Towels Off Loom

The six towels (and a towelette from extra warp) are off the loom. Here are pictures of them, some from the "front" and some from the "back:"


And, here's a close-up picture of one of them:


I was happy with them as they came off the loom, but when I washed them I got a lot of tracking and the patterns became quite muddled. You can still see them from a distance, but up close, the pattern gets lost. Quite a disappointment. I used a combination of cotlin and 8/2 unmercerized cotton from a mill-end batch. Next time I may try mercerized cotton for the colored yarn, although I'm not sure which of the yarns caused the problem. Maybe next time I won't do six towels before I see how they wash.

Towels

I've been out of town and not weaving for a few days but I just finished towel #6. I warped for six towels but still have warp left for another, possibly shorter, 7th towel. Here's a picture of the first one:



This isn't my favorite pattern of the ones I've done - I'll post more when they're off the loom. I need to get the 7th one woven tomorrow and finish at least a few to put in our gallery on Tuesday, which is jury day.

I joined another guild - three wasn't enough. For years I resisted joining the Weaver's Guild of Greater Baltimore because they meet the night before the Central Pennsylvania Guild of Handweavers and I just can't bring myself to go to two guild meetings in twelve hours - one 45 minutes away and the other 2 hours away. But I also felt bad about not belonging to a close and very active guild. Some day I'll find the secret of 36 hour days.

Well, let's give this blog thing another try. I seem to stop and go in spurts.

The crackle scarves have been off the loom a long time - one is actually sold and gone. Maybe I'll post pictures of them sometime later just for closure.

I now have a warp on the Macomber loom to make six towels. The warp is half cotton and half cotlin, both in a natural color. Here is a picture of how I thread the loom when going back-to-front.



I hold all the shafts up by sticking a strong rod under the metal lifters at the castle. Then I still need to use a really short stool so the heddle eyes are about at my eye level. I tried a regular chair but it hurt my back. Of course, the lower stool hurts my knees, but not as much as the other one hurts my back.

My studio is in the lower level of the house and it's winter, so the room is about 5 degrees colder than the rest of the house, hence the heater blowing warm air on my feet.

The towels will be a set of fancy 16-shaft twills. I'm actually weaving the third one today, but will save the pictures for later in the week.

When the Cardboard Falls

I use corrugated cardboard rolls to pack my warp beam and one of the most satisfying parts of a project is when the cardboard falls off and thunks onto the floor. That means the project is almost finished and ready to come off the loom.

I recently heard about something called rosin paper, though, and bought a big roll at Home Depot and plan to use it instead of the cardboard. It is a thinner paper, but very sturdy. More on this in some later post.

I got my crackle scarves off the loom last week but don't plan to post pictures until I get them finished and washed. They are quite different. On one I treadled 24 picks of each block A to H and back to A and repeated that for the whole scarf. I got a nice diamond an X pattern. On the other one, I had a regular pattern but I varied the picks per block and I did five blocks in sequence, then backed up three, then forward again ... On that one I got a series of wobbly V's. The patterns are both pretty subtle, though, and I'm anxious to see how they look when washed. But not anxious enough to be in a huge hurry to twist fringe ;-)

Next project, in the planning stages, is a bunch of tea towels in an 8/2 Cotton/linen blend using different fancy twill patterns. I haven't decided whether to use 8-shaft or 16-shaft twills. The latter, of course, have more variety, but they probably mean I have to crawl under the Macomber in the middle of the project to change the tie-up. That prospect alone heavily favors the 8-shaft twills.

Snakes!

For most of you I don't think finding a nest of snakes in your yard would exactly make your day, but today it made mine. My wife found these two cuties snuggling in a nest they made in one of our large azalea bushes (click on the photo for a larger picture):


I like having snakes in the yard. My friend Lisa Couturier, a fine writer, wrote a great book of nature essays called The Hope of Snakes: And Other Tales of the Urban Landscape. I enjoyed reading it and you might, too.