Yesterday I finished threading the 2/8 cotton warp, got it sleyed, tied on, generated a treadling and wove the first towel.
The half bleached linen (slightly slubby and hairy) yarn is working quite well on the mixed beige warp and I'm pleased with the results.
It kind of looks like a pastry dusted with icing sugar. (Maybe I was hungry while I was weaving?)
Since the linen is on average thinner than the cotton, it was a bit 'daring' of me to go with 20 epi, except that the linen is so stiff in relation to the cotton, plus the texture and the hairiness of the linen, that I figured it would not want to beat in anywhere near what a cotton yarn of the same grist would do. The stiffness of the linen will give the cloth overall body (I'm anticipating, based on previous experience) and while the resulting cloth is too heavy to rightly be called a 'tea' towel, I'm thinking these will make really nice hand towels. Perhaps, even, a good sauna towel.
My goal with this is to make something that has flexibility (hence more open density) but that will wear well (hence the plain weave incorporated in the tie up).
In the draft above you can see the body of the towel (the upper part) and then the hem area. I don't really have anything compatible to use for the hems, so the hem weft will be the same yarn, but woven in a straight progression rather than the advancing progression of the towel body.
Even without changing the tie up, just making this small change will create a cloth that is less bulky for the hem to be turned. This cloth is definitely heavier than the towels woven with 2/16 or 2/20.
However, it looks like this one warp might just use up the majority of the linen. If there is any linen left over, I will put one more 2/8 cotton warp on and do the same thing to use up the linen, plus two tubes of a 2 ply - one ply cotton, one ply linen - plus if there is still warp left on the second warp I have some textured cotton that can be used to finish the warp off entirely.
This week I've been working on the classes for School of Sweet Georgia, and expect to continue on that this afternoon after an errand run, including a clothing store to look for two identical tops to wear for the filming. The filming crew has suggested that we interleave the filming of the two topics in order to reduce camera set up time - IOW, for the scenes that need an overhead camera angle we film all of those at once for both. Which means I will have to be able to switch from one topic to another instantly. But for continuity, both classes will need the same 'wardrobe', so I'll need two tops to make the switching easier.
The problem is, I didn't like the tops I wore for the last class and don't want to wear them again, but neither do I have two tops of the same colour/design that are acceptable so I need to buy some.
Since I really dislike shopping for clothing, send good shopping vibes!
My studio is also being used as a staging area as I begin to pack what I need for the trip and quite frankly I will be more than glad when I'm home again and all of this is in the 'I have done this', not still in the 'I will do this" category.
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