Change One Thing

 

bottom cloth with cotton weft, top cloth 'strip' with linen weft

Truth be told, I did change more than one thing when I ran out of the navy cotton and sampled the singles linen in my stash that I wanted to use next.

Giving the yarns a cursory examination, it appeared the linen was somewhat thicker than the cotton, but it is a slightly slubby singles, and when I actually wove with it, it behaved very much like the 2/16 cotton in terms of how it beat in.

However, I anticipated that the linen would slightly elongate the 'tile' design I had been weaving, so I switched to an undulating design instead.  That way if it didn't 'square' it wouldn't much matter.

On the other hand I knew, from previous experience, that linen weft will not draw in nearly as much as cotton weft.  The linen is stiffer and resists drawing in as much as the cotton will.  So when I finished weaving the cotton, I cut off what was woven, then re-tied and started over again.  I did not want to begin layering the wider linen on top of the narrower cotton cloth because the selvedges would 'suffer' if I did.  (Yes, I could add packing sticks to the cloth beam, but I needed to cut off because the cloth beam was getting 'full' anyway.  Easier to cut off and tie on again, start 'fresh'.)

Before I cut off, however, I wove a wee sample with the linen, just to make sure things would work out.

Now, before and after the linen sample is cotton, so the little strip is drawing in more at the very beginning and end.  The centre linen yarn, however, is pouching out, nearly an inch.  You can clearly see how the cotton draw in is causing the linen to curve and not sit flat on the table.  

I'm weaving these towels slightly longer than my 'usual' because I expect the cotton warp to 'shrink' more than the linen weft.  So, in anticipation of the wider width, I thought I'd weave them a bit longer to compensate for the shrinkage differential of the two yarns.

Now, to be really accurate, I should have cut off after the first linen weft towel and wet finished it.  But I didn't.  I don't actually care if they are slightly larger overall.  They will make a good table centre if someone thinks they are 'too large' for a tea towel.  

OTOH, they could also be useful as a sauna rub down towel, or hand towel, or to 'turban' your hair when you wash it?  

Or you could just dry pots and pans with it.

It looks like I have enough of this linen singles to weave 7, possibly 8 towels.  After that, I'm not sure what I'll use.  I have some finer linen yarn that weaves up beautifully on 2/16 cotton.  Or I could switch back to 2/16 cotton.  I have plenty in white, and some in a kind of turquoise green that might look ok on this blue-ish warp.  

More samples to be woven at the end of this section?