your weaving at midnight.  I really was ready to bundle the whole thing up and pitch it.  But in the morning I decided to forge ahead and felt it...just to see what it would become, and voila!...love...

 ...pure unadulterated, unapologetic adoration.

Note to self...two things...
nothing looks good when it's midnight, you have a fork in your hand and no cake before you,
and two... that it's not done until it's done. 

Sorry for all of the pictures.  I went a little crazy trying to capture all of those colors.

Hope you have a great weekend, full of fun projects and happy surprises!

~xoxo
alison

ps~ If you want a pdf of the pattern for the Libernating Mitts {that I blogged last week}you can download it here.