Monday, September 7, 2020

Small Steps



Yesterday I finished beaming the next warp.  The warp has three 'main' colours - this emerald green, a turquoise blue and a rose (made up of two shades of rose/pink).

Of the emerald green, these tubes are what is left from warping.  I have a few more tubes with a little more yarn on them, but in total there really isn't enough to use as warp again.  So the emerald green tubes will go into a box for weft use.  There should be enough for two or three towels.  Maybe a fourth.

But using up stash isn't just about the yarn - it's also about the supplies.  The last bout of warp pretty much used up the last of this roll of masking tape.  There was just enough left to tape the stick with the bouts to the loom.  (I tape the stick down so that it stays in place during threading.)

This warp will have black as weft which should make a pretty dramatic cloth.  It wasn't my first choice - I had intended to use another, nearly the same, green.  But the black wants using up, and I want it gone. 

There is enough black to finish this warp, plus some for the next. 

Like I say - you get a lot of play time from fine yarns! 

The warp is 24" in the reed at 32 epi.  Each one inch section is filled with about 20 yards of warp.  That means approximately 15,500 yards of yarn for the warp.  Each warp takes almost 2.5 pounds of yarn.

Each towel is woven approximately 40" at about 32 ppi for about 950 yards of yarn for weft for each towel.  Or less than 1/6th of a pound.  At about 420 yards per ounce (again, approximately), that makes around 2.5 ounces of weft per towel.  A bit less, but I'm trying to show how much yarn it takes - and how much more I have to use up!

After wet finishing the towels are smaller in dimension, of course, so you have to go with the dimensions as they are in the loom.

I haven't weighed the towels yet - maybe I will another day, but according to the math, the towel (100% cotton) is about 5 ounces.  A little less because I've rounded up in some cases.

However, last night my back went into full on spasm, bad enough I dug out the strong muscle relaxants.  I am not to the point of weaving because I still have to thread the loom.  Just sitting isn't good for my back, so I'm going to get dressed and gingerly get myself set up to thread.  But I won't push through the pain this time. 

It is long past time for me to be doing that.  So I will give it a try and see how I feel.  After I take another Robaxacet and let it do it's job.  I'm hoping that the threading posture will be a bit of a 'stretch' for those tender muscles in my lower back.  And if not, I will try to find something else to do.

Since the sun is currently shining in a blue sky, who knows, maybe I'll go for a walk. 


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

So sorry your back is giving you such awful pain. I hope it gets better VERY quickly. Your blog - the whole thing about weaving - is completely fascinating to me. As a shuttle tatter, I can identify with parts of it, but, of course, we use our shuttles quite differently. ;) I, too, am working on using up as much of my stash as possible. A tatter who uses very fine threads gets quite a lot of play time from each ball/spool, too. I get excited when a 300-meter spool of thread starts showing the plastic core, as two of yours are doing in the photograph you posted. :) Can hardly wait to see how the color combinations look in this next batch of tea towels. It amazes me how you can combine such different colors when weaving and get something so beautiful, and so DIFFERENT from anything I could possibly imagine - designs built into the cloth, and everything.

Again - I hope you feel much better SOON!
StephanieW

Laura Fry said...

Thanks. Today is much better, but I’m taking it slowly. I also make bobbin lace although I haven’t touch my pillow in ages. Another craft that takes time to use up yarn!

:)