Half the year is gone…how did that happen?

I had grand goals for this year…I was accepted to the Forest Hills Craft Fair for November, and then I have Artmakers the first weekend of December 2022..so I figured I could weave 60 scarfs, 60 dish towels, 10 shawls and knit 40 hats. If I think about those goals I’m going to start to panic..so I’m just not going to think about them…I’m just weaving what I want to.

I took a class from Natalie Drummond in Deflected Double Weave. it was a Zoom class for me because of Covid concerns. I have tried to take Zoom classes before and totally failed..didn’t attend, forgot to attend, didn’t like the presentation, didn’t like the presenters voice…lots of (mostly) bad reasons, but this class was a delight! Natalie is a great instructor, good presentations, great individual feedback, lots of weaving time…spread over two days. just terrific! and since we had a choice of two different drafts, and I had two looms available , I was able to do both drafts! a total of 5 scarfs…and they are really neat!

I dyed the yarn myself…each required three different bouts, so I was able to set up a dyeing studio in the furnace room and dye away. It was March in Michigan so still too cold to do it in the garage or outside.

I tried to be productive…really, I tried. I had an idea for a birthday gift for a friend, so I played around with some silk..60/2..sett at 36 ends per inch. My initial idea was to also have some elasticized thread in the warp, but that was a warping nightmare…i tried winding the warp with the elasticized thread intermixed…that didn’t work. Then I tried hanging the elasticized warp threads on weights off the back of the loom…oh my gosh! that really didn’t work. so I cut all the elasticized thread off…threw it away and decided to embrace an open dent concept and used some of the elasticized thread in the weft for the cowl. Then I wove the silk scarf. I’m in love with the look of this scarf. I will say, at 40 picks per inch, It was a slow weave, but this is my favorite type of weaving, when I just keep choosing a color at random for the weft.

I wove three huck lace scarfs with a variegated warp…i used up a ton of partial bobbins winding the warp!

Diane V. showed me the kitchen towels she had just woven and shared the pattern , so I wove these bright red towels. I think they will be perfect for Christmas! Winding the warp was incredibly time consuming…I’m going to figure out how to streamline that a bit!

Albert Einstein these next towels are for You… I wove another small batch of towels..they were supposed to be waffle weave but somehow between writing the pattern and tying up my treadles I left something out and forgot to tie up one of the treddles… I may have just reinvented something…I kinda like them…. did you know that reason we have Quilted northern toilet paper and quilted paper towel is because at the start of his career in the United States, Albert Einstein was hired to do a study on absorbency and he concluded that bumpy surfaces were more absorbent than flat ones?