Working in Series

 

inspired by Snail's Trails and Cat's Paws

As I work through a series, I usually generate a lot more designs/drafts than ever see the loom.

So it is with this series.

I have a queue of designs I've messed about with over the months, some of them I found acceptable at the time.  Now?  Not so much.

My approach to designing in a series is to build on what I've done before.  Therefore some of the designs are minor 'tweaks' to a previous draft, and therefore quite derivative of previous work.

With not being able to weave for nearly three weeks, and then only for limited amounts of time since then, my weaving pace has been slowed considerably.

Right now I'm managing one towel a day - on a good day.  With hope of treatment and a new pain med, I've been 'pushing' that - a little - and weaving a bit longer,  But progress seems hopelessly slow, given I still have mercerized cotton to weave and made a promise to myself that I won't stop until it's gone (as in, too little to weave a towel).

However, the other day as I was at the loom with only surface attention required, I realized that I could pretty much use any four block twill design and translate it into this weave structure.   (Still no firm idea what to call it - 'shifted' twill blocks seems to be sticking - in my mind, at least.)

The other night I took a look at the 'traditional' Snail's Trails and Cat's Paws design and decided that while I wouldn't want to replicate it exactly, I could fairly easily convert it into something similar.

For reasons, I didn't do an exact 'copy', plus there is an issue of the two circles being two different sizes (because I'm lazy and threading that last 'block' is awkward and I just donwanna), but I think this draft will do.

Making this connection means - if I want to - I can go through my previous block twill designs (of which there are many!) and use them as springboards to spark new designs in this weave structure.

However, I am watching the pile of mercerized cotton going down and by the end of this year may be finished with it.

If (and it's a huge 'if') I can become more functional and at least go back to two hours of weaving a day, that will up my productivity and hopefully allow me to finish this combination of yarns and do something else for a while.

However, I'm not 'done' with tea towels - yet.  When I'm finished with the mercerized cotton as weft, I still have 2/16 unmercerized cotton to use up.  

And once I'm done with *that*, it will be time to consider making more scarves.  I can see this weave structure making nice scarves with 2/16 bamboo rayon, and various fine rayon wefts.  Since I have a stash of *that* to use up, it seems like a reasonable goal to work towards.

Because I can see yet more potential for this weave structure, so why not?