Crackle Towels and more

I finished the crackle towels, and the two pillows from the crackle towel fabric. What fun! I even was able to add buttons and buttonholes to the pillow sham. Yay for the new sewing machine's buttonhole function :)



Today I'm starting to wind a warp for some napkins for Erika. I also need to wind off some 10/2 cotton for next weekend's workshop on tablet weaving.

Towels upon Towels

The Teal/Turquoise towels are off to their new owner. Well, 4 of them are. I'm left with two that I've listed on Etsy:



And after a terrible struggle with a very weak warp yarn, I finished weaving a bunch of crackle towels. I ended up using nearly a can of hairspray to try to keep the warp threads from breaking. I also used a paper clip temple to help minimize draw in. It all worked quite well and after a disastrous first towel, I ended up with just a few broken ends here and there.

I've just washed them and they're waiting for pressing and ironing right now, but here's a preview:



I've been complaining about the lack of sun, and you'll note that picture was taken with a flash. Of course today, we get sun but I've had too much work to be able to take a break for pressing and hemming, so no pictures yet. Boo!

That does remind me, though, that I should go use the sun to take a picture of the socks I just finished knitting :)

More towels and more towels

After Christmas I had a few days at home to work on my weaving, so I finished the teal/turquoise swiss twill warp. Mimi decided she needed more attention so she snuck in and took a seat.



Here's the big pile just off the loom. I've wet finished now, but need to press and hem them still.



And finally, I got a new warp on the loom. This is a mystery cotton warp that's not particularly strong. Fortunately, it wound on like a dream, but now that I'm weaving, I'm getting a lot of broken ends on my selvedges. I have it threaded in a crackle pattern and love it! I didn't get a picture of any of the weaving though, so here's just a picture of the warp, ready to go on.



Oh, also, I got an inkle loom for Christmas and have made several bands out of carpet warp. It's so much fun! They make awesome hair bands and cat toys.

Can't see the forest for the trees...

Tree towels! I loved doing these. I may just have to put another warp on for some more. The draft came from A Weaver's Book of 8 Shaft Patterns. There's a whole section on little figures that can be made on a rosepath threading, and they turn out wonderfully on the edges of these towels.

Pardon the dark photo. It's been dark all day here and I had a hard time getting any shot that wasn't washed out by flash. The towels are ivory with a dark green border.

Busy busy

I've got a new warp on the loom. 10/2 cotton in an 8 shaft rosepath pattern to do some fingertip towels with pattern borders. I'm doing 4 of them with Christmas Trees for a pastor at Brent's church. She's requested them before Christmas for her gift giving needs.

I just got started weaving today after spending quite a bit time with my tieup plan. The Christmas tree draft requires 17 treadles, which is great if you've got a computerized loom, but not so great for a 10 treadle loom. I used the treadle reducer here but it said there's no way to convert the draft to 10 treadles without depressing more than 2 treadles at once. I messed around with the inputs a bit and got it all into 10 treadles except for one combination (shafts 2 and 6). So I went with that tie-up, and when I come to the pick for that one missing combination, I just pull the cords manually to lift the shafts. This is working out quite well since that pick only happens twice per towel.

I'm quite proud of my own cleverness (and grateful for the treadle reducer tool).

Unfortunately, after just finishing weaving one border of Christmas trees, one of my shafts fell. Now that happens sometimes if it escapes its little hook, but no! Eek! The cable broke. Booooo! Fortunately, Harrisville Designs has extra cables available on their website so I put in an order.

In the past week, I've also been putting a few things up for sale on etsy. I keep accumulating woven fabric and I had several things from the guild sale that didn't sell, so I got them all photographed and up online here.

I also pulled out some ivory felted fabric to see what I might be able to make from it. I made a sample baby bootie but I'm not quite happy with the shape so I'll set it aside and do some thinking about what I want to make.

Resurrection

I haven't quit knitting, just blogging. I'm going to make an attempt to start this up again, but with a fairly good dose of weaving content. I took a weaving class last summer and have been doing quite a lot of it lately.

I recently finished my first waffle-weave project. These towels were from a kit I got from Halcyon Yarns. The kit was to make 3 towels, but I had enough warp for an additional square dishcloth.

I've only hemmed the dishcloth so far. Even though I used sewing thread for the weft on the hems, the flare is quite pronounced compared to the draw-in of the waffles. I'm going to have to mess with the hem on the others a bit to get it to look nice.

These towels are for us. They should go nicely with the green kitchen walls!


During the WEBS anniversary sale, I picked up a few cones of 6/2 unmercerized cotton. I used almost an entire cone of the "oatmeal" color for some huck lace towels for my cousin's wedding (Coming up this Saturday!). I'll post another picture of the completed towels. I'm going to be cross stitching a monogram on some of them in white embroidery floss.

I got the lace pattern out of an Interweave Press compilation of huck lace articles from Handwoven magazine. I'm really impressed with the book. It gets into detail about the structure and how to create your own patterns. It also has instructions for a form of huck that can be done with pickup sticks on the rigid heddle loom. I'm planning to try that out with panels for an afghan one day.


And finally, the next project on the loom. I'm making some shawls for Afghans for Afghans. Syne at weavecast sent me a pre-wound warp (major time saver!) in these crazy colors. I've gotten started on sleying the reed but a diversion to go hear some jazz at the Missouri Botanical Gardens last night has put the brakes on that project for a bit. I might get some more done today, since I got some Alias dvds from Netflix in the mail yesterday.

I'm planning on doing the shawl in an undulating twill pattern from the Davison book. That'll be my first try at undulating twill and at an EPI of 30. Previously I've only done as high as 25.