🧗‍♀️ Many Ways to Climb a Point Twill Hill 🏔

I recently saw this in an email from Long Thread Studio who publish Handwoven magazine for weavers:

 “Fun fact: There are 65,534 tie-up combinations on a 16-shaft loom.” To which I replied, “And I bet there is someone out there trying them all.” Although I didn’t know the validity of the number at the time, I was pretty sure I was right that somewhere in the world a weaver was trying every tie-up combination, “just to see.”     

Taken from : Handwoven article

They were talking about me I think..... 😊

I had bought a large 3 pound cone of natural 8/2 unmercerized cotton "ring spun" from Unicorn Weaving Yarns (Quebec) on Etsy.  I planned to do a long 11 yard warp and then weave 10 towels and each one a different tie up / treadling on my Megado.   The cotton showed me a hint of what was to come when I took the first bout wound off the warping mill as it all twisted up on itself!

Beaming the warp was tricky due to the curl or energy in the yarn. It looked like a nice even two ply to me but....     (Oh, I have two more 3 lb cones of this yarn so I hope they aren't all like this!)

I had to get help... lucky Hubby, and we fought all of it on.  Threading went okay.    16 shaft point twill with a straight draw on either side.    Sett 24 epi.

Weft was from 3 colours of Bockens Nialin cottolin in a green turquoise, mid blue and an oatmeal shade.  I'm trying to use up the last of this stash.   ⭐️   Gold star for me!

 This sweet little 5-6 inches became my samples for my records.

I wove four towels and was about to weave number five when I noticed something iffy.    I looked carefully under a pick glass and saw that I had ONE thread missing from the threading sequence.  It didn't show until I changed to the new treadling and then became obvious.    😢

I cut off the four towels and rethreaded the left 4-5 inches of the warp, resleyed and tied back on again.  Once you know... it has to go!

So I have some samples and nine towels.   Only one towel has an obvious mistake and all four of the first towels are being gifted to relatives, who either won't notice (my brother) or if they do, know enough to keep quiet as they won't get anymore.  Towels work perfectly as seconds regardless.   

Eight towels here.... with one blue one off in someone's kitchen already!

The blues...

The oatmeal...

The green turquoise...    (the gifted towel has the same pattern as the large diamond in the centre of this grouping, but in blue)

One towel was gifted immediately to our house painter for his Dutch wife so I wasn't able to get a picture of it before it went.  The man had just single handedly painted the whole exterior of our home and 2 garden sheds in five days so they earned a gift of a blue and white towel. 

So in the future I will wind only a short warp with this cotton as its not worth fighting the curl.   Or use as weft?  It will be used up though...   the hand and softness of the cloth shows it was worth the battle. 

Some individual pictures showing both sides:

There will be more pictures to come of our newly painted house but a slight delay as our painter has hurt his back..... but soon!