Bits and bobs
Feb. 9th, 2026 05:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
merrileemakesSo it's been over a month since I posted any thing crafty. I've certainly been crafting, I just haven't had any big finishes. I often think of my crafting approach as "kicking the can down the road." Lots of little steps, sometimes without significant progress.
I borrowed this Kromski Weaver's Choice heddle from a friend at my spinners and weavers group. Typical rigid heddles are a solid piece of plastic, with same size slots and holes all the way along. The Weaver's Choice heddle is different in that it's made up of tiny sections of heddle that you click together, kinda like a puzzle. This sounds cool, but it's actually very fiddly and frustrating. This heddle does let you mix and match slots and holes of different sizes though, so you can weave with yarns of very different thicknesses.
To really push the limits of this borrowed heddle I warped up 2 very different yarns, some bulky handspun art yarn and some very fine tencel. I started with the art yarn, warping up a stripe pattern.
Then filled in the rest of the design with 8/2 tencel in silver. Very pretty!
But also, a very bad idea. The art yarn was super stretchy and the tencel was super not. I tried winding on the warp in increasingly pedantic and careful ways but I just couldn't get these 2 very different yarns to play nicely together. So I took the warp off and found a silver-grey sock yarn to use instead.
I then didn't take any pictures at all of the weaving, but this worked. Combining the very stretchy wool art yarn with the kinda stretchy wool sock yarn made the warp (and me) much happier.
I'm quite pleased with the final result. I used leftover art you to make random stripes in the weft, for a not-quite plaid look.
Upon looking at these photos I just realised I made 2 huge errors wearing this scarf. Normally this would make me hide the scarf away, maybe use it for sewing instead. But I'm on these new mood stabiliser meds and my perfectionist streak has just... evaporated. It's weird, that a fundamental part of my personality can just disappear. But also, it's really fucking nice. I'm leaning in to it. I'll put the scarf as is in the upcoming exhibition shop and if it sells, yay. If not, I'll then think about other options.
The left-over art yarn then went into an Emotional Support Chicken, along with some other handspun and the ends of the beaded scarf that I knotted together to turn back into yarn. The little tufts in some parts of the chicken are the ends of the knotted yarn, which I used as a feature. I felted the chook lightly, to make it extra soft and fuzzy.
Emotional Support Chickens are a whooooole thing. The pattern went viral a few years back, with good reason. It's adorable, easy to follow and very satisfying. This is Emotional Support Chicken #14,136 entered on knitting database Ravelry.
I'll knit at least one more ESC as I have another pair of beady black safety eyes left. I make a small modification to the pattern in that I sew on the wattle (the fleshy bit under the beak) folded in half rather than just hanging down like the pattern says. Just because that's how chickens actually are!
I borrowed this Kromski Weaver's Choice heddle from a friend at my spinners and weavers group. Typical rigid heddles are a solid piece of plastic, with same size slots and holes all the way along. The Weaver's Choice heddle is different in that it's made up of tiny sections of heddle that you click together, kinda like a puzzle. This sounds cool, but it's actually very fiddly and frustrating. This heddle does let you mix and match slots and holes of different sizes though, so you can weave with yarns of very different thicknesses.
To really push the limits of this borrowed heddle I warped up 2 very different yarns, some bulky handspun art yarn and some very fine tencel. I started with the art yarn, warping up a stripe pattern.
Then filled in the rest of the design with 8/2 tencel in silver. Very pretty!
But also, a very bad idea. The art yarn was super stretchy and the tencel was super not. I tried winding on the warp in increasingly pedantic and careful ways but I just couldn't get these 2 very different yarns to play nicely together. So I took the warp off and found a silver-grey sock yarn to use instead.
I then didn't take any pictures at all of the weaving, but this worked. Combining the very stretchy wool art yarn with the kinda stretchy wool sock yarn made the warp (and me) much happier.
I'm quite pleased with the final result. I used leftover art you to make random stripes in the weft, for a not-quite plaid look.
Upon looking at these photos I just realised I made 2 huge errors wearing this scarf. Normally this would make me hide the scarf away, maybe use it for sewing instead. But I'm on these new mood stabiliser meds and my perfectionist streak has just... evaporated. It's weird, that a fundamental part of my personality can just disappear. But also, it's really fucking nice. I'm leaning in to it. I'll put the scarf as is in the upcoming exhibition shop and if it sells, yay. If not, I'll then think about other options.
The left-over art yarn then went into an Emotional Support Chicken, along with some other handspun and the ends of the beaded scarf that I knotted together to turn back into yarn. The little tufts in some parts of the chicken are the ends of the knotted yarn, which I used as a feature. I felted the chook lightly, to make it extra soft and fuzzy.
Emotional Support Chickens are a whooooole thing. The pattern went viral a few years back, with good reason. It's adorable, easy to follow and very satisfying. This is Emotional Support Chicken #14,136 entered on knitting database Ravelry.
I'll knit at least one more ESC as I have another pair of beady black safety eyes left. I make a small modification to the pattern in that I sew on the wattle (the fleshy bit under the beak) folded in half rather than just hanging down like the pattern says. Just because that's how chickens actually are!
(no subject)
Date: 8 February 2026 06:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 9 February 2026 09:28 pm (UTC)Heddle is a fun word to say, and also means a few different things in weaving. :)
(no subject)
Date: 10 February 2026 01:31 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 8 February 2026 06:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 9 February 2026 09:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 9 February 2026 12:11 am (UTC)Glad you found a solution!
I'm glad the meds are working to make things easier. I am sure someone will be happy with the scarf.
The chicken is adorable! I agree that the folded wattle looks better as well.
(no subject)
Date: 9 February 2026 09:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 9 February 2026 01:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 9 February 2026 09:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 9 February 2026 03:33 am (UTC)That emotional support chicken looks very soft and supportive.
(no subject)
Date: 9 February 2026 09:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 9 February 2026 05:18 am (UTC)The Weaver's Choice reed looks similar-ish to the Lojan Flex's reed where you can swap out heddle sections, and the Lojan reed also seemed like a cool concept except the damn things kept popping out etc so I finally gave up and made my husband superglue the reed frame. /o\
(no subject)
Date: 9 February 2026 09:36 pm (UTC)I ended up washi taping all these individual Kromski heddle pieces together because they just wouldn't stay together.