Take Me Out to the Ball Game!
Marcy Petrini
November, 2021
In 2020 Major League Baseball cancelled all Minor League games. But in 2021 our M-Braves were back! The Mississippi Braves are the AA Affiliate of the Atlanta Braves.
Being outdoors, baseball games were an activity approved for controlling the virus. Alone or with friends, we were regulars at Trustmark Park.
Even though the team didn’t play its best early on, it was wonderful being back; after all, the grass is greener, the sun shines brighter and the beer tastes better at the ballpark! But the M-Braves improved through the season and won the AA Southern League Championship.
Going to the ballgames, I would sing to my husband:
Take Me Out to the Ball Game!
Imitating Carly Simon, but not very well.
One day, as we were driving to the ballpark, I thought: I should celebrate by weaving a scarf!
As I talked about in my October blog, I had been thinking about linen weaves in Davison’s book, and I thought that the one in the canvas weave chapter would be the perfect structure to depict a baseball. However, I had to modify the draft because I didn’t want the canvas blocks to be throughout the fabric or even staggered in columns.
Meanwhile I was thinking of colors: green for the grass and white stripes for the ball. I could change the drawdown to get a mixture of plain weave and pseudo-basket weave for texture, as ballparks usually have a variety of grass cuts Here is the drawdown:
Looking at it, I realized that I could use the middle thread on a shaft 2 for a red stripe. Because there is a single thread, the stripe wouldn’t be solid, but alternating warp and weft – perfect for the stitching on the baseball!
But a green fabric with white stripes, even with the red stitching, wasn’t very exciting. I started thinking about the colors of ballpark – infield is brown!
As a baseball field, the scarf didn’t have to be symmetrical. As I was working with the proportions of the colors and the structures, I had an idea of where to place the white stripes:
a foul ball
a bunt
an infield hit
and a line drive!
I used 20/2 silk for the green, brown and red; to make the white stand out more, I used 8/2 silk.
Finally, it was time to weave; using the green of the warp for weft made the fabric somewhat flat. I tried a variety of green yarns, and found that a 10/2 Tencel®, color sage, worked well.
Here is the Take Me Out to the Ball Game scarf and close-up.
By the time the scarf was done, the season was over. But that’s OK, I wouldn’t be wearing a silk scarf to a ballgame with 100 degrees weather!
Happy Weaving!
Marcy