This morning I pressed the samples for the second article. Now they will finish drying and then I'll examine, document and assess them for results. And then see what conclusions I come to.
Not all of the results were a 'surprise' to me, given I've been weaving for nearly 50 years, with lots and lots of different yarns and weave structures. But if I'm going to be able to present the information in a way that makes sense, I need to include examples of what I'm talking about.
On the end of the blue/grey warp I wove a 'sample' with the aim of running it through wet finishing loads with other towels numerous times, to see how it behaves with time and processing. I want to treat the sample 'roughly', so I will use a wet finishing load rather than an 'ordinary' laundry load.
When I sell my towels, my care tag says 'machine wash warm water, machine dry, iron if desired'.
My wet finishing process is to use *hot* water, not warm.
These towels, woven with my 'mystery' yarn (likely a 6/2 cotton, given the burn test and close examination with a microscope) seemed to have quite a lot of twist in the singles, less in the ply, I was curious to see how it behaved during wet finishing. It behaved about as I suspected, so now I want to see how it behaves with repeated trips through the washer/dryer.
It doesn't matter how many warps a weaver has run across their beams, *change one thing and everything can change*.
And so I sample.
Writing these articles were a great exercise for me. I can roughly guestimate how a yarn will behave, but I don't always guess correctly. So it was important to do the samples and find out.
It will take some time to write up the details and pick though my conclusions. And of course I do realize that someone else might have a different experience with the exact same yarns (see change everything caution, above.)
In some ways it's difficult to accept I've been at this for nearly 50 years. OTOH, I have woven a LOT, and learned TONS.
But here I am, learning more.
It's what keeps me getting out of bed in the morning. What will I learn today? There is almost always something!
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