The Great Cape Caper--weaving decisions

Can't escape this obsession--the cape is going to happen.  What makes it really ridiculous is that in the 90's I spent about 10 years talking myself out of a handspun, handwoven cape--and then made one.  Lord of the Rings pushed me over the edge.  Thanks to the internet, I even tracked down the flock of sheep (New Zealand, Stansborough Gotland) that supplied the wool for the fabric and bought a couple of fleeces.  I don't really live in a cape-wearing climate or have a cape-wearing lifestyle, but I'm still happy that I did it.  Gotta embrace the crazy.

Finished that one in 2003--so it's been 14 years.  That one also took about 10,000 yards of spinning and I didn't really want to go *that* crazy again.  And it was also rather civilized (after all, it was Elven).  This time I wanted to go more barbaric--think "Vikings" (quotes because it will have nothing to do with being any kind of reproduction) or "Game of Thrones" (also quotes because I don't watch GOT--read the first book, saw the first episode, and decided that was enough violence for me).

So now I have to go back to a couple of projects from last year.  I have been intrigued with the idea of a loose, openwork, gauze-like fabric.  This was spurred on by an article in Spin-Off  where the author made a gauzy stole with inset leaves.  The leaves didn't do it for me, but I loved the fabric.  Then Sarah Swett (whose blog I follow) (https://www.afieldguidetoneedlework.com/) did a series of open gauzework weavings.

And while most people are drawn to fancy designs and great colors, I have a fondness for, well, brown.  Something that most people would pass by whispers to me.

I had a bag of brown BFL (blue faced Leicester--a sheep with long shining but soft fleece).  I spun it to my good ol' default yarn (2 ply, about 24 wraps per inch), and put it on the loom.  Normally this size yarn would be sett and woven at 12 wraps per inch--I did it at 6.  To be honest, I sort of expected it to just fall apart when I took it off the loom but it didn't, but it was quite sleazy.

  Fabric this open needs to be "fulled"--washed and agitated so that it shrinks slightly and clings together.  With a pounding heart it went into the washing machine--with me pacing the floor and wringing my hands and pulling it out every three minutes to check it. Three minutes:  Nothing.  Six minutes: nothing.  Nine minutes:  nothing. Twelve minutes: nothing.  Fifteen minutes: nothing.  Eighteen minutes: too far!!  It suddenly looked like a drowned rat.  Damn.  Chalked that up to experience.

Except that I hung it up to dry, and as it did, I found myself petting it and stroking it and straightening it out and generally being nice to it and then I decided that I really loved it and now it's my wrap at night for sitting up in bed and reading.  It's fuzzy and soft and warm and very very light.  I even got a bonus of subtle stripes; when I put it on the loom the reed (the thing that controls how many ends per inch you get) was eight ends per inch so I skipped on a regular basis to get six.  Normally this skipping comes out in the wash but in this case they slid together to make stripes.

With that success, I wanted to do it again.  Stash diving, I found a skein of blue BFL.  Several years ago I had lost my spinning mojo and my local yarn store had this blue roving so I got it just to spin.  Blue just isn't really my color, but at least I was spinning something.  As I looked at it, I wondered how to knock down the blue (pretty dark, so overdyeing wasn't an option) and I thought that if I wove it with something on the opposite side of the color wheel it might work.  I spun up some more white BFL that I had (it is good to have a stash) and dyed it a copper color.  The combination worked--it's almost iridescent, being blue or copper depending on how you look at it.

Time to full this one.  This time I went a gentler route.  Rather than the machine, I did it by hand, with the alternate method of dunking alternately in very hot water, then ice water.  Like the last one, it took awhile (about a half hour) and then fulled suddenly and dramatically--so it's also very fuzzy.  I like it--maybe not quite as much as my first one, but it's good.  I had sleyed this one evenly (I used a reed that ran 12 ends per inch and used every other slot), so it didn't have the stripes of the first one, and I missed those.

And for some reason I don't have a "post fulling" picture."

Although I had problems in the fulling, the success of these made me think I wanted a gauzy fabric for the cape.  Onward . . .