Awkward Photo

photo taken from under the loom, late at night

draft of the design

The draft is sideways - I forgot to rotate it before saving it, but you can see the general gist of it.

This is the latest draft I used from Ars Textrina.  (No, the book does not 'name' the drafts, they are merely numbered.  For anyone interested it is Ars Textrina vol. 14, 1990, page 373, L.249, Lumscher Section 51, draft 5.  Be aware I also changed the small blocks to weave rose fashion while leaving the table in star fashion.)

The drafts in the book are just one repeat - the weaver/designer decides how to apply the repeat.  In this instance, I was working within the constraints of the size for a tea towel.  With very little editing, two and a half repeats fit, with a couple of straight runs for a border at the selvedge.

The length was more difficult.  The repeat was either going to be too long or too short.  After fiddling with it for a while I realized I didn't have to have the rosette but could repeat the 'table' in the middle.  In the end I fancied that it looked like a rose trellis around windows and doors.

But then another consideration.  There were rather a lot of heddles on shafts 5-8 while my loom is set up with the most heddles per shaft on 1-4.  No problem - I simply exchanged the threads from 5-8 to 1-4 and vice versa.  An easy edit given the shaft shuffler tool in Fiberworks.

Beaming this warp I nearly emptied a tube and ran a bunch of others down to the point where I am looking at using those up as weft on the next warp.

For this warp I am using up some more pirns full of yarn beginning with this soft greyed green.  Over the weekend I pulled some medium blue, and some brighter pale leaf green.  If there is warp once those are used up, I have some peach that I'd like to get rid of, too.

Yesterday I got two towels woven.  There should be enough warp for 19 or 20 towels although these are a little bit on the long side so might be only 18 or 19.  I don't really care because I will just keep weaving until it is done.

As for which side of the cloth will be the 'right' side?  I don't know.  Yet.  I may hem some with the white as 'right', some with the colour.  I'm sure either will be fine.  But I'm weaving them with the least number of shafts rising so the colour is what I see.  And I quite like it.

Currently reading The Clockwork Boys by T. Kingfisher