Grey Striped Tea Towels Part 3

Once I fixed the threading mistake I quickly got into the groove with weaving the tea towels again.  I’m always surprized at how fast a tea towel weaves up once I sit down to do it.  I do a different band of colours on each tea towel to make them individual, here is an example.

I don’t have much to show about the tea towels as I’m still weaving them but it is always exciting when you finish the tea towel and finish a pirn at the same time!

I’m almost done weaving the towel number five and only have one tea towel left to weave this week before I can cut off, wash and hem the tea towels and have them ready for the Etsy Shop.

But I’ve been doing something else this past week.  I have been in the garage painting.

It is a grandfather clock that we bought in the 1980's when a local grandfather clock manufacturer closed down.   I just couldn't find a place in the house for it while it was natural coloured.  So we  painted it a lovely dark blue based off of one of the shades of Tencel; does anyone else take cones of yarn to the paint store?!  It needs a bit of moving about in place to get it perfect in the room and then the debate is whether or not to start it up.  I'm not sure if we can stand the ticking that close to the couch only time will tell.

Final Garden photo is a blue hydrangea, the flowers start a lovely yellow but then change to blue, unfortunately the flowers are sterile so no food for the pollinators so it will be leaving the garden this year because we are focusing on making our garden a true feast for the wee beasties.

Grey Striped Tea Towels

I am doing another set of tea towels; they are a great summer weave because you can play in the garden in the morning then in the hot summer afternoons weave a tea towel.  I went back to an old tried and true tea towel draft Mom and I have both used multiple times.  Here it is in an Easter Egg Plaid, here in Grey with Purple Stripes, here in Grey with Yellow Stripes, here in Grey and Red Stripes and here in Caribbean Blue Stripes.  It is a much loved 8 shaft false damask, which is based on a 1/3 broken twill instead of 1 /4 satin like a true damask.

I wanted to do the grey stripes again with a different colour as the accent.  I pulled seven different colours and lined them up with the base colours of white, black and three different greys.

The middle grey was the hardest colour to match with; it is a funny shade of grey with a touch of brown.  I ended up choosing the blue because I liked the bright and clear tone of it.

Pulling the warp is when you get the first glimpse of what the tea towels are going to look like and they are going to look great!

When the warp is this pretty it is amazing how fast the threading can go.

The tea towels warp is now ready for me to start weaving.  

Final Garden Photo is a Cardinal Flower (Lobelia cardinalis).  The plant has dark red leaves with these spikes of crimson red flowers.  They are about 3 feet tall and really stand out in the garden.

And an update on the Orange tree (Poncirus trifoliata monstrosa 'Flying Dragon citrus'), we have one orange!

Blue Striped Tea Towels

I have just put on a warp that is seven yards long, which is enough for six generous tea towels.  I didn’t really have a final plan for the colour of the tea towels, I wasn’t sure if they were going to be the same colour but different treadlings or if I was going to just change the weft colours.  All I knew was that for the first set of two tea towels I was going to use the same royal blue as I used in the warp.

The tea towel is really pretty with the royal blue weft and the patten really shines through.  The treadling is straight point twill but when I first started the tea towel, within the first three inches, I made a treadling mistake!  Thankfully the mistake was easy to see so a little unweaving and away I went.

I wove two tea towels with the royal blue weft.  Then I auditioned some different coloured wefts.  The first two were denim and a navy.  The navy is a possibility but the denim just looked faded.

Next I tried purple and that was a big nope for me.

The last two weft colours that I tried were a bright blue and a periwinkle blue.  These two are definitely the weft colours for the next two sets of tea towels, very fresh and clean looking.

When I change weft colours I also change my hanging selvedges to match the new weft colour.  I make sure to change the hanging selvedge in the middle of the spacer between the two tea towels, as sometimes there can be some pulling.  I just wind it around a long pin and away I go.

I decided to keep the treadling as is for the tea towels and just change the weft colour.  I really enjoyed using this pretty bright blue so much so I only have this one photo of the tea towels, they wove up really fast.

The next set of two tea towels is the periwinkle blue.  It is a lovely rich colour.  I am just starting the last tea towel in this colour and I will finish the tea towel today because it is a rainy day so I’m stuck inside while the grass just keep getting longer.

The roll of finished tea towels on the cloth beam is so pretty, I’m glad that I went with the bright and cheerful blues!

The final Garden Photo is Gaillardia x grandiflora 'Comotion Moxie' and what a beauty!

Tea Towels Started

If you remember from the last post I wrote, I was planning to use some of these small bits of 2/8 cotton for my warp.  I worked at the computer for a very long time trying to get stripes of colour and a pattern to work.

In the end I ended up only using one cone of royal blue from the little bits pile.  But the colours for the warp are bright and happy which makes me happy too.  The final colours are in the middle, the royal blue, turquoise, emerald green, peach, pink and white.

I like to pull my tea towels in four small bouts of about 100 threads.  It makes it easy to keep track of the number of threads and the stripes.  It also helps to stop my natural inclination to cram a lot of threads on the warping board.  The problem with cramming a lot of threads on the warping board is that the tension of the threads slightly pulls in the warping board pins which means that your warp gets a little shorter; it can be quite noticeable.

The Louet Spring has a build in raddle at the top of the loom.  It makes quick work of spacing out the warp in preparation of beaming the warp.  But it also comes in handy in double checking your work, this time I missed ten threads in one stripe but I was able to fix it before beaming the warp.  I used to have a Leclerc Minerva and I would lash on a 5 dent raddle to the top of the loom and use it the same way.

I use heavy white bond paper as the separator for the back beam.  We found a very large ream of it many years ago, we are still using it.  I cut new warp paper at the beginning of the year as by the end of the year it is starting to tear from the pulling on it.  I like to cut two different lengths, one 6 yards and one 12 yards.  I use the 12 yard one mainly for tea towels.

There was a rainy day last week and I was able to quickly thread and tie the warp onto the loom.  But it has been nice the rest of the days I’m still working in the garden so the warp is sitting waiting for me.

I pulled out some 2/8 cotton cones that I’m thinking about using for weft.  They are sitting on the corner of the mantle waiting for me to start weaving.

The Garden Photo this week is Blue Speedwell (Veronica ‘Flover  Blue’) and a bush Cinquefoil (Potentilla fruticosa ' Yellow Gem').

No More Empty Loom

I’ve finally decided what I am going to put on my loom, tea towels!  Aren’t all these colourful  2/8 cotton cones just full of possibilities.

There is a small bag of little cones that I want to use up.  I think that I’ll only use a couple of colours but these cones are going to influence the stripes in the tea towels that I’m planning.  I kept some notes from other tea towels and I know that 10 ends at 7 yards weighs about 0.35 oz.  So with some math I’ll figure out how many stripes that I can do of each colour.

I haven’t decided on the draft yet but I am going to do stripes of colour woven in some sort of twill.  I’m looking at old drafts and at the Strickler book to see what leaps out at me.

Thankfully I’ve got a little extra time to find a draft as Mom gazumped me to the warping board.  She is also pulling a tea towel warp in white 2/8 cotton.

An update on the orange tree (Poncirus trifoliata monstrosa 'Flying Dragon citrus'), the flowers have bloomed and the smell was amazing.  Now there are little oranges!

During May the front garden starts to really come into its own and blooms abound.  The Siberian Irises (Iris sibirica) have started to flower as well as the first of the Alums.  In the background there are two Jupiter Beards (Centranthus ruber) in red and white that have also begun to bloom.  It is quite exciting and the bumble bees and honey bees are going nuts.

The Beginnings of a Deflected Double Weave Scarf

After doing a scarf is Double Weave (blog post here), it is now time for me to explore Deflected Double Weave.  I had a little bit of trouble picking out the colours for the warp and weft, but I decided to go with colours that made me happy.  I am using 2/8 Orlec in Plum and 2/10 Cotton in Pink.  Pretty and cheerful.

Yesterday I pulled the warp, pulled it onto the back beam, threaded, sleyed the reed, tied on and tied up the treadles.  Not bad for a mornings work!   Now it's waiting for me to start weaving.

In these interesting times I’m finding that I’m enjoying going outside and working in the garden.  We are doing some spring tidying up, here we cut down the lavender and now you can see the daffodils popping open.  We planted daffodils in the front garden last fall to add spring colour and because the deer don’t eat them.  Well, the deer must use our front garden as a nursery because they are trying to eat them and spitting out the daffodil flower heads!

In the back we are doing a massive garden reno, we are digging up almost everything in a garden bed, splitting plants, moving plants and increasing the size of the bed then moving onto the next section.

We are also moving the pathways through the garden; the old pathway was behind the rosemary between the two grasses.  Now we have moved to the corner of the patio beside a sprinkler.  We have also increased the size of the garden beds.  It is going to be a big job; we have only tackled the small gardens by the patio, and we still have the vast beds running along the entire fence line!  I’m excited to see what the gardens are going to look like in the summer.

Final Garden Shot is Russian Snowdrops (Puschkinia Libanotica), I planted a whole bunch of spring bulbs under a little tree and they are opening up in succession.  First was the crocuses, now the Puschkinia and I’m not sure what the next bunch is going to be but you can just see them peeking out behind the Russian Snowdrops.

Table Runners Yet Again

The white 2/10 cotton warp pulled onto the warp beam beautifully.  I was a little worried because the cotton is quite sticky while I was separating it onto the raddle at the top of the Spring loom.  But, happily, it flowed on quickly and easily.

I was most of the way through threading the 650 threads when I realized that something was wrong;  I had a lot of heddles left unused on shaft six.

Off I went to the computer and compared the paper draft that I was using to thread the loom with the draft that I was looking at on the computer.  Well they are two different drafts!  But they are very similar; the computer draft had 4 more threads for extra flourish.  So I printed out a copy of the new draft and hopefully this will be the end to my problems.

I put on enough warp for a 40 inch a 50 inch and a 60 inch runner.  For the first runner I am going to use the rest of the blue slub rayon that I used with the Pima cotton runners.  At this point I am not sure how long it is actually going to be. 

The pattern is called Bethlehem Star, and the large diamonds are quite striking.

The runner didn’t take long to weave up; I think that it helps that the pattern is 'tromp as writ' so after threading the pattern twice it is firmly memorized.  I finished the runner with only a little bit of weft left; I don’t think that I could have done better.  The runner is about 50 inches long on the loom.

So for the next runner I had a good old rummage through the stash.  I found this cheese of silver grey silk.  It is really lovely with some subtle flecks of white.  I know the weight of the cheese, but I have no idea of the yardage.

The silver silk is weaving up quite differently from the blue rayon.  It is more subtle and it is a finer grist so the pattern repeat is shorter.

The silver silk keeps twisting onto itself.  I have to keep a close eye on it to make sure that the weft is straight.

But the runner is beautiful and well worth the effort.  I am still weaving this runner so I don’t know how long it is going to be but I think that it is going to be about 40 inches long.  So I still have one more runner to weave about 60 inches long and a lot of stash to bust!

The Final Garden Photo is the evergreen perennial Candytuft (Iberis sempervirens) that is starting to bud.  Unfortunatley we have a winter storm warning for tomorrow and it may snow 5 to 20 cms.  Yikes!