Unventing*

 

This is the beginning of me exploring a concept that I have been toying with lately.

It's not 'new' - I doubt much is actually new, as in no one has ever come up with this before, when it comes to textiles.  I have, in fact, played with the concept previously but set aside as other things took top of mind and energy.

At this point it's all very direct and not very complex, but I can see ways of playing with it to make it so.

One of the ways humans interact is to bounce ideas off each other.  I shared this with a friend who immediately started playing with it and came up with something far more complex, just by changing the tie up/treadling in a direction she had been exploring.  And came up with something much more dramatic than this simple proof of concept.

I have been mulling it over in the 'back of mind' way I do, and after thinking about it decided that I can continue with the current approach of 2/16 cotton at 36 epi and 2/20 merc cotton for weft.  There are fewer interlacements than the twill blocks I've been weaving, but that should not be a problem.  I'm only making tea towels, after all, and a little higher density (more ppi) won't be a problem.

I have nearly reached the half way point of the current warp.  This week kind of knocked me off my rails ending with the window guys coming on Friday to install the new window in the living room - a welcome notification, but one that left us scrambling to make room for them to come into the house and do the work.  Then putting things back to rights again.

It seemed better for me to simply leave the house, in case of covid, so I took my hemming to the guild room and managed to get the black rayon chenille scarves hemmed at long last - the log jam in my getting any hemming at all done as I was forcing myself to do the scarves first.  But they are done now, and who knows, may show up in my ko-fi shop on Monday, since there are still rayon chenille scarves in the inventory for the guild sale.

So the goal today is to get back on track after barely getting to the loom last week, finish off the current warp, then set up for the new design.  I still have to crunch the motif to fit into the width of a tea towel, and if I'm happy I will start tinkering with the threading/tie-up/treadling for the next warp.  I won't run out of yarn any time soon - I 'found' the other box of 2/20 merc cotton that had been shuffled once too many times and was hiding beneath boxes/bins of 2/10 merc. cotton.  A box of dark almost black navy blue.  On top of everything else I was beginning to worry I'd never get used up!  At 8400 yards per pound, each towel taking about 900 yards, I have enough yarn to last me all of next year - and perhaps beyond.

*unventing - a term coined by Elizabeth Zimmerman when she came up with a concept but didn't want to claim it had never been done before