Favourite Colours

 

I cannot tell a lie - I have 'favourite' colours.

After weaving with beige warps for most of the spring, then the pale blue/grey, then beige/brown, this nice blue/green warp with pops of peach, yellow and pink is just the ticket.  I did something similar but with a variegated yarn with those accent colours in it and quite liked the result.  I still have a bunch of the variated yarn left, but it was faster to work directly from the tubes than deal with winding the variegated onto spools.  I have very little energy and I can't stand for long periods of time anymore, so I've had to adjust what I do and when.  What can I say?  Working with a body that is 'breaking down' is full of challenges...

The plan with this warp is to finish off the mystery yarn, then work on some of my other odd ball, odds and sods stash.  Like the yellow cottolin that I've owned for, oh 30 years?  In my stash, a little yellow goes a long way!

Since I was weaving to sell for most of my life, I had to get comfortable working with colours that were NOT to my personal taste, and weave them in such a way as I found pleasing.  But every once in a while I need to break out and give myself the pleasure of working with colours I *do* find appealing - on a personal level.

Today the plan is to finish threading, then start pressing the beige/brown towels from the last warp.  I have a few more sale orders to package up, but I'm not heading to town until mid-afternoon, so if any more come in this morning I hope to get them all processed and into the mail.

Yesterday I messed around with the draft I posted and changed where the plain weave happened in the repeat and may do that one instead of the first one I did.  My computer files are rife with drafts I've generated, then rejected.  But I never seem able to trash them.  Sometimes that makes finding something a challenge.  Usually I just make something 'new' rather than try to find something I did a while ago.  Just easier to begin fresh!

It's not raining today, just cloudy.  But that means it's not super hot.  The hot weather we were warned about has yet to arrive, and frankly I'm grateful.  Neither have we had to deal much with smoke from wildfires - yet - this year.  So I'm working on maintaining an attitude of gratitude.

Still lots of inventory in my ko-fi shop and the sale continues until midnight July 9, 2024.

Variations

 

variation on yesterday's draft

Messed around with the tie up and quite like how it looks this way.

Not sure which I will use since both are potentially useful, although I'm leaning more to this one.  OTOH, I won't really know until I start weaving.

The weft will be very close to the warp in value.  I purposefully chose paler hues to make the warps.  With such fine yarns, I could have gone with a higher contrast, but what I did was buy 4 different colours and I plan on mixing and matching the four to produce a range of towels that look different but play nicely together.

I suppose it doesn't really matter much since I no longer do craft fairs, but with each colour combo enough to beam 5 warps, I found I was getting tired of the same colour warps.  Mixing and matching will provide some visual 'interest', I think.  

With 5 kilos of the white linen, each kilo weaving about 20 towels, that's 100 or so towels ahead of me.  I'm hoping to get some done in time for the craft fairs in the fall, but I also still have to finish writing the articles I've committed to writing.  However, Thursday will be a 'light' duty day, so I expect to work on the wet finishing, then 'testing' (experimenting) for the first article.  As soon as I can, I want to get it to the editor in case they want more, or something different.

Plus my sale is on until July 9 and today I need to hit the post office with the bag of packages to mail.

It's a grey dreary day, but honestly?  Better to have rain clouds overhead than thick wildfire smoke pall.  I'm working hard to be grateful and not complain.

Thinking Ahead

 

Not a great image, but Fiberworks can only do so much in terms of showing the weave structure, especially when it has to be 'reduced' so much.

The motif is 1/3rd the width of the warp, at 36 epi.  This cut/paste image shows the selvedge and one repeat.

It is based on the snail's trails and cat's paws motif, which is usually woven in overshot, but can also be done in block twills.

Here I've interpreted it as point twill repeats.  At 36 epi, the tie up needs to have some plain weave in it, so the motif is not as clear cut as with twill blocks, but nonetheless, I think I'm going to use this for the warp after I'm done with the 'mystery' yarn.  I may play with the tie up some, try placing the plain weave in some other part of the tie up sequence, but that remains to be seen if it will improve anything much.

The warp and weft will be close in value, so whatever I decide to do, it will be on the subtle end of the range of things possible, so I'm not too bothered about having the motif not stand out.  

The tie up is not 'balanced' - iow, one side of the cloth will show more warp, the other more weft.  This is referred to as warp emphasis or weft emphasis.  I like doing this because it can give the two sides of the cloth quite different appearances.

My Birthday Bash sale went live yesterday.  It was ready, there wasn't much point in waiting.  Orders will begin being shipped tomorrow because today is a national holiday and the post office is closed.  I will attempt to keep the inventory numbers updated on the ko-fi website, but if something sells out and someone else wants to buy the item, I will let them know what is left and arrange a substitution.

There seems to be some confusion about how the sale works.  

You order one towel - I will ship two.  Buy one, get two for the price of one.  

Thank you to those who have ordered already.