Finished towels!

Spent the weekend hemming and pressing. These are the square hand towels with loop in the center from Favorite Scandinavian Projects to Weave. Sorry about the funky picture. The only place I had to hang them was in the hall bathroom, and the hall bathroom has LED plant lights so the color is off. I made some changes in fiber and color but otherwise followed the draft. I used 8/2 cottolin for everything. Most of the warp was medium blue and medium green, with fuschia and blue in the center stripe, surrounded by a stripe of medium green and light green. I had a plan, kind of, and then I winged it when I ran out of medium blue.

I made 4 towels, each with a different weft color. Light green, then lightish blue, then fuschia, then black. I wasn't so sure about fuschia in the weft, but I wound up liking it quite a bit. I washed them in hot water to get any shrinkage out of the way. They came out soft and drapey, a very nice weight for hand towels. They are not perfect, but they are for me (not for sale) and I am very pleased with how they came out.

I had some trouble maintaining a steady beat here and there, and not all of the unevenness washed out. Also was tricky figuring out how to weave the loops. They were not at all even at first. I got better at it, and just today got some tips from another weaver about how she got her loops so nice. I think I will wind another warp for these towels again soon.

The next thing I have planned for the floor loom is shower curtains for the same bathroom. I have 4 cones of white in different weights for the warp. That will give them a nice texture. For the weft, I am thinking about trying saori. If I keep to a restricted color palette and let the colors come and go throughout, I think I will wind up with something interesting and harmonious. More blues and greens in varying values, and maybe a pop of contrast here and there, something to jazz it up. We will see!

I also hemmed the blue and red towels for D and J, they are in the washer now. I will post a pic of those next time.

Have a great week!

BCW Towel Exchange towels

We finally had our exchange last Monday, after postponing several times. Here's the ones I wove on my 8 shaft table loom. My first warp with random stripes, and my first attempt at plaid (also random). I brought the plaid one in to exchange, but the striped one stayed at home because the bad weaving didn't improve in the wash. ;)

That's too bad, because I really liked the pattern of the striped one. I noticed that my friend Jane's blanket had a cool weave structure, so I charted it one day. It would take 12 shafts to weave as it is, but I shrank it down to 8 shafts and added color. I love the pinwheel effect! I'm going to try that again in thicker yarn for a baby blanket or something similar.

The plaid one was the first towel picked. I really like it and I'm very pleased someone else did, too. It just came together. 

I chose one of my favorite twill drafts from the past study topic and reversed it every now and then, changing colors as I felt the need to.

Fruitful weekend

No photos today, but progress!

* Finished the first of 2 socks for Finn, the other one only needs ribbing.

* Knitted Poul Erik from Kunststrik 2 over the weekend, a 40 round little gem that will get blocked tonight.

* Wove off the magical silk noil warp that I was beginning to believe was getting longer the more I wove. It did actually have an end, after all.

* Counted heddles as I moved them around for my next warp. I'll need 600 for the towels that are due April 5th. I have: (drum roll, please)

  607!    

which means I don't have to drop $20 on another hundred heddles (yet).

I've been kicking around the idea of weaving a warp per month this year, but I'm still undecided. I had been weaving for an hour every weekday for quite a while, but for the past year or so that just doesn't happen. Goals rally do help me get things done, but I don't want to wind up feeling oppressed be deadlines.

For this week, I'd like to finish Finn's other sock, make it through chart 4 of the butterfly scarf, wind the towel warp, and dress the loom. If I get the silk noil gathering threads pulled, that'll be extra credit.

Playing with a Straight Threading

In the Handweaver's Guild of Boulder, there is a Complex Weavers interest group. I decided to join when it started up even though I was a pretty new weaver. Nothing wrong with having the most to learn, especially when many of the others have been weaving for decades.

These ladies are amazing! They know their way around rules I haven't even learned yet.

Anyway, we've been working our way through Bonnie Inouye's book Exploring Multishaft Design this year. The first 6 chapters deal with what you can do design wise on a straight threading. So I put on a long warp and made mugrugs for chapter 1, twills. Some of the liftplans I made looked pretty good, so I wound a 7 yard warp pf 6/2 cotton and wove some towels. The fringe turned out to be a bad idea with that particular yarn, but overall I'm quite pleased. I got to play with pattern, and color too. I'm still figuring out how color works in weaving, mostly by imitation and my own trial and error.

I wove these in the spring but didn't get them out of the camera until last week.

8 Shaft Huck Towels

This past March, I took a class on weaving towels from Susan Wilson. It was a round robin where each of us threaded a different weave structure and /or fiber that's good for towels, then wove a sample from each one. There were also several lectures peppered throughout where she talked about the design tools you would use for each type of weave structure. I was very interested in working some more with 8 shaft huck, so I wound a 15 yard warp of 6/2 unmercerized cotton, got out my graph paper and notes, and went to town. I came up with about 12 drawdowns and converted them to liftplans (I weave on a table loom, no treadles).

I had such a good time playing around with the liftplans and weaving each one several ways, by the time I made it through 15 yards of warp I had only used the first 5 designs. I have another 15 yard warp ready to go so I can weave some of the rest of them.

I used the same 6/2 cotton for the weft on about half of the towels. For the rest, I used 7/2 inmercerized cotton in a slightly darker, duller green. I love the brightness of the 1 color towels, but I also love the depth of the 2 color towels. It makes the huck spots "pop" a bit, too.

I also learned to double-check the liftplan after transcribing from the drawdown. I had a few "surprise" patterns where I had missed a shaft on a particular pattern row. I still liked the pattern I wound up with, but I did have to look at what I had done and compare it to the graph to figure out where I had gone astray. Good learning opportunity, but If I had been weaving somthing that was supposed to be a certain way it would have been frustrating. I also found that all of my designs had been symmetrical. The ones with missing shafts were not, and I both liked them and found them interesting. So, next time I'm going to try drawing patterns that are deliberately asymmetrical just to see if I can. ;)


All in all, I wound up with 21 towels each about 12x22", except for one that came out much shorter (I must have mismeasured). They are all different. I can hardly wait to see what the next warp will reveal!