Straight draw scarves

At Saturday's guild meeting, several of us presented a program on straight draw. For my part, I focused mostly on the versatility of straight draw on eight shafts and the many looks that can be achieved just by changing the tie-up. I started off with the second set of three rayon scarves that I wove for my grandma. These are all 5/2 rayon, threaded 1 - 8. The one on the right is a waffle weave on straight draw, which was fun to weave. The one on the left is my favorite; it looks the most fluid.

Then I showed this scarf, with a buffalo warp and a handsun alpaca/shetland/silk weft. It is herringbone, but I threaded it as a straight draw on eight. I don't usually weave with wool this heavy and started weaving with a much too heavy beat. I was then so conscious of not beating too hard that my beat became progressively light. The other end wound up rather sleazy. You can see the difference between the two ends in the picture. The lesson I learned from this scarf is that when I am unsure of my beat, I MUST NOT be too confident to get out the ruler and check the ppi.

The last scarf I wove, just for fun, in plainweave with a crammed warp, following a recipe in an old Weaver's magazine. The structure is so simple, but the scarf turned out so nice. The crammed stripes are handpainted 20/2 silk, the remaining warp was 20/2 Jaggerspun Maine Line, and the weft was 20/2 silk noil. This turned out to be a nice, airy, light-weight scarf. I am really pleased with it. If I were to do anything differently, I would beam the wool and silk warps separately. Toward the end, there was a definite difference in tension.