Don't Do What I Did!

Way before my hip replacement, I planned a project to put on the loom for my recovery. I'd totally forgotten that it would be weeks before I'd be cleared to weave again, so it was kind of a useless idea.  In the end though, it meant I had the warp almost ready to go when I needed it months later.

  It was 2/8 cotton and I did stripes, navy with painted warp stripes in between.   The painting of the warp was very successful.  It was a beautiful warp.  I started winding the navy stripes but only got halfway done before climbing up and down to the basement to my warping board  became difficult.   The project was left, semi-forgotten in a bag on the back of my desk chair.   Eventually though, time passed and I realized that I had 3 1/2 weeks left before the guild sale.    Discussion at the last meeting suggested that our stock of tea towels was low, so I decided to get this project on the loom.   It's an easy to weave project, the ubiquitous "friendship towels", from Schacht.  It's a delightful project, fun and fast, and also easy to change up the colour for each towel.  They've also provided the draft free, which was really nice of them.

See the twisting!  The navy was so much worse!

So step one -  When I dye warps I put tight figure 8 ties in the cross and also one at each end, to keep the yarns from slipping.   However all the rest of the figure 8 ties are tied loosely in a bow, so that a) it will be easy to dye the whole length without those white marks from a tight choke tie and b) using a bow so that when the warp is dry, I can tighten up the figure 8 ties to keep the warp contained and straight.  

  First mistake was not retying the figure 8 ties to make firm choke ties.   This allowed the painted warp to twist around itself, making for not so fun warping.   Secondly, I know that I painted the warp in a particular order.  I neither marked each of the painted warp chains with the order number, nor did I take proper notes.  I have a basic explanation of the project, a quick diagram with numbers etc, but absolutely none of the details which tell me what I was truly planning at the time.  My third mistake when starting this project, is that while I wound each stripe in the painted warp separately, I didn't do that for the navy stripes.  I wound about half of it in one bunch, and then because I neglected to note how many warp threads I'd wound, when I went to finish winding the warp 3 weeks ago, I figured it was easier to wind the second half of the navy stripes in one bunch too.   I'd counted my navy warp 3 times, and had 3 different numbers, so took the average and wound the rest of the stripes together as one warp.  This wouldn't have been such an issue if the navy cotton yarn hadn't been really over twisted, so it wound around itself something fierce and was so difficult to work with.   

painted warp and navy stripes, black weft.

After much fussing, winding, a few crossed threads and some broken threads from the over spun yarns twisting in the heddles, the warp was on the loom.  This was not a fun process and if I didn't absolutely love that warp, if it wasn't maybe 7 feet long, so 6 tea towels, so a lot of thread to waste, I might have cut it off.  Once it was on the loom though, it was very pretty.  I wove off two in a teal colour, one in a lighter green which was nice but not spectacular, two in purple which were awesome and one in black which is stunning.   I hadn't realized that I had any 2/8 black cotton in my stash or their would have been more of them.  I used all the purple I had.  My initial thoughts were to use the navy for the weft, thinking the navy on navy would give a sold stripe against the painted stripes.  However to my eye, because the navy is a broken twill, it just looked a bit messy to me.

1- take lots of notes, even if you don't think you'll need them.   If you put that project aside for a bit, you'll really want to know those details that don't jump out at you, including warp length, that the yarn is over twisted or delicate or just fine etc.

2- document numbers - how many are in each stripe, how long, did you add extra threads for use in breakage etc.

3 - don't wait until last minute and have to rush.  Give yourself time to enjoy the process. 

4- sometimes it's best to wind your stripes in the right number of threads to facilitate that enjoying the process bit :)

The towels have been washed and dried.  They are waiting for me to hem them.    I'm happy with the outcome.