More miscellanea

After the last post I realized I received one more photogenic Christmas gift.

Cool, isn’t it?!

And here are shots of those finished towels. Reminder, I used 8/4 cotton for both warp and weft, sett at 12 EPI.

8/4 all over huck, white weft

8/4 striped weft, all over huck

After those 2 all-over huck towels, I tried one alternating huck treadling with plain weave treadling. It wasn’t clear on the loom, but alternating huck and plain weave ended up creating a sort of waviness to the towel, since the shrinkage wasn’t consistent. I *should* have been able to anticipate that. Sigh.

8/4 huck and plain weave alternating, white weft

Then I wove one in plain weave. As other weavers have reported, LOTS of tracking. (For non-weavers, tracking in plain weave is when it appears that there is texture and/or twill lines that don’t really exist.) I actually like it, but others may not.

8/4 plain weave, striped weft

Then I got tired of the white weft and used yellow for the last 2 towels.

8/4 yellow weft, alternating huck and plain weave

8/4 yellow weft, alternating huck and plain weave, alternate tie up

That last towel is my least favorite.

So, would I use 8/4 again for towels? The answer is maybe. I like the ‘beefy’ feel of the towels, although they are a bit stiff. I’ve now put them through the washer and dryer twice, once on their own and once with a load of my clothes. I may do a third. We’ll see.

On the next-up front, it was time to audition wefts for the planned circle shawl with the hand painted warp. I was surprised by what I saw/learned.

From bottom to top

• 8/4 white weft, simply to spread the warp cuz I had some left on a bobbin after the towels;
• 8/2 black tencel weft;
• 8/2 sienna tencel weft, which is what I’d sort of planned for, but which makes the weave structure totally disappear AND doesn’t show off the lovely warp yarn to its advantage;
• 5/2 golden mercerized cotton weft, since I saw that I wanted a yarn that was similar grist to the bamboo-cotton warp;
• 5/2 purple bamboo weft; and
• 8/2 black tencel weft doubled, since I liked the black best so far but a thicker yarn.

You can probably guess which I’m going for. Or maybe not. It’s that last one – doubled 8/2 black tencel. Now back to the loom.