Qiviut scarves

Yesterday I finished the edits on my musk ox design and started weaving the scarves. I wove one musk ox at a time (about 15 minutes of weaving), separated by a few hours of doing other things, so as not to aggravate things during recovery. But it seemed to be fine, so I wove two more musk oxen in a single session this morning. I’m now about 1/3 done with the first qiviut scarf – four musk oxen in. Here’s a photo from the beginning of the scarf:

I love the surprised and mildly puzzled look on the musk ox faces – a “Who, me?” expression.

The plan is to weave two scarves, one for me and one for my friend. I had originally planned only a single scarf, as I had only 72 grams of qiviut yarn and two scarves would have required 100 grams. But I hated to waste the leftover qiviut, so I did some more calculations and realized that if I wove the center of the scarf in plain weave and placed the motifs on each end of the scarf, I would have enough to do two scarves. So that’s the plan.

I am also cooking up an interesting thought experiment with tied weaves, just to test my understanding. I’m considering a divided parallel threading to weave echo weave ground cloth with two or more pattern wefts and maybe some patterning in the ties. I have no idea what it will look like, and doubt that it will be super attractive, but I want to make sure I understand the tied structure and how it’s constructed. I am reading through Marian Stubenistsky’s marvelous book Weaving with Echo and Iris in an attempt to understand parallel threadings and what can be done with them. It will be awhile before I can do anything with it, though – I have three more scarves to weave before the current warp is off the loom. (Two qiviut scarves, and probably another sea-turtle scarf.)

In book-land, I reviewed the manuscript with one of my editors yesterday. She had some structural suggestions, but said that overall, it was one of the cleanest and most professional manuscripts she’d ever seen! and that after I finished the structural edits, it was probably good enough to send to the publisher. I’m thrilled to get that feedback – it means I’m on the right track. I’m planning to start the structural edits later today.

No progress on Adobe Illustrator, but planning to do a few more chapters today, if I can find time between the book and weaving. I want to use it to draft the design for my sea turtle shawl – intended to be an adventure in kente-style strip weaving.

I’m also planning to work some more on the beaded fringe, though time is rapidly getting away from me (especially since I am still sleeping ten hours a day). It’s OK, though…everything will get done eventually.

And now Fritz has arrived to harass me, so I am peering around a cat and typing with the keyboard held awkwardly in my lap. Lest you think that I’m the only one who gets feline help, though, here is Tigress, “helping” Mike at the computer. Isn’t she adorable when she’s naughty?