I’ve been experimenting with Crackle Weave in preparation for the class I will teach in May.  

I love how the colours look together on the warping board.  I use elastic bands to hold the yarn on the warping board until I am ready to chain it off.

These two scarves are in a new silk from Jane Stafford Textiles, “Hot Line of Hand-dyed 20/2 Tussah Silk”.  In these scarves I used three colours: Tiger Lilly, Chocolate Cherry, and Persephone’s Pip.  This yarn has a beautiful hand, soft and lustrous, and wove up well in a four-shaft Crackle weave at 20 ends per inch.

In the “Traditional Crackle Weave” scarf, I used the same yarns as pattern weft, and a fine 30/2 silk in gold for the tabby weft.

Traditional Crackle on the loom.

Classic Crackle on the loom.

Traditional Crackle weave – close up.  It has a flatter, smoother, profile, and the colour blocks stand out clearly in columns.

For the Classic Crackle Weave I used three colours in Zephyr wool-silk: Chrome, Mahogany, and Garnet.  In this method of weaving the colours cycle through with no tabby used.  By changing the colour order, the blocks appear.

Classic Crackle weave close up.  It has a comfortable, cushy profile, and reminds me of a patchwork quilt.

So, two distinct scarves are made on the same warp.  References for these weaves are “Classic Crackle and More” by Susan Wilson (2011), and “Crackle Weave” by Mary Snyder (1961)