August already?!

Honestly, I have no idea how I can seem (to myself at least) so busy and have so little to show for it. How does an hour, a day, a week just fly by?

Within two days of posting about my handwoven hugs in my BuyNothing group, I got 10 requests! The three July hugs were picked up by their new owners or family members by the end of two more days. And I have people waiting for my August & September hugs, plus the first person in line for October. I’m SOOOO glad I posted there!

I’d already decided that I needed to weave some colorful towels for my Etsy store – I haven’t been able to update that with new items in months. 🙁 So I decided on returning to the polka dots designed by the talented Susan Pogue.

How fun does this twist of thrums looks? All I can think of is Fruit Stripe gum. Although I liked their commercials, and could still sing their jingle for you, I wasn’t the biggest fan of the actual gum flavors.

Anyway, it didn’t take me long to weave those towels, but it took forever for me to hem them and photograph them. I was too busy! (Don’t ask what I was doing.)

I did get them listed in my Etsy shop today.

Oh, yeah, and I spent 3-4 days learning about loom-controlled shibori. First was a full day in class at the Weaving & Fiber Arts Center with a great teacher. Then there was the time at home: measure the warp, beam & thread the loom, and weave. I used three different threadings, so that meant threading the loom three times. And the pickup I did was MUCH slower than lifting shafts, even though this was all done on my little table loom.

After the weaving, the pattern/pull threads all had to be pulled, really tightly, and tied. I was amazed at how long that process took. Here’s what my 9 samples looked like when that piece of work was done.

Then back to the Weaving Center for the second day of class to do the dyeing. Then, of course, opening them up, rinsing, drying, pressing, and photographing. Ok, maybe it was more like 4-5 days all told. Anyway, here are my results. In each triptych you’ll see what the fabric looked like after it was taken off the loom, and then both the ‘front’ and the ‘back’ of the cloth. My warp and most plain weave weft was an undyed 5/2 bamboo. The pattern wefts were mostly embroidery floss. I’ve noted differences from that in the appropriate photos.

The blue pattern weft in the samples immediately above and below is rep weave filler.

The dark plain weave weft in the next photo is navy mercerized cotton. Then there’s some ribbon yarn for the pattern weft.

The darker weft below is a variegated cotton flake in tan-to-brown.

This was quite a learning experience. Will I do more shibori at some point in the future? I don’t know. But I think can assure you it won’t be in a piece I intend to sell – there’s way too much of a time commitment involved, and I don’t know that I could charge enough to make it worth it.

I also get the warp wound, beamed, and threaded for the August hugs. I’m loving it!