Dressed Loom and Half-Knitted Hat

As soon as I sat down to write this post, I remembered the picture of the loom. I had to put the loom on the floor as the warp consists of mainly dark colours and I had it on a dark table. I took a picture from the front and one from the back. This is the better of the two pictures, taken from the back, showing the rigid heddle loom dressed and ready for the weaving to begin. The silk is dyed a dark purple with random strands of reds and blues running through it.

Now I have to decide on the weft colours. My first idea was to use a darkish dusky pink. I tried a few strands in the warp and was not to keen on the result. I have now found a nice red that matches the main red strands in the warp, and a dark purple. I might use both colours, with the purple as the main colour and work some random stripes in the red. This is an experimental piece in two ways. Firstly using a rigid heddle loom, and secondly weaving silk with rayon chenille. How ever the fabric comes out, I will make the poncho with a crocheted edging to give it more strength. I can wear it around the house or as a bed poncho.

I am just a bit over half way through the patterned area of the hat. I will knit another four stripes before starting the stitch reduction for the top of the hat. I am choosing the stripe colours as I go along, and so far I think they look nice. The colours look a bit brighter in the picture than they really are.

The pattern is called a two colour seed stitch and is very simple to do. It has four rows to each pattern repeat. I am doing four rows in one colour, then two rows in the base grey colour for each stripe. I sit and knit a stripe when I have coffee, three times a day so it is growing quickly and will be finished by the end of the week.