Oh Glory Be, I Forgot to Show You the OTHER Scarves

Honestly, some days I just forget what I'm doing. These are the last two scarves that I made a couple of weeks ago with my friends Denise and Channyn.

We tried doing two at the same time.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Don't do that.

We started with one that would have lots of greens in it. The base silk was this light blue, green, yellow and white silk that I brought.

We did well with these lovely lightly distributed colors. 

And then I'm pretty sure Channyn said, "Now don't get carried away and make it too heavy."

Sadly, I think we ignored Channyn and got a little carried away.

Yeah, we might have gotten carried away with the green toward the end.

We really look like we're having fun here, don't we? We were, until we had to move on to the second scarf.

Here's a closeup:

And here's the end result.

LESSONS LEARNED: Look real close... do you see my original blue, green, yellow and white scarf? Yeah, me neither. Nice silk like that is best used as the final layer, not the base layer.

OK, now let's look at the second project.

So, for the second project, we laid down a base of super-thin black silk. Then we put black mereno on it, added embellishments, wet it down and put a layer of tuille over it and started smushing.

We used a lot of maroon silk on top for embellishment. And this time, we were careful to put a very thin layer of the black merino across the silk, just to make extra sure it would hold things down. The merino, you'll recall, acts as the glue.

We particularly liked the length of this scarf. We decided on the length by wrapping the silk around my neck and then cutting a piece off when we were satisfied that it would be long enough. The blue green scarf came out wider and a bit shorter. I think we ended up liking narrower and longer better.

My model, Denise, appears delighted.

Here's a closeup:

FINAL CONCLUSION:

I learned on my next scarves (the blue green ones that I did at home) that if I wasn't satisfied that things had felted enough, I could wet everything down and tackle it again. And I could wait until the next day if I wanted. Which is nice, because pounding away on this stuff really wears you out.

On my next scarves, I also tried leaving areas of the base silk without anything on them. That didn't work so well. The silk is really thin, and should be laid on top for best effect. That was easily fixed, though - I just added a light layer of wool, wet everything down, and muscled it into felt.

By the time we were done with this, we were all ready to lie down and give up. So don't go trying to do two scarves at the same time; it's just too much work. Fortunately, Channyn fed us.