The End

Finally!  The Flame warp is finished.  You can see from this photo that I didn't have much choice but to end it, and as it is, the last scarf is four inches shorter than my standard 72 inches woven.  I don't like having so little left behind the heddles, but since I cut the first two scarves off and tied the warp back on, I lost at least six inches of available warp.  I plan my warp lengths pretty tightly, leaving little extra, so as not to waste much of a beautiful hand-dyed yarn. 

Tomorrow I'll do the beaded hemstitching, then cut these last two pieces off the loom, clean off the loom and the floor around it.  I drop all snippets and schniddles onto the floor as I'm working, and pick it all up at the very end.  Seems more efficient.

The yellow cord divides the twill pattern of the overall scarf from the plain weave ending which serves as the base for the hemstitching.  As I work across (right to left), I gradually pull the cord to the left, leaving a neat space between the twill and the tabby so I can easily see where I need to place my stitches.  I don't remember if someone showed me this trick, or I figured it out long ago, but it makes the whole hemstitching-at-the-end process go smoothly.

The next warp for this loom is ready to go on, and the warping process will begin tomorrow.  It's a pale ecru 100% bamboo yarn, very smooth and lustrous, and will be the foundation for a series of four "pale neutral" scarves, appropriate for the warmer part of the year.  All four weft yarns will be just slightly lighter or darker than the warp, with complex twill patterning, so the overall effect will be tone on tone.  Very subtle.  I do a series along these lines once or twice a year, always a stretch for me, as I much prefer working with lots of color.  However, as an occasional venture, this kind of scheme is rather restful.