Weaving: The pros and cons

A friend recently gave me a quick walk-through on one of her weaving looms, and I was intrigued. It only took me about four hours to create a sizeable dishtowel out of cotton yarn. The same dishtowel would have taken about 10-20 hours of knitting to produce something of a similar size. That's one thing weaving definitely has going for it: Speed!

Weaving also lets you create fascinating and intricate effects with color and texture that are not possible with straight-up knitting alone. Because you can use different yarns for the warp versus the weft, you can blend colors and styles in an almost infinite number of dazzling variations. If you factor in being able to use yarns of different fibers and thicknesses, the hardest part becomes making your selection. SO MANY OPTIONS.

However, if you happen to have a big stash of sock yarn, all you need is a loom and some basic tutorials and you can be knocking out beautiful woven scarves in no time flat. Particularly considering how much time it can take to knit something in a fingering weight sock yarn! There are so many gorgeous sock yarns out there, and weaving is a great way to feature these. (Not to mention whittling down your stash.)

On the down side, there is the cost and the storage space required. I have a very small home, and I don't know where I would put even a smallish tabletop loom. (I don't have a table.) A great affordable option for beginning weavers is this little Cricket loom, which you can find for around $150 online. Even so, $150 is $150, right?

I still haven't decided if I would really use a loom enough to justify the cost. I have also put a lot of effort into bringing my yarn stash under control, so I don't have a lot of yarn looking for a potential project. If I had a bigger yarn stash, I would definitely get a little Cricket loom and start weaving.

Image courtesy Flickr/doodleleaf