About a month before school finished for the year, I was giving some serious thought to what to make for gifts for the boys’ teachers. Both boys have been incredibly lucky to have teachers that they adored, and who thought my boys were pretty good too, so I wanted to make something a bit special!

All the sewing ideas I was coming up with were not quite right, and I was getting a bit frustrated that I wasn’t having that ‘tadaa’ moment of clarity. I took to trying to find inspiration in the lovely craft shop I work in, Made Marion. One of the many fun things in the shop is a small weaving loom, so I googled the company’s site, and my ‘tadaa moment’ was had. They had a video that declared that you could go from warping up to completed scarf in about 2 hours.  I wasn’t so naive to think I could do it in 2 hours, but my takeaway from it was that it was reasonably quick.

I bought a loom, and some yarn to practise with, and set to teaching myself to weave! My first attempt was a little wobbly and uneven, but all in all, not too bad. I decided I might just be able to pull this off in time – by this stage, I was now down to 2 weeks until the end of the year!

So I went back for more yarn in colours that suited the teachers who would be receiving them, and went on a scarf weaving jag. All were woven with Ashford 8ply corriedale wool – plain warp, and variegated weft.

I am pleased to say, I managed to get 3 scarves woven and wet blocked in a little over a week, and all of the teachers were incredibly pleased and appreciative of their lovely scarves.

I am quite enjoying weaving as a change of pace from sewing, and so will continue to explore what I can do with it. I have also now bought myself an 80cm rigid heddle loom, and some different sized heddles, so I have more options to play with in terms of fibre thickness and am not constrained to scarf width pieces.