Beaded fringe samples

I’m continuing to recover at a rapid pace – in fact, the physician’s assistant was pleasantly shocked at how well I was doing post-surgery. I’m back on solid foods (hooray!) and basically pain-free, except for a little soreness at the incision sites. But I’m continuing to take it easy, staying in bed most of the time and doing a lot of reading.

I have also been working on the beaded fringe for my sea-turtle scarf. I did a lot of samples yesterday:

Of these, my favorite is the one that is fourth from the left in the top photo and second from the left in the bottom photo. The ones with the dark blue beads won’t do; the dark blue beads don’t match the indigo pattern weft. And the other two samples both mix the location of the shiny and transparent aqua beads, which I think puts too much shiny in the aqua section, as well as making it difficult to get an evenly beaded fringe. (The shiny/iridescent beads are slightly smaller than the transparent aqua beads, which makes it a real challenge to get the spacing right.)

My favorite sample, on the other hand, has the shiny beads at top, the translucent beads in the middle, and the pale green beads at bottom. This attracts attention to the top of the fringe (and thus the body of the scarf), while still providing an organized feel and a nice color gradation in the beads. It’s not perfect, but I think it’s the best I can do with what I’ve got on hand. And I’m satisfied with it, I think, so I’ll be moving ahead with it today.

I have also planned my next weaving project, which will be another scarf on the same warp, in white silk/cashmere with a qiviut (musk ox down) pattern weft. It’s a gift for a friend who lives in a very cold climate, where a qiviut scarf will be much more useful than in our warm, sunny climate here.

Here’s the musk ox draft, a tied weave on 40 shafts, six shafts reserved for ties, network drafted ripples in the ties:

The musk oxen look a little tall in the draft, but based on the picks per inch I was getting with the silk, they will shrink about 20% vertically when actually woven. Of course I will have to weave samples with the qiviut yarn to be sure.

In book news, I have heard back from my editor at Schiffer; she will be getting me feedback on Monday. So I will be able to start back in on the book within a few days, doing another round of editing before sending it out to artists to get their photos/release forms.

Meanwhile, the cats continue to set a good moral example by sleeping most of the day (well, when not galloping around the house chasing each other!) But it’s exhausting work, this sleeping all day – so much so that it makes Tigress yawn a lot. (Nice fangs, though!)