Thursday, April 10, 2008

An ugly rug?

A dear friend who shall remain nameless in this case, brought me a very large baby-poo colored sweater knit in super bulky yarn. He did not like it. He said the color wrong for him and he didn't like the pattern (which was a cowl neck).
Now my friend is a large fellow and the sweater fit him. But he was right in that the pale yellow with odd brown hairs throughout made him look rather ill. The neck was completely wrong for him -- he would look far better in a V-neck. He said the sweater had been hand-knit for him by a friend of his wife and he had worn it from time to time when he needed a sweater but really wished something else could be done with it. I think he was hoping I could dye the yarn and reknit it into a nicer style for him.
Well, I unraveled the thing and got a large paper grocery bag filled with balls of yarn. Some of the balls are soccer ball sized. We burn tested the yarn and discovered it was acrylic. I really am not fond of acrylic yarn for knitting. But I certainly appreciate it's affordability.
The bag of yellow super bulky yarn sat in my fiber room for nearly six months.
Then I got the loom.
Well, one thing the loom is making me realize is that I really don't have much room for a large stash. I need to use up the stuff that I have.
Since I'm a new weaver, I'm figuring I will probably make many mistakes at first and hate the thought of using "good" yarn (high dollar or particularly loved) yarn on items which might find their way to the trashcan anyway.
My first warp was dedicated to using up some of the brown/neutral odd bits of homespun stuff that I had lying around. (See last blog entry)
I thought about using up some of the collection of odd purples/pink/mauves and whites that I have sitting in a basket waiting for inspiration. (And I think I got one, but on a loom, you can really only do one thing at a time, so it will be my next project.)
But everytime I went digging into the stash for ideas, I had to move that bag of baby-poo yarn. I got tired of moving it around. I studied it a bit. I did a little cardboard sampler and made a mug rug. It looked pretty good.
It had the right thickness. It wasn't too stiff and it was actually kind of nice to pet.
So I decided to make a rug.
I wound off enough cotton rug warp to make a 52" long 24" wide rug from this yellow yarn. I planned to weave it and give it back to my friend. I'm about 8 inches into it and actually finding I like the way it's looking. And I've barely made a dent in the bag. I might actually get two rugs out of it if I put on a second warp later.
I saw my friend yesterday and told him what I was doing with his old sweater. He just laughed. I hope he likes the finished project for there is really no where in my house for this color.

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