If It's January, It Must Be Tea Towels

It’s a drippy but fairly warm day here on Vancouver Island ~ a perfect start to the New Year, but not so good for my photos, so please bear with me!

As usual in January I have an intrinsic need to weave tea towels, I have no idea why it is such a compelling weave, but I have no trouble embracing it.

I must admit that it’s taken me a few days to thread the loom because of our ‘west coast gloom’; it’s just really hard to see the dark threads even though my loom is right in front of three large windows.

My warp is navy blue 2/8 cotton of 513 ends.  I sett the warp at 24 epi a nice firm tea towel and made the warp 11 yards long and 21 inches wide, with the end result of 10 tea towels, each a yard long.  I am using the same pattern 12 shaft twill pattern that I used in January 2018, because it’s a beauty.

I have only just begun tea number one, and I chose to use a lovely turquoise for the weft, the plan is to use jewel tones as the weft and weave one or two of each colour. 

 

I like to weave a nice hem at the start and end of each tea towel and generally I change the treadling somewhat so that I have a fold guideline.  In this case I treadled 1-2-3-4 for two inches before I began the body of the tea towel. Sorry for the colour discrepencies, the bottom colour is closer to true.

The garden is resting right now and although there is the stray bloom here and there, it’s pretty boring.  What isn’t boring is this amazing Passionfruit and Citrus Entremet Cake Ngaire and I made for her birthday.

This cake has 8 layers of yummyness!  It starts with a cookie base, then citrus curd, then cake, then creme fraiche citrus mousse, then passion fruit jelly, then cake, then curd and finally fresh passion fruit.  It was a triumph!