Chenille on the Wheel

Hi folks,

This blog has been dormant for a very, very long time, but I have been crafting. I will not really have time to post about all the things I have learned until this fall, but I will get in here from time to time this summer.

Since I last showed up here, I have taken up weaving and spinning with all the zeal of a new convert. I don't have a lot of money, and I like the concept of recycling whenever I can, so I will be posting about making "new" yarn from old yarns in the coming months.

Today's effort is a chenille yarn made from 2 plies of recycled thrift shop sweaters. It's acrylic, and I'm making it for weaving into scarves on my Schacht Cricket loom.

I wasn't sure what to expect, so I started out with the sweater I liked the least from my thrift shop haul, and got this yarn as an end result. I'll edit in the wpi later.

On the niddy noddy, before setting the twist
Balls before plying.
On the Babe Production wheel.
I have not used Blogger in so long that I accidentally uploaded my pictures in the wrong order. Whoops. :)

So far, I'm pretty happy with this yarn. I don't know if I would knit with it, but my goal was to make a weaving yarn. I believe I could use this yarn right from the sweaters without plying it, and use the 12-dent heddle I bought separately, but a lot of us only have the 8-dent heddle that comes with the loom. By plying this yarn, I now have a thick enough yarn to use with the 8-dent. I have been reading that chenille yarns need to be woven fairly tightly to prevent "worming" in the finished piece.

I'll keep experimenting and posting my results. For now, I will continue to be semi-random in my posting habits, but soon you will see more from me. Look for a lot more posting activity from September on.