First steps to weaving my own shawl

I have been wanting to weave my own shawl ever since I inherated a small table loom from my grandmother. I actually own two, I also got one years ago from an eldery woman in the neighbourhood. As a young girl I always loved to weave and also had my very own small loom.

Somehow I never got around to, or never had the courage to start on this project. This winter, I always said it was a winter project, I am serious!
As one of my crafts is natural dyeing, the wool that I wool be using will be dyed with natural dyes, by me.

I bought this really nice and soft lamswool from wollknoll.de which is quite thick for the weft.

And thinner and stronger woollen yarn, also from wollknoll, for the warp.

Both yarns will be dyed in two colors, madder red/orange and walnut husk brown, to create a blocked pattern.

I try to keep the whole project as easy as possible as it is my first serious attempt at weaving.


500 grams of lamswool.

My electric kettle, which can hold about 29 liters of water.

After soaking the wool for 12 hours in water and mordating it with alum, it is ready to go into the dyebath. In this case madder, 500 grams of madder for 500 grams of wool. The madder has also been soaked in water overnight.

Today I bought the book wrtitten by Paula Dietz, Schering and inslag. For directions on how to set up the loom and how to weave, because frankly I haven't got an idea of what I am doing ;-)