Making A Move and Twill Tea Towels

Those of you who read this blog on a regular basis can probably tell that there is a bit of a kafuffle going on. We usually post a blog about every 4-5 days and now it’s a scramble to get one blog a week!
We have been in the process of listing our home and so we have been extremely busy for the past three months. My husband, daughter and I have painted every interior room, re-trimmed, made two new closets and put hardwood floor on the only room that didn’t have it and styled the house like crazy folk. I swear we’ve cleaned like Will and Kate are honeymooning here! We finally got through the arduous process of choosing an agent and the house will hit our market on Tuesday…..whew! This is a photo of my studio as it was during the month of tear down – it looks like a bomb went off! I find that I’m the kind of person who doesn’t do well in clutter, so the past few months have been very difficult for me. But since I’m the kind of gal who likes to plan ahead ~ Ngaire and I pulled a bunch of warps in anticipation of this commotion and now we’ll start working our way through them.There are two tea towel warps, 5 scarves and 1 set of placemats to weave while we are tucked into a corner of the room that we are showing as the family room.I have a seven yard tea towel warp on the loom right now and I am just finishing towel number four. It’s a very graphic pattern for me and I’m able to vary the weft colour and so far have used three different yellows. This is a 2/8 unmercerized cotton warp in twill and it’s weaving up really quickly. I love this type of weaving as it gives me a chance to center myself and practice technique rather than concentrating on the pattern. I have used a broken twill for the two tone green stripes and two different yellows for the 2/2 twill portion and the broken twill gives a very interesting pattern due to the colour changes. I have also done weft stripes in green beginning three inches from the beginning of each towel to add interest.A member of the spinning study group that I belong to is in Nepal right now and so are these two hats. Her group is taking a dozen pair of new hiking boots for the lady guides they are using for their trek and she asked us to knit a wool hat to tuck into each pair of boots. These two are made using Merino and silk. I created the yarn variations by spinning more than five different pinks and purples at the same time. These are so soft; hopefully the ladies who receive them will like pink!