Thursday, November 17, 2016

Lining Up Varigated Yarn Colors in a Warp

I spend entirely too much time on pointless things just to answer a question I have had in my mind.

I little while ago, I was given an ugly cone of varigated yarn. Agree?

My question I wanted to figure out was how to wind a warp a specific length and get the colors to line up.

The varigation is short, with each color only about 6" long, so the colors would look muddy if I wound the warp straight off the cone.
I determined the length I wanted for a scarf and after winding to the bottom and reversing, realized that wouldn't work because the colors were in the reverse order with the second pass back to the starting peg.

To get them in order, I needed to make a continuous warp around the board. My start is at the top right peg.
When I got back to the start peg, I determined how much excess yarn I had before the colors lined up again.

I added two pegs on the right side to wrap the excess around until the colors lined up.
I made two wraps around both pegs and one or two wraps around a single peg for each pass around the warping board.
As I made each pass, I made my cross.  After deciding how many warp ends I wanted in each inch, I used a counting cross for each half inch, just to keep track of the number of warp ends wound, and to fit in my 1/2" spaced raddle.

When I am done winding the warp, I will tie off my cross, add some choke ties at the beginning, and right before the two end pegs and then a couple along the length to keep everything stable before cutting it below the start peg.

With everything stable, I can unwind the excess at the two pegs and trim all the warp threads evenly.

I still think it is ugly.  I'll see if my opinion changes after I get a loom open and start weaving the scarf.

2 comments:

  1. Jenny, that is such a good idea, I will have to give that a try with some of the ugly variegated cotton yarn I have in stash. Thanks so much!

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  2. excellent explanation. I warp handdyed sock yarns this way for scarves and try to explain it to people without much success.

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