Juneuary Tea Towels

My loom has been empty for a while so what is that best thing to get back into weaving?  Tea towels!  I started the project by getting out the cottolin cones; there are lots of small amounts perfect for a striped warp. 

I separated out the cones into two possible colourways, a pink/red and a wild mix of colours which really appealed to me.  The colours are turquoise, orange, pink, periwinkle, lime and dark purple.

I did the math to find out how much yarn I had left on each cone.  For cottolin there is 3200 yards per pound, and I figured that each cardboard cone weighed 0.4 oz.  But I wanted to make sure that my math was right so I pulled the warp using the smallest cone which was the turquoise and counted the ends.  There were 2 more threads than the math predicted but better too many than not enough.  I went ahead and pulled the warp as I felt that my math was good enough to pull the warp with no problems.

And yes, there was enough yarn for the warp to my slight surprise; it is always worrying when the cones start getting empty.  The tea towels are going to be colourful!  I used the dark purple to separate and define the stripes of colour and to give the tea towels a more cohesive look.

I didn’t finish the cones so I’m already thinking about the next tea towel warp where I can use up the rest of the cottolin yarn.  I’m thinking ribbons of stripes with large stripes of lilac and lime. 

The greenhouse has undergone another transformation from seedling propagation to food production.  The greenhouse is full of tomatoes, cucumbers and hot peppers and we still managed to squeeze in some chairs!  The tomatoes are in 5 gallon pots and are being trained up heavy twine that is attached to the ceiling of the greenhouse.

There are already tomatoes!  The greenhouse tomatoes are already over 4 feet tall and the tomatoes that we planted outside to hedge our bets are only two feet.  But it has been a cool start to June, hence Juneuary.