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.

Time consuming projects

These are the new tea towels on the loom.  They are a huck variation pattern.  Not only are they fairly quick to weave off, but they look much more complicated than they are.   The bonus is that the weft colour has a significant influence on how the towels look when done.  Each towel will look quite different depending on the weft colour chosen.

I'm betting lots of people have done these towels.  The pattern was in an issue of Handwoven Magazine a number of years ago, and here is a similar, if not the same project free to download.   I'm sure everyone and their sister has made these towels.  I even was inspired colour wise by a guild project a couple of years ago.  The grey and navy works with so many colours and the light and dark stripes add a lot of interest.     One towel down, and only 4 more to go.

 

A while ago I made this hat.  It's knitted and then felted.   I made some proddy flowers for a demo I'm doing and they were perfect to display on the hat.  It makes the hat really fun.  Right now the flowers are just  pinned on the hat with straight pins.  The hat is thick enough that the tips bury in completely.   Once I feel comfortable going out to get crafts supplies, I will get some pin backs and finish the flowers off properly.  Alternatively, I could just stitch the flowers down permanently.   

I wore the hat on my walk the other day and it was super warm, despite not covering my ears.  Like really, winter appropriately warm.    Yay for that!

 

We did our first sap boil this weekend.  We had about 120 litres of sap, which boiled down to almost 3 1/2 litres of maple syrup.  It should have been a full 3 1/2, but I misread the thermometer and I finished it at a degree higher than it should have been.   Sadly, only 3 of the 500 ml jars sealed, so tomorrow or Tuesday, I will empty them into a pot, re-heat them and then reseal them in clean jars.   

It's really good this year and my temperatures mistake means it's super thick.   I admit that I licked the spatula when I was done scraping the last of the filtered syrup into the pot for reheating, before canning.   YUM!

It feels like I should have gotten more done this week, but all of these projects took way more time than anticipated.  Well, the syrup boiling always takes a long time, but the flowers were part of a demo which will be done with a power point. It always takes me more time than expected to put one together.  Dressing the loom is always a bit of a slow project.   Too many distractions :)