2/16 cotton warp, Lithuanian linen size N56 (if I remember correctly)
When seen from any kind of distance, this cloth simply looks...beige.
The warp is Brassard's 2/16 cotton in two closely related hues and values of beige, and the weft is the singles linen from Lithuania I received as a thank you from a student I helped.
It took me a little time to get to it. I had to order more cotton in as I had pretty much woven down my 2/16 cotton stash and didn't have anything near enough to create a warp, never mind a colour I thought would be good for the natural coloured linen.
Coming to the end of the warp, I decided I could tell it was going to finish up nicely, so I then took a look at the seller's website and decided to get some bleached linen.
Why, when I'm *supposed* to be downsizing my stash did I decide to buy yet more yarn - for which I then had to order more cotton to use as warp?
Because I found this warp very satisfying. In spite of the 2 threading errors and the 3 sleying errors, once the warp was weaving it was trouble free. The linen, steeped in humidors for at least 3+ days behaved beautifully, and even in loom state it felt like there was great potential for it to be a really nice tea towel.
And, since I recently, consciously, decided to only weave things I wanted to weave, buying more yarn that was going to bring me this much satisfaction seemed like the right thing to do.
The shawl warp should come off the loom tomorrow and then the warp for sampling (and more stash reduction) will go into the loom. I still haven't decided exactly how much I need to weave for samples, but I'll put on my 'usual' 60 turns (about 24 yards) and crunch numbers later.
The yarn from Brassard should arrive on the 11th, so that will be here ready to go into the loom as soon as I get the samples/towels woven. I will design another 'fancy' twill, make sure I have some plain weave in the tie-up so that I can keep the epi at 36 and not push it to 40. The weight and feel of this combination feels quite lovely - and I know that as they are used they will improve.
So, it seems that sometimes you *can* get satisfaction! (Take that Rolling Stones...)
4 comments:
It’s a beautiful piece of cloth! I personally love natural colors. Was curious on treating the linen in a humidor. I know that Euroflax steams their linen during their process. Did you humidor the linen in cone or skein form, before weaving? Many thanks!
I only use linen as weft (usually) and so I wind the bobbins, then put them into a humidor so that the yarn takes up some moisture into it. At least one day, 3 or more is better. Just makes the yarn so much more co-operative and easy to weave with. If I'm going to use linen as warp I wait for the summer when the relative humidity is at least 60%, more is better. I have a post when I share what I do. I think the label is 'humidor'?
Yes, I have several posts where I talk about humidors: https://laurasloom.blogspot.com/search/label/humidor
Thank you!!
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