50 Shades of Grey....Wool

I've never used Kauni wool yarn as a warp before, so after the tencel disaster, I thought I'd go back to the tried and true. Since I can't draft a color changing yarn, I was interested to see how this would work. I threaded birds eye sett at 10 epi. I used the Zebra color scheme, which is, as it sounds, varying shades of white and black. The yarn never goes to a true white or black; it is heathered. I was hoping that I'd get solid areas of color that accentuate the pattern and other areas of blended color that mute the pattern. That way I'd end up with 50 shade of grey. 

It's funny, I always seem to lose my place, in treadling, when weaving simple patterns. I can't tell you how many times I had to unweave to get the pattern right again.

Overall, it had the effect I was going for. I had to use a very light beat to keep the fabric from being totally warp faced. Now I'll twist the fringe and wet finish it. I'm hoping the diamonds will pucker a bit during fulling to add some more texture.

I had a bit of warp left so I tried plain weave for about 10 inches with 3/2 black cotton as weft.....

I like this effect much better. The sample looks a bit like snakeskin. 

My next experiment with color will be to use the same yarn for warp and weft. I just got this in the mail.....

So stay tuned for some crazy colors. I'll have to wait a bit for the color experimentation, as I've got a lot of pillow fronts to weave. I'm threading 200+ ends of 3/2 cotton for some large scale summer & winter. Should make gorgeous pillows.

A side note, I may soon be the owner of a 12 shaft 48" Macomber loom. If this comes to fruition, I'm not sure my brain can handle it! I'm just now beginning to see the intricacy that is possible on a 4 shaft loom. I'm trying not to get too carried away, but I'll admit, I've already drafted several patterns for this, hopefully, new loom. My head is just swimming with ideas. 

Happy Weaving!