I was sick for a couple of days. Still am, a little bit, but my fever’s gone. Some kinda respiratory thing, my lungs still ache. Tonight I started crafting for the first time since Friday morning, working on the shawl while listening to podcasts. Before that I slept all day, and most of Sunday too. (Did go for froyo with my BFF last night, though, which was nice.)
I’ve been thinking about another project I want to do, next month: a light cotton throw. It will be striped, black and another color to be decided as purchasing time comes up. Blue, maybe, or silver. I’ve been talking to people about finishing methods, as I don’t know anything about sewing so had no idea how to finish a blanket when I don’t want fringe. MIL told me about blanket binding, which is basically a wide ribbon, folded in half, that gets sewn around the outside of the whole piece. She’s willing to do that for me, which is very kind of her. I figure I’ll arrange the colors so the black binding will match up with the stripes so it looks planned instead of tacked on afterwards. I’m going with black because I imagine it would be hard to perfectly match a shade of colored yarn.
Someone told me to put the binding on before washing the piece, but that makes no sense to me. I need to ask her about it. Because woven cloth changes size when it’s finished (washed or steamed or whatever). It seems like the binding would pucker as the cloth shrinks.
Anyway, I’m going to make 6′ panels and then sew them together to make a 4.5′ wide throw. I want something light I can snuggle under without getting too hot. The yarn someone else recommended is a 3/2 pearl cotton, and a couple of other people agreed, so I’ll buy some next month and see if I like it enough to weave with it. It’s cheaper to buy it in cones, and it’s also less wasteful because you don’t have random lengths of skein ends to cut off when doing the warp.
I’ve been raiding the Weaving Today free resources section for techniques. I need more info. And possibly more books…
transknition 