Comfort Towels

Here's a sight for sore eyes! A nice stack of towels, fresh off the loom! These lovelies kept me sane (?) during the past few weeks while the reno was under way. I was right to keep it simple and keep all colours and complications to the tie up and warping board. I was pretty tired most days and a simple treadling was best. Either 1 to 10 and repeat, or, 1 to 10 and back, then 10 to 1 and back. Even that was challenge some days as I did find two treadling errors later and those towels are now 'mine'. I don't think I have one towel that I have made that doesn't have an error! I guess weavers are the same everywhere... keeping the seconds for home use.

Brief project overview: a 10 shaft, 10 treadle towels in 2/8 cottons, sett 24 epi. 10.5 yard warp and I got ten generous sized towels that I wove to 34 inches each, then turned a small hem and hand sewed. Even hand sewing was calming and as Martha says "it's a good thing" :) Oh, they also measured 24 inches in the reed. Pattern by Laurie Autio and came from a Complex Weavers Compilation. If you'd like to see a closer look at the draft, please click here and scroll down to the draft at the end of the post.

I got a few colour choices for weft but found it was difficult to vary much from the same dark green as in the warp and also the same plum shade. I was trying hard to use stash yarns and not succumb to buying more! I got two olive green towels that finished up an old cone (stash reduction!) and I tried a burnt peach ( ...its just okay...) The lighter shade of ecru in the warp perked up nicely when I used a more neutral beige. Both front and back of the towels are nice. The fronts show little hearts and more of the weft stripes and the back the pattern looks like x's and o's. One treadling variation looked both sides like little chevrons or ceinture fleches. See this in the picture below.

Another thing about this chevron variation was the crazy optical illusion that is going on! Those stripes are equal distance from each other and the same width, but look how the pattern makes them appear wider in places and narrower in others! Its like that in person, whether you hold them up or lie them down.

Here's one side of the plum weft towel as it was rolling up onto the cloth beam. It looks like diamonds with a circle in the middle but is two sets of hearts touching at their bottom points.

Here's a close up view to show the hearts. Darker wefts showed the pattern off best and with more neutral or lighter shades, it was more of an overall patterned look, much like a petit point.

These are the two 'seconds' for our new kitchen! The olive green and burnt peach. Goes nicely with the cream cabinets and walnut flooring.

Reno Report:

Things have slowed down quite a bit and we find ourselves in limbo. Someone today called it 'reno-pause'. You are done, but you are not. Our biggest problem has been the painting aspect. The painter said to me one day "I'll see you tomorrow at noon" and never showed up. It took 10 days and a few calls left on machines to get a call back. Then he failed to show again early yesterday. I guess you can see where this is heading and the new painter starts later this week. I guess people get overloaded and some jobs run over time and over quote .... but....still !

Other things that seem to be going backwards is our weather! Call everyone back for Olympics again, cause it's snowing here! This will put a damper on the colourful showing of spring flowers outside. The Para-Olympics are about to start in the Olympic venues so the snow will be a welcome sight.... it is afterall supposed to *winter* games!

I'll close this post with a shot of the new warp going onto Emmatrude. Its an experiment and already I'm thinking I should have waited a bit before leaping back into something more mentally challenging! 2/8 tencel, alternating colours iris and coral, sett 40 epi. Yes, you read that right.