Thinking Things Through

 

Linen from Lithuania, Tex 56 or Nm 17.9

I received a gift from someone in the form of linen produced in Lithuania.  I chose the fine singles because my end product was intended to be tea towels, and I thought this yarn would make a lovely weft.

Since I really liked the end product, I bought 5 more kilos in dyed white.  (I know I'm supposed to be stash busting, hush!)

I proposed a project for the new magazine and while it hasn't been approved yet, I figured it would be a good idea to do some experimentation to go with the idea I had to weave.

The singles linen is finer than 2/16 cotton, but that was what I wanted to use as the epi.  However, the idea I had for the article was to weave with two singles in a double bobbin shuttle, but 36 epi - my current warp density - wasn't going to 'work'.

Yesterday I got to the end of towel #6 and instead of weaving one more towel, I wove a couple of samples with the 2/16 and two strands of the singles linen.

My initial thinking is accurate, it looks like.  It's the wrong threading/treadling and the wrong epi, but I was looking to add more data to my decision making, and it's looking like the 32 epi that I expected would be needed, is.  Just based on the difference in the density, the weft is beating in too loosely to square, so it looks like 32 is going to be a better match.

Normally I wouldn't fuss too much about a weave that doesn't beat 'square', but there are times where it becomes important.  On this project it's optimal, if I can get there.

I won't go into that here now because if the project is accepted for the magazine I'm not supposed to talk about it before it is published.

But I thought it was fair game to talk about the steps leading up to my actually going ahead with this idea.  And, who knows, if they don't feel it is appropriate for them, I can go into the details here when I get them done.  Because now that I've done this much work on it, and exploring the factors that are being considered during the design process, I might as well share, if no where else.