Its the Start of a New Weaving Season!

That noise you heard was the door closing on summer with the ending of the Labor Day Weekend!  Oh, there's three weeks left till the autumn equinox  but it's clearly over. Birds are suddenly absent, with flocks of geese flying over head. The gardens look tired no matter how much you primp them and fertilize. The bracken ferns are turning that beautiful bronze colour.

We are starting on fall clean up earlier this year as Hub is having a knee operation early October. The big thing coming up is the taking down of the large fir tree that died earlier this spring and having the hedges trimmed up neat (the better to withstand snow falls in the winter).

Here's a studio shot from today. Some days I wish one of you could come and join me for company!

I have been managing to get more time in the studio but I haven't been pushing myself very hard. The Megado is sitting waiting its turn and I really must review the program manuals once more before my next session on it.

I did weave quite a bit on the Woolhouse and waffle weave towels today. I'll share more on the towels later on but most likely once they are woven off and hemmed. Its just the same view foot after foot, with yards to go right now so not much to show you.  I've decided to just weave all the yardage as one continuous length using royal blue as weft and cut apart towel lengths later. It means I can just sit and weave away! Podcasts, music or the radio.... and a 'no brainer' for treadling!  Just hit treadle one through to eight and repeat. Yes, I do mentally count as sometimes your foot thinks treadle seven is the end... and its not.   :)

That just leaves the Spring to account for!  I'm happy to report the Drall scarves are all woven off, plus I even squeaked out three small samples. They are all rolled up and waiting to be finished. That means serging the samples and pinning out the scarves for fringe twisting.  There are no lack of places to sit and work and so they wait their turn. The full reveal will come soon.

Seeing that the end of the scarves was coming up, I got busy and planned another towel project.  That's the new warp in the picture above. I have no towels at all in my meager inventory so another batch will help.  I have no plans to do the sales this fall season so I can weave away at what I like with no pressure. (There will be a brief break as I work as Nurse Ratchett for hubby in October.)

The Drall scarves were an eight shaft turned twill and so the tie up is still in place and can be re-used for this project. That's a great back saver right there! These turned twill towels are 8/2 cotton in soft muted shades of burnt peach, sage green and plum. My sett is 24 epi and I have enough warp for nine towels. That's eight for the inventory plus one for my kitchen.

The warp wound on quickly and I was able to beam the warp and thread all 600 +/- warps ends ( I forget the count right now)  in one afternoon.  Today, I sleyed the reed and tied onto the front beam and threw the shuttle! No errors thankfully.  It really peeves me when I have to go back in and fix a mess-up before I can get busy.

Now to test the theory that this turned twill draft can be used with another tie-up plan:

Looks good to me! The camera flash makes the weft look like a lighter colour but its the same as the warp.
Be back soon with another update.... in the mean time, good luck with getting the kids back to school, and back to 'normal' routines!