Newbie, newcomer or rookie = learning experience

Oh the joys of learning something new.  I have been so in love with my loom and the weaving, I have loved the whole process, and even though I have made a major blunder, I still do.  You see I was not thinking about fiber content with my last project.  The solid purple yarn, that left over yarn from my sweater had a bit of a slippery quality to it.  The weaving yarn is a wool/acrylic blend.  The two were not going to mix and I had the misfortune of learning this at the very end of my shawl.  

I wove the whole shawl, really paying attention to the sides, trying hard to make them straight.  I had better success with the sides than with my second scarf, but still need to work on this.  The thing about this shawl is I wove it too loose.  I knew it, the whole time I was working on it, but I kept going.  I feel a bit like Goldilocks, too tight, too loose and I am not at the just right part yet.

After finishing the shawl I was taking it off the loom when disaster struck.  The woven part of the shawl pulled and completely came apart.  Here have a look.

Look at this mess, the fibers were pulled all whacky and they just could not be fixed.

However, my sides are looking better so that is something! I have to focus on something good here.

 

This is the beginning of the project, see how it is supposed to look!

 

Ah well, live and learn.  I painstakingly tried to unravel the piece, but I soon found that if I pulled the long, purple warp threads out, two by two, I could save my fancy colored yarn.  There was going to be a casualty to this experiment and the purple yarn was it.

It was actually kind of fun to pull this all apart, I know I have a warped sense of fun (no pun intended).

So this is what I had at the end.  A big pile of purple yarn that was all chopped up and ready for the trash bin, and saved Berocco Lace yarn ready to be used again. 

I am not upset, this really was a learning experience for me.  Just like knitting or crochet, every project teaches you something and hopefully you can remember that something and not make the same mistake twice.  I have learned more about using two yarns with different fiber contents, learned more about the how loose or tight I like to weave, and of course what happens when the yarn snags at the end of the project, not a pretty or fixable outcome. And last but not least I have learned how to dismantle a project to save some yarn, even though I wasted a whole lot of other yarn. 

My plan for this afternoon is to warp another project.  Lucky for me I enjoy the process.

I want to thank Tracey Yarn and Pencil for a lovely award.  I appreciate you thinking about me Tracey.  I am honored.

Oh and Craftsy is having a big 50% off sale.  I just bought my second weaving class for $14.99.  You might find a class over there you might want to take at a very reasonable price.

Have a great day.