Yep, I was

Crazy, that is. I wove some more on the rayon chenille FLW warp, and decided it would not do what I wanted when it was all done, and that I could spend weeks weaving on something that wouldn’t make me happy. So I cut it off and tossed out the yarn. Paraphrasing Laura Fry, one of my weaving gurus, “Hey, it’s only string. And your time is worth way more than that string.” It’s all out in my trash bin already.

I immediately put on another warp to get my head straight. It made me happy to put on this multi-colored towel warp. Cheryl, a really kind local artist, told me she had a bag of yarn that she’d give me. Having no idea if the yarn was ends of acrylic knitting yarn or something I might actually use, I brought her a loaf of homemade bread when I went to pick up the yarn. I was overwhelmed when I saw that it was probably 10 pounds of coned cotton yarn in various sizes and colors. A loaf of bread was insufficient and I wanted to make Cheryl a towel with it, so that’s what went on the loom.

The red, blue, and yellow warp stripes were yarn I had, the rest is part of the gift. I like the apparent complexity of this 4 harness weave.

I also really like the way the thick-and-thin multi-colored yarn makes even a simple tabby weave more interesting, creating irregular waves across the warp.

After these two towels I used an easy straight treadling – 1 through 4 – repeated. I liked that, too.

For the last towel I really wanted to highlight the weaving pattern of the first one, the towel that Cheryl will get, by using a darker solid color weft. I went with a medium blue. See that threading error next to the blue stripe on the left? I didn’t notice it till this towel, and wasn’t about to change it then as it doesn’t affect structure. But I wouldn’t ever submit these towels for jurying.

I’ve woven all 4 towels, hemmed and wet finished them, and will put Cheryl’s towel in the mail today. It makes me very happy.

Last night I spent some time needle weaving a treadling error in one of the rayon chenille shawls I wove in August. Some missed threads. Sigh. Not only do I really dislike needle weaving, it’s SO much better to find the error before the piece is wet finished. I’ve now got the shawl back in the washer to wash & then dry again and hope that my ‘fix’ doesn’t stand out like a sore thumb. We’ll see.

Oh, yeah. I like to have little things for people to buy in my booth. So I did some more rep weave mug rugs, this time with 8/4 cotton rug warp. The 5 on the left are too wide; after I wove them I cut them off, removed some warp threads, and re-threaded the reed. I also rethreaded the blue & green alternating threads on the left side of the warp so that they were a mirror image of those on the right. I’m much happier with the 2 on the right.

I also finished off the warp of bookmarks I’d put on the Missouri loom for the library demo. All but 1 are woven with bits of hand painted yarn I have left over from projects; people like them best.