Rainy Day Textiles

Wow, two weekends of sales has kinda set me back, but I almost have my shopping and my wrapping done so the end is near!  Tomorrow I’m baking cookies for a cookie exchange and making chicken tortilla soup for dinner…but it’s 4:54 pm on a Tuesday and I have no idea what I’m doing for tonight….
I do, however know what I’m doing to that travesty on my loom…I’m putting in my sticks to get my cross back, cutting that stupid thing off and resleying the whole darn mess!  I really liked these towels

See how it’s one pattern on one side, and a coordinating pattern on the other…so I hope I can find my draft!  Anyway, that’s my game plan.  I’m going to do some more of that towel and again use that beautiful blue linen that I got from hacylon last year…it was a one off color that is unevenly dyed, but was a fantastic value and it makes a lovely towel…I really like linen.  I like how hard and firm it feels and I love the intensity of color.

Isn’t that a pretty color?

The other thing that I spent the afternoon doing was working with Jacob  to set up my Square shop!  Who hoo!  So now, if you look under the rotating gallery of projects, you can click on my “square shop” and it will bring you to my store and what I have available!  Isn’t that cool?    Thank  you jacob!

Maaannn….I do not like these towels…I think I have a dog on the loom!   I really don’t know what I was thinking…this warp is set at 30 ends per inch, my pattern repeats every 8 shots, it’s minuscule!  Doesn’t show up and is truly boring…as tedious as the drive from Urbana Illinois to Springfield…the same drive that NB and I had to turnaround from after 45 minutes because we just couldn’t bear the flatness and sameness of never ending corn and soy fields…yes, that tedious!

So then I tried this…

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And then this…

Still don’t like it, don’t know what I’m going to do, so I think I will tag some stuff for my two winter sales.  Artmakers is this Saturday, December 3 and the Woodland weavers guild sale is the following Friday and Saturday.
I have some towels I like….

And hats…

And lovely scarfs…

I will continue to ponder the yellow warp…ugh!

I spent the last two days running down to see Hannah at Ashland College in Ashland, Ohio.  It was so pretty driving home yesterday. Mi left around 8 am and there was a misty fog over rolling farmland as I drove on country farm roads before I got to the highway.  I passed an Amish horse and buggy going the opposite direction.  The driver was a Grandpa with a gray beard down to his waist..I wish I had a picture of him, but I was driving and that’s not allowed anyway.

I finished my Chicago sunset towels…9 towels and a bread cloth…which is a nice name for a short towel…

I’ve been pondering what to do next.. I like crisp white and blue towels, but you can buy those at every store in town and I have some natural cotton and 2.5 cones of really bright cotolin that I bought when Webs was discontinuing their cooling. So this is what I came up with…I’m going to wind a mixed warp of one strand of natural and one of bright yellow.

I will wind the warp in three bouts.  The center bout will use my small cone of louet natural 8/2 cotton and the bright yellow cottolin.  Then I will wind the two sides with my larger cone of 8/2 natural cotton and yellow cottolin.  I think that will be better than yellow stripes and white stripes because the cottolin, even tho it is also an 8/2 weight is actually thicker than either of the natural cottons.  The natural cotton will also soften the harshness of this particular yellow.  At least, I think it will!

That’s where I am at at 6 am this morning…more later!

I’ll show you when I’ve got these sewn!

When I was young, I used to get to fly down to Oregon City to visit my Grandparents.  I loved to go Oregon!  I was most often coming straight from Cooper’s Landing, Alaska where I had spent the summer with no running water, no electricity and a pretty rustic outhouse, so my Oregon Grandparents house seemed like s mansion as large as the Governors Mansion in Juneau.  They did have a very grand house on the edge of a cliff overlooking old downtown Oregon city and the river.

My  Grandmother was a weaver, she had a huge loom..( as I remember) and then a small 20 inch wide floor loom.  She would often have a little project on the small loom so I could weave and Sometimes she would have me help her thread the heddles of her big loom…I know at least one time I totally messed everything up..sorry About that Grandma!  That room was fascinating!  It not only overlooked the river, with an occasional train going by way below, but it was filled with nifty tools: ball wonders, bobbin winders, an electric cone winder, shuttles, and yarn.

Years later, after Grandmother was no longer weaving, and I was married with two small babies and living in Grand Rapids Michigan, my Aunt called and asked if I would like Grandmothers small floor loom…I was thrilled!  it’s a 20 inch, 4 harness Norwood made out of cherry…and it was made in Michigan!

I took a couple of weaving classes from the shop in Rockford, but I found it just too hard to try to learn to weave with toddlers running around…so I learned to spin yarn instead, and spent most of my time knitting and spinning, which kept me pretty busy but that loom kept calling me so for the past 5 years I’ve been trying to weave.  I feel like I came 30 years late to the game, but maaan. I’ve been having fun!

I set lots of goals for myself…and sometimes I totally fail, but then I usually learn something too!

I hope you enjoy seeing what I am up to!
November 2016….towel month!

Goal: 3 warps, 24 towels…..hmmm.  Going to be a stretch….

These are my current towels, the yarn is 10/2 cotton from Webs and I had all of it in my stash.   My original plan was an orange and purple warp, but as I was winding I realized I didn’t have enough orange…so I added the magenta, a serendipitous improvement!   My weft has varied from 10/2 cotton, cottolin, and 8/2 cotton…all shades of red from magenta to tomato orange.  I love them!  It’s like a burst of fire when I walk down the stairs and see my loom!