Virtual Sheep to Shawl

First time trying one of these; with distancing, it ended up being a sort of relay with the different participants. As the team weaver, I was measuring and dying the (purchased yarn) warp while the other three members were preparing the fleece and spinning it up. 

Measuring out 275 ends of 100" each. .

Need to remember to allow for shrinkage on dyeing.

The spinners dropped off four full bobbins of a yarn.
I used 3+.

The warp is Harrisville Shetland yarn; I dyed it with Dharma's "forest green" fiber reactive dye. The weft is grey/"natural-colored" Romney ewe fleece, spun in the grease. Most of it was done as a 2-ply "thick & thin", to maximize consistency among the 3 spinners' singles, with one bobbin of Navajo (3) ply that worked out to the same diameter.

Finnish Birdseye Twill is fun.

I used a Finnish Birdseye threading (4-3-2-1-4-3-4-1-2-3) on my 4-harness table loom, because it's a pattern I enjoy in two-colors. Within that, I opted for the zig-zag, since it's fun and the treadling is easy to remember when working at speed (treadle 12, 14, 43, 32--just a 2-2 twill). The warp had 275 ends; I used a 12 sett with 2 threads floating for selvedges on each side.

A (1) shawl, woven in a single 4-hour stretch.

To finish, I made a simple two-level fringe using square knots, then steam-pressed the whole shawl with an iron. The steam-pressing is fairly fast, and I like that it doesn't shrink the final piece as much as more vigorous fulling/finishing processes.

The handspun has some lovely subtle color gradations.

Zig-zags are fun.

The completed shawl is 20" wide and 72" long, with 2" of fringe along the short sides. It involved three spinners (who did all the fiber prep, spinning, and plying), and one weaver (warping, weaving, finishing). Prep (dying/warping) was not counted for the final time; my timed part was 4 hours of weaving plus 40 minutes of tying fringe, trimming threads, and steam-pressing the final product.