Show your team spirit... Weave a scarf for the sport fan or fans in your life! The Team Colors Weave-along starts Wednesday, November 14th and we want you to join us! Don't forget, starting the 14th you can download the pattern you love most, or all 4. If you haven’t ordered your yarn already, do it today (Jagger Yarn and Halcyon Yarn) so you can join us on the 14th. If you have your yarn, wind your skeins! The weave-along will help you perfect your weaving skills while weaving a scarf that shows your team spirit. While we wait for the official start, read this by designer/weaver Elisabeth Hill about the process she followed to design the 4 Team Colors Scarves.
My design process often starts with yarn—beautiful, colorful yarn—and these Team Colors Scarves are no exception. The two yarns I used—Jagger Spun’s 4/6 Mousam Falls and Halcyon’s Victorian 2-ply wool—are very different, each with exceptional characteristics. The Mousam Falls yarn is a 4-ply, Aran-weight, superwash Merino that weighs in at 840 ypp, while the Victorian 2-ply is a sport-weight, that weighs in at a bouncy 1,485 ypp. Both have lovely textures. The Mousam Falls is soft and squishy, and the Victorian 2-ply is firmer and a little scratchy until it is washed, after which it blossoms into a light, soft dream.
Jagger Spun’s Mousam Falls yarn in red, white and blue shows your team spirit.
After my yarn-petting session and after hearing that the chosen teams were the New England Patriots (Mousam Falls) and the Denver Nuggets (Victorian 2-ply), I started thinking about what kind of scarf a sports fan might need. The words that came to me were “bold” and “easy.” If you’re a fan who is committed enough to weave a team scarf, you want it to boldly show your team colors and spirit while being easy and quick enough to get it (or more!) woven by game time. I decided to weave scarves that are, when finished, about 10 by 70 inches. For Patriots fans, that size will come in handy for bundling up during the chilly New England football season. For Nuggets fans, it will be wide enough to represent their team even high up in the bleachers!
Support the Nuggets with this home game scarf woven in Halcyon’s Victorian 2-ply wool
Once the yarns and general size were decided on, I started searching the internet for pictures of team uniforms and color schemes. I found a site that gives color codes for all the teams in the NFL, NBA and other professional leagues, as well as teams in the NCAA, and I found that Wikipedia has great images of home- and away-team uniforms. For example, for the Patriots, the Wiki site is en.wikipedia.org. Using these online resources, I created a digital “mood board” by clipping images from these sites, clipping yarn images from the Halcyon and Jagger Spun sites, and assembling them into a document on my computer. I found that both yarn lines have great color ranges that allow me to come up with home and away designs that resonate with the color proportions in the uniforms.
For each team, I designed two scarves: one for home games and one for away games. For each team, I also designed one scarf with a modern, asymmetrical design, and one with a more traditional plaid. All of the scarves are unisex (for families of sports fans), very quick and easy to get on the loom, and easily adaptable to other team colors. I chose an 8-dent reed and made the color blocks even numbers of ends so that there would be no fussiness in direct warping, which is the method I highly recommend for ease and speed on the rigid-heddle loom. With mood boards and yarn in hand, I was ready to get the scarves on my loom and weave (with spirit!).
What’s not to love about these scarves? Wouldn’t you love to give one to someone special in your life? Join us on the 14th! Go team!
Weave well,
Susan