Eleven Shaft Tea Towels Wrap Up

My eleven shaft tea towels are done, done, done and it was a lovely project overall.

One of the neat things that happened while I was doing some random treadling between the tea towels is that these lovely hearts magically appeared.  This is just a partial pattern treadling and I know I’ll go back to it later and see if I can make it work as a repeating pattern.

The take up on this pattern was more than I expected and I ended up weaving right to the very end of the warp.  I really don’t like to go this close to the heddles because the shed was sooooo tight.  This is also a pretty good shot of the colourful hair clips that I use to hold the heddles that I’m not using together.  Everytime I sit down to thread a new warp I’m delighted by the Easter colours and of  course the bunny ears help!

Here are my tea towels off the loom, before wet finishing.  I love this shot.

I had a hard time deciding which side would be the ‘right’ side, frankly both are lovely.

These are the four different wefts that I chose for my Spring Tea Towels.

The front and back sides of each of the duplicate coloured wefts.

I placed an order with Maurice Brassard et fils in Quebec for more 2/8 cotton and this lovely box of possibilites arrived in just four days.

One of the things I do right away is take a sharpie to each tube of cotton and mark colour them in.  I choose a different colour each time.  This not only helps me with using up my stock by age, but really helps with keeping the dye lots seperate.

This shot is a bit blurry, but you can still clearly tell that they are the same colour, from the same supplier but differing dye lots.  I have been caught out more than once, I’m sorry to say, with a streak in my web because I got the dye lots mixed up.  Surprisingly this has also happened with white cotton, not only with the dyed cotton; I guess there are differences in the bleaching process too.

At this point I update my yarn binder and I can’t say enough about what a good idea this is.  I have written blogs about making this binder in the past and it is my best organizational tool. (Focusing on Fibres March 2009 and Confessions of a Compulsive Organizer December 2019); I would be lost without it.

Our Garden is really lovely right now and the perennial borders are at their best. This is a really lovely shot of Penstemon hybrid ‘Garnet’ commonly called Beard Tongue.  What a weird name for a truly spectacular summer perennial.  The hummingbirds and bummble bees love it.

Cotolin Tea Towels on Eleven

I’m still plodding along with my “Sunny Day’ tea towels and I’m currently weaving towel number five.

I have really jumped into the spring theme and I’ve taken the plunge into pink.  I rarely use pink, but for some reason, right now, they feel very optimistic.

As always my goal is to  use partial tubes of yarn for the weft whenever possible.  To that end, I’ve been weighing each tube before and after weaving; and this is when weighing in grams is a real benefit.  I have found that each tea towel uses exactly 59 grams of Borg’s cotolin for a yard long tea towel.

So far I’ve woven two tea towels (above) using what I originally called salmon and now I’m changing to quince to keep with the spring botanical theme.

I have woven one in pink lilac and it is extremely light lilac.

This one is in a very pale apple blossom pink, a real girly and sweet pink.

This one is in true lilac and I have exactly 59 grams left on the tube after weaving this tea towel, so, if I’m very brave and trust my math, I may pull on my big girl pants and use this instead of the pink lilac for my last tea towel, which has a much safer amount left on the tube.

I will admit that although I’m slow at weaving these tea towels they have been an extremely satisfying weave ~ I don’t have to concentrate too much with the treadling and the pattern really appeals to me. I will definitely use this pattern again, perhaps for a scarf or shawl.

I almost forgot to show you the beauty photos of the 8 Shaft Frond pattern shawl that I took off the loom last month.  This shawl turned out just wonderfully light and supple; and since I’m a bit of a magpie and drawn to shiny things, it fills that role too.
             
Today’s garden shot is the Phlomis russeliana or Turkish sage. The flowers on the bottom tier are just beginning to open.  This plant makes these lovely little rosettes of flowers all the way around the stem and then the stem starts growing out of the centre of the blossoms and does it all again making three or four tiers of petty yellow flowers.

Sunny Day Tea Towels

What does fine weather, sunny days and weaving have in common?  For me, nothing....I just can’t seem to concentrate on difficult weaving when the birds sing.  So, I go to my happy weaving place and put on tea towels.  I find that tea towels lend themselves to a short attention span and right now that is exactly where I am.

I put on a white 2/8 cotton warp that was 7 yards long, this gives me 6 tea towels, each 36 inches long and plenty of loom waste and spacers so that I’m not skunching up at the end.  I really hate trying to weave off that last couple of inches when you can barely open a shed.

I have been using PCW Fiberworks for more years than I can remember.  I purchase my first iteration of the program when my invoice number was in the five digits!  My second upgrade came about five years later and my current update came on a wee thumb drive.  How times have changed!

I knew I wanted to find a pattern that would give me a clear, crisp motif and a pattern I had not seen woven before if possible.  So I started my search at home with this CD called Thrilling Twills that PCW also sells.  These drafts are almost all computer algorithms so all the differences come in the tie up, with straight draw threading and treadling, perfect for summer weaving.

I decided to look at some of the more unusual drafts and since I have 12 shafts I started looking at patterns on 11 shafts, because lets face it, not too many people choose to use 11 shafts! I found the perfect draft, it has a clear motif and is not too busy.

Dressing the loom took a few days as we are still painting our house in between rain showers and cool winds that come barrelling down off the Comox glacier.

This photo was taken in early April, but the mountains are still snow covered today and the wind can be darn cold!

I decided to do a stash reduction ~ and tea towels are perfect for using up that last bit on the tube ~ and use cottolin for my weft.  This is 2/22 cottolin, 60% linen and 40% cotton, and the colour that I chose looks like Sockeye Salmon.

Ngaire had tied up my loom so that the pattern was showing the reverse side and I was absolutely delighted when these lovely circles appeared.

This is the pattern as shown in the draft and frankly I’m happy with it too.  I took this photo by putting the camera lens between the warp threads, so not the best photo, but you can see it looks like the draft.  I really think I like the circles the best!

I planted this Cistus x purpureus (Purple Rockrose) last autumn and this is the first time I’ve seen it flower.  Although it seem to be more pink than purple it is lovely and deer resistant to boot, which is so important here on Vancouver Island because the deer think of my garden as their personal buffet!