Blanket scarf in real Shetland

 The idea for this came partly during team HSN's visit to Haworth Scouring earlier in the year. I must also give credit to Knitbug Valérie and aureliantownsend for inspiration.

The real Shetland fibre is a delight to spin, I spun some during last year's Spinzilla for my Ardelise and some more in April for my Riddari. Previously I'd spun from the end of the top (after splitting and pre-drafting) and from the fold. Here I tried making 'fauxlags', which turned out to be very quick, and spinning those unsupported longdraw with the high-speed kit on the wheel was some of the fastest spinning I've done.

The yarn was 2-ply, perhaps a little thinner than DK.

I wanted to use mostly natural colours; white, fawn and a little dark grey. With a little dyed colour. This is white shetland dyed with Ashford acid dyes; blue with a small amount of yellow for a 'peacock' blue. Not as blue as it looks in this picture.

 Before warping I sampled with some similar handspun yarn, and settled on 6 ends per inch.

On the computer I'd mocked up a more symmetrical plaid pattern, and a more random pattern, which I settled on.  I used the same sequence in the warp as for the weft, for a certain symmetry.

warp speed

This is the start of a very exciting journey; leaving behind the rigid heddle and the peg method of warping.


My guide is Anne Field's Book of Four Shaft Weaving. It's a steep learning curve, the book is thick and detailed, but I feel I'm in good hands. My loom has eight shafts, but all of the principles are just the same and I'll just ignore four of the shafts initially.

First step is to make a warp. At the top end, the threads cross over alternately to keep them in the right order for threading. At the other end is another cross but in groups for counting. The number in each group is the number that will go between each pin in your raddle if you're using one.