Towel Season

It's that time of the year again...time to make some towels for the Cyber Dish Towel Exchange. There is still time to sign up- the sign up deadline is August 30th. Towels must be woven, hemmed, mailed and received by the end of September. I did it last year and got some real fun towels back. But I must admit - I liked my towels the best. The magentas, reds, and purples were quite a vibrant color palette.

This time I am going to use the same yarn as last year, a cotton linen blend from Webs plus add some new lighter and mid- value greens to punch out those magenta/purple colors even more than last year. I bought some cottolin from Loominesce which I will be trying out for the first time. They have a nice selection of colors. The stuff from Webs although in fabulous colors made a nightmare warp. This new stuff warped up fairly well.

I am weaving a polychrome summer-winter weave structure in four colors which requires six shafts so I am using my eight harness floor loom. The weave is supposed to look like ribbons woven in and out of each other... that assumes I can select the right colors to go in the right places. The warping, set up and I suspect the weaving is fairly complex - particularly for a dish towel. This is the first time I have ever had to use all ten pedals for the tie-up. I don't quite have them balanced correctly since my sheds are not beautiful yet. I even had to review how to tie those snitch knots for the pedals.

Next, I will be weaving a sample to thrash out any issues like mis-threading, crossed warps or uneven tension. I have already identified four warps that need to be fixed. I going to use a set of greens for the sample so I can use the material to make some leaves for another little project I have going on the side.

After the sample, I will then do a towel in the color palette I will be using to make the six dish towels for the exchange. Once the first one is complete, I will probably remove it from the loom and wash it to see how it comes out. But who knows, perhaps I will just go for it and weave them all.

After the first warp is gone, I want to try tie-ing on a new warp to the old warp so I got an additional color to try out. And once those are made, I can tie-on a partial warp to do the lapel for my Christmas jacket. Ah - what a plan!