Most of my handspun stash are either remnants from previous knitting and weaving projects, or single skeins from various fleece samples from different breeds. Few of them are enough for even a knit cap or scarf, but for this Saori style cap, that works in my favor.
I thought briefly about using handspun for the warp, but there's always too much warp waste, even using it for the cap fringe. So, I decided on commercial wool weaving yarn. I recently dug it out from storage and found a place for it in my studio, so the totes were handy for making a selection.
This variety of colors will make for more interesting braided fringe, don't you think? The yarns are finer than the cotton-bamboo I used for the sample cap's warp; 20 e.p.i. as opposed to 12. Using the same formula from Peggy Osterkamp, 65% of 20 is 13, so I can use my other new reed at 12 dents per inch. I'll swap the reeds but leave the heddles threaded and tie on the new warp to the old.
For my weft, I chose a number of small skeins in a variety of colors.
The natural colors are North Ronaldsay, a rare breed sheep from the Orkney Islands of Scotland. The blues on top are a mohair/wool blend that I dyed, and the blues on the bottom are Border Leicester, also dyed by me and used to learn color blending with wool combs.
I bought the North Ron fleece samples for a Rare Breed Fleece Challenge with the Online Guild. I used some of it for my Rare Breed Sweater, and some of it for the afghan you see pictured in my blog header. Looking back at the blog post, I see I used it for part of the warp! How brave of me, lol.
In the spirit of Saori and it's freeform style of weaving, I'm planning a serendipitous approach to warping the loom. Rather than plan the color order of the stripes, I'm just going to tie on the new warp in whatever color strikes my fancy.
My planned size is 24 inches by 12 inches before construction, with 10 inch fringe.
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