Iterations

 

These are the latest (wet finished) towels.  During my 'light duties' time I have been slowly catching up on some of my 'donwanna' tasks - and hemming has been one of them, in part because sitting in my preferred chair to do the hemming has been painful.  My back was not happy about sitting in the loveseat, which is lower and tends to be a 'bad' position for my body right now.  However, after massage *and* physiotherapy last week, I have made some progress and am actually nearly finished hemming this design of towels.  They still need their final press, but that may happen over the weekend given I have just 3.5 more towels to hem (I think - it might be 4.5).

But what I really like about this weave structure is the subtle changes in texture that happen on the warp emphasis side of the cloth.  So generally I have been hemming the towels with this side as the 'right' side.  The next warp is a combination of three blues, and I'm not sure I chose well with the colours.  Guess I'll find out.  Those may get hemmed with the weft emphasis side as the 'right' side.  TBD.

With the twill 'blocks' shifting by 1/2, the weave structure develops half-tones and depending on the threading those halftones can make very interesting shifts in how much texture the cloth has.

As I have been working my way through developing this series, there have been 'surprises' - some of them I liked, some of them, not so much.  I had one complete 'failure' and because I wasn't feeling well at the time I abandoned that direction and came back to 'drawing with lines', shoving them this way, that way, seeing how I could make the twill line move within a rather small 'vocabulary' of straight and curved lines.

I have tentatively started weaving again.  Yesterday I managed two 30 minute sessions which meant I wove one whole towel (yippee!).  Which is a hard pill to swallow when I used to be able to do 4, then 2.  But 1 after nothing for 10 days?  It's progress, so I will accept that progress and hope that it will continue.

But that's the thing with crumbling bodies.  You just never know what each morning is going to bring.  You have to accept that some days are not going to go according to your plan, but you will have to acquiesce to what your body can/will do.

I have a new threading in the queue (I actually have several, but only one I want to do right now) so I'd love to get this warp off the loom.  However, I'm not halfway through it - yet - and at the rate of one towel per day (if I can even manage that much) it will be at least two weeks before I can get the current warp off the loom and beam the next.

But I haven't run out of ideas, yet, so I'm anxious to keep going.

My goal is to keep weaving for as long as I can.  To that end, I have to be very kind to my body.  It's the only one I have, after all.

Watch for these towels to be listed in my ko-fi shop, hopefully by next week.