Scarves off the loom

 We don't have a local yarn or fabric store here.  There is however, a large mill ends warehouse, where they have a large stock of regular yarns, quilting fabrics, sewing fabrics, as well as the over stock and over run items.   It's the one place where you can buy last year's hockey logo t-shirt for $5 and full price yarn.   Their sales though, are often really good.   I got 10 yards of brocade there last year for $6.   I was after some tapestry for a pseudo carpet bag project, which I didn't find, but got the brocade instead.  They put fabrics and yarns on sale regularly, with bright yellow tags.   Once in a while they then put those on for half price.   I found a bunch of gradient shawl skeins at one of those sales.  These are knitting yarns and can be a tad delicate to weave with.  I tried one, which was peach to deep burgundy or dark red.  The contrast was too much and the scarf which got the lighter weft, just looked wrong. 

  Next time they had the sale, they still had some of those gradient skeins.   I found 3 different colourways with much less contrast.   This is my favourite so far, in browns, greys and yellows.   Not colours I might normally wear, but very pretty when woven up.   I just got these off the loom this morning!  These ones are cotton and acrylic.    They are a tad longer, running between 74 and 79 inches in length and they are 6 inches in width.   

These are the mauve ones, although I'd call them purple.  They colours run from white, grey and a variety of purples.   They are quite nice, even though there is a bit more contrast with these.   

I have one more set of scarves like this to put on the loom.   They run from grey, green to purple.  I just noticed the grey in the skeins today, so my fingers are crossed, it's not too bright with the other colours.   The nice thing about these is that they appeal to people who are afraid of wearing wool, or can't afford the really soft commercial wools, silks, alpaca, etc.    I can sell these for less money because the materials are far less.  The downside is that the skeins are not easily replaceable, so all of this is single, unrepeatable runs.    It would be too expensive to purchase this yarn at full price though, and make the selling price too high to be worth it, as I don't think they'd sell at a similar price point to a silk blend or wool scarf.

Once these scarves are done, I will have a bag full of the leftover yardage from a run of different colours and yarn brands, all in a similar weight.  I'm thinking of running a few scarves off with a mixed warp and maybe a black weft.   But that goes on the project list and who knows which one will get woven off next.