Good Intentions

 

I had good intentions for today.  Yes, I did.  And yet...

A few days ago I messed around on Fiberworks and came up with the above, which is about half of the width of the warp so that some detail can be seen.

The weave structure is twill blocks.  The blocks are not discrete, but overlap.  That causes interesting(?) half tones, much like overshot which is also a type of overlapping block weave structure.

The effect is very textural and the lines are blurred.  The cloth itself is very pliable and feels like a great quality for tea towels.  Woven with 2/16 cotton for warp and 2/20 mercerized cotton for weft, there is also a very subtle interplay of matt and shiny that I like quite a lot.

I'm finding new things to note as I play around with the threading progressions, some I like better than others.  In the image above, there is a short stretch of straight draw in the treadling at the very top, which I think I will tweak further to use for hems.  One repeat isn't going to be visible as it will be folded over for the hems.  OTOH, if I leave it as it is, the motif will end part way through without the distortion of changing from the blocks to the straight.  So, I'm still pondering on that.

There are 3 drafts ready in the queue and I'm nearly done the current warp.  But this week is busy with other stuff - class preparation, Olds marking, 6th Covid jab today which may leave me feeling a bit 'off' for a couple of days.  

On a bright note, I've managed to condense my mercerized cotton stash into fewer boxes/bins.  The 3 drafts/warps won't finish it off, though, so I'll keep exploring this technique for a while.

Once I'm done the mercerized cotton, I will have to decide if I make more tea towels and try to use up the 2/16 cotton - I kept finding more mini-stashes around the studio so instead of being 'done' with that it appears that I will need a few more 2/16 cotton warps to weave those off.  And round and round we go!  It feels counter productive to buy more yarn to use up what I have, but there you have it.

Anyway, time to get dressed, see if I can weave a towel before I get my jab.  The advice is to not do anything physical right after, so perhaps weaving when I get home isn't the best thing to be doing.  OTOH, there is all that class prep to be done, a book that needs reading and a jigsaw puzzle that wants building...