Trying not to snort the chenille

I'm very happy to report that I finished Payton's Prairie Boots. And now that those are complete, I can put my sewing kit away for a very long time because I'm sick of sewing.







Amazingly, the buttons ended up being nice and straight, and they actually fit into the button holes.










And, I've received many nice compliments about how even the stitching was for the soles.

Alright, enough of me gushing.

So, flash-back to Thanksgiving weekend. The same weekend as I bought the yarn and slipper bottom kit for Payton's Prairie Boots, I also picked up some chenille for Chuck's mom Mary. We were shopping at the French Creek Fiber Arts shop in Avon, OH. Mary dug right into the sale bin while Peggy, the shop owner, and I were busy color matching various wools. Looking at the pile of yarn on the table, I felt pretty satisfied that we had found all of the right yarns I needed to get started. Mary came over to the table and joined us with a wad of chenille from Cherry Tree Farm in hand.

I had never seen a super-bulky chenille before and looking at it immediately made my hands ache while thoughts of absurd size 15 needles filled my head. "Don't you think this would make a nice looking scarf?" she asked us.

"Um, yeah," I replied, a little skeptical as to where this was all going. "I think I can make a scarf out of this, if you'd like one." Peggy looked over at me with a somewhat questioning glance. I didn't help that I had also told her about Milo's stocking and the multiple pairs of slippers I had been working on; so, seeing the large amount of yarn she had just helped me pick out for the boots, she probably thought I was a little nuts. Turning to Mary, I caught on and asked, "Waaiiiiit a minute....you don't want it for this Christmas, do you?"

"No. Just whenever will be fine," she whimpered; I think deep down she really did want them for this Christmas, but didn't want to say knowing all of the other projects I had already lined up. Regardless, the bulky-ass wad of chenille joined the rest of the wool in my shopping bag.


Well, flash-forward to this past Sunday. While at Woven Art for our monthly book club, I described the chenille I had bought to Nancy, with thoughts of weaving rather than knitting it. Since she always has a positive outlook on these things, her reply was "Of course you can weave with it!" Inspired by that, I returned to her shop on Wednesday to pick out a good warp yarn and get started on a scarf. I chose to use Plymouth Yarn's Plymouth Tweed for the warp. '

As I was warping my loom, Nancy wound the chenille for me into two large balls. "Wow," she exclaimed. "You're gonna need a dust mask when working with this!" Not exactly grasping what she meant, I just smiled over at her and kept on with what I was doing. Once my loom was ready, I decided to hang out and weave a few rows. After only a couple, I became very annoyed with the amount of fluff that had become airborne with each pass of the shuttle.


"Ugh, you weren't kidding!" I told her as we both admired what I had accomplished in a relatively short period of time. I just hope that the dye Cherry Tree Hill uses in non-toxic as I'm sure I'm inhaling a good deal of it. So, if I suddenly fall ill, please tell the doctor that it was due to chenille poisoning!