Weaving for Me, Weaving for You

I finished the long piano topper in a red and cream checked pattern.

I like the look. For some reason it is tighter on the side edges and therefore puckered in the cloth, but that would probably go away if I washed it. But I was eager to put it on the piano, and I'm really not picky about the puckering. I'll wash it when it gets dusty.

Frankly, I'm not picky about the stuff I make for myself. I shrug off errors and set something on top of mistakes and don't stress about it. It makes little difference to me. However ... however ... I'm extremely picky about stuff that I sell.

This piano topper has a couple of weft floats visible. See that gray one below? I had to hand-feed the gray yarn because I only have two shuttles. That's why I made mistakes on the gray weft.

When weaving, if you make a mistake with your weft threads, you can't always see it on the top of the weaving, and you have to lift up your loom and peer under to see the bottom of the weaving. Who does that? The "top" of this weaving (where you work) has many little thread ends showing. Usually I would wash the piece and snip those ends flush to the fabric so they wouldn't show. (There were so many this time because I had to change colors so often for the plaid.) Instead of washing and snipping, I simply turned the fabric upside down, so the ends are underneath. But ... that means that the weft float errors are showing. I set my metronome or piano light on top of them and went my merry way :)

I'm more of a gray/black/melancholy-colors kinda gal, so this bold attempt at
 red/white checkered in my home is a challenge to the inner woman.

Now I'm working on another scarf. I spent time online looking at projects other weavers make. I love, love, love the look of some scarves in which the warp threads are varied in color and texture. It takes time to warp the loom with all that, but I felt it would be worth it. And look at the loveliness I warped up:

 If I could've kept the scarf looking  just like that, without any weaving at all, I would've. Unfortunately, strings alone do not a scarf make :(
Here are the yarns I chose from my varied stash for that warp:

A blue theme with lots of texture and shine variation.

This one has sequins and silver.

A simple, silky baby blue

A thicker (but not bulky) variegated yarn with silver and a good bit of bounce in it.

Ribbon yarn I bought at a temptingly dangerous yarn store in New Bern.

One more: The darkest yarn I chose was just a wad of thrift store yarn, two strands together with lots of blingy interest. When I warped only two slots of this yarn ... this is all I had left.

Okay, so I warped all that on, and I started to weave.

Ignore the beige yarn and the early thicker blues.

 I chose this 3-weight baby yarn for my weft. I was hoping it would just blend in with the gorgeous warp yarns, letting them dominate and being a background.

It did not comply as much as I'd hoped. It's more blue and less silvery.

 It is pretty, Adam said so. And I like it okay. I was just so enchanted by the warp look that the blue was a bit of a let-down. I want the warp threads to stand out, so I decided to begin integrating lots of deliberate floats, like this:

 That's three strands of the sequin yarn.
You use a "pick-up stick" to do floats like this. I'm using an old plastic ruler as my pick-up stick. I insert it behind the heddle, lifting up the yarn strands I want to stand out and sliding the pick-up stick right behind the heddle. See?

Those sequin strands are lifted up. I do this only when the heddle is in the "up" position.
Here's the look it's giving to the scarf. If you search you can find lots of patterned floats in there. On the reverse side of the fabric, the floats go the other way -- they are weft floats.

I hope to finish this scarf today. I'm wondering exactly what color of weft yarn would have produced the look I wanted -- accentuating the warp selections and down-playing the weft. Not sure how that works yet, but I'm doing a lot of reading online. There are articles and videos dedicated just to yarn selection.