Scarf for my Nephew

My college age nephew, Daniel, likes to look fashionable with thrifted clothes. He sees the social media posts of things I have knitted and woven, and had told my sister that he would wear “anything” I made. It is hard to know what gifts to get the young people, but I figured he would like a pair of hand knit socks or a hand woven scarf for Christmas. I gave him a card to open with an IOU for a hand made item. I had a box of yarn options ready so he could pick out the yarns and colors he liked.

Daniel picked the scarf option with three different wool yarns. He started out with some navy and turquoise, but there was not enough of the turquoise, so he picked some tan also.

I warped the loom with the navy yarn, and then started playing around with how to use the tan and turquoise for the weft yarn. First I tried every other row, but the tan completely took over and you could barely see the turquoise. I undid that and tried switching colors every two rows, but I did not like that either. Finally I tried every four rows. That was not doing it for me either.

Sometimes you don’t know how something is going to look until you try it. The three skeins of yarn looked nice sitting next to each other on the table, but somehow they were not right together on the loom. It might have worked if I had included one of the other colors in the warp yarn with the navy, and then it could have been more of a plaid pattern with alternating weft colors. However by this time it was too late for that. I texted Daniel to share some options for what I could do. He did not know what to say, so I went with an executive decision to ditch the turquoise and have only the navy warp yarn with the tan weft yarn. Following is the beginning with about four inches of weaving.

I think it looks very nice. The colors are somewhat neutral, so it will work with many different looks. The blue and tan yarns are different colors of Berroco Ultra Wool. They are soft and can be machine washed using the delicate cycle, and dried in the dryer on low. The turquoise yarn is nice too, but not quite as soft and not machine washable. If I had included the turquoise yarn in the scarf it would have meant the final product would not be washable.

As usual, I did the hem stitch at the beginning and end of the scarf while it was still on the loom. I completed all the weaving in a couple of days. It was New Years Eve and New Years Day, so I gave myself permission to not do my usual chores. It was also a good time to stay inside due to temperatures as low as minus 20.

When I started to remove the project from the loom I realized that there were two problems at the very beginning. I had done the hem stitch backwards, and the first row of weaving after the hem stitch was the opposite pattern from what it should have been. Oops. I was able to easily undo the hem stitch and re-do it, and then add another row with a scrap of yarn on a needle in between the two identical rows at the beginning. Problems solved.

During the weaving I had to join a new length of weft yarn in two places, by doubling back the loose end in the same row as the new yarn. Sometimes that is not noticeable but in this case it really stood out. I decided to undo those ends and weave up the side instead. You can see the extra thick doubled rows in the photo below, before I fixed them.

The following photo shows the completed scarf after all the ends were woven in correctly, the fringe was twisted, and it had been gently washed.

Lastly are photos of my nephew looking dapper modeling the scarf.

Daniel is taking some acting classes at college. Some day in the future if he becomes a famous actor, these photos might be worth something!