Simply Happy Towels 😊 🌈

 

Sometimes I go back and revisit a draft and work with it again. Perhaps modify it, sometimes leave it as is.

This is my third time using this simple 6 shaft herringbone twill (four times if you include a scarf some years back too).   I have been asked to make more kitchen towels and when I ask them why, or what it is about the towels, they say "they are fun and colourful and make me happy when I use them".

A kitchen towel..... bringing smiles to household chores.   😁

Shared stories: A husband who asked where his favourite towel was, and going to the dryer to get it.   Two kids arguing about who gets the 'good towel'!

People who now use a clean fresh towel to rest dishes to dry rather than a draining board that gets slimy if not washed every day.... and who washes them every day? 

So I wound up an 8 yard warp and planned on 7 towels woven to 37 inches each and approximately 25 inches in the reed. They end up after wet finishing and hemming as approx 22 1/2 inches wide by 30 inches. 

I've had nice compliments on my colour choices.  I use rich deep colours in the little 2 end stripes and place colours that compliment each other.  A sampling across the rainbow or colourwheel.  The photo above shows the latest grouping.    If I could go back and change one thing, I would use a royal blue and not a navy blue.... but they are done.    The stripes are doubled ends of 8's cotton, treated as though they are one end.   I thought about using 8/4 cottons but I feel the ply would be rounder than two 8/2's and be more of a physical bump in the fabric.   If someone actually tries this, let me know how it went.    

Anyhoo.... I used 8/2 as I have more of it and a greater variety of colours and that was more important to me. 

The neutral in-between in this case is natural undyed 8/2 cotton.   It supports the stripes and let them shine and is the frame work for the 'best supporting actor' or weft yarn.    Also 8/2 cotton and I purposely go looking for medium to neutral shades such as the light grey, taupe and ivory cream.  But then you get braver and play with some  candy or gelato colours / flavours:  pale orange or 'creamsicle'.... light lime or 'limeade'..... or soft turquoise or 'mint'.    I carried on the candy theme and taupe became 'caramel' and ivory became 'Devon Cream'.    Salmon pink became 'bubblegum'.   You help create the fun right there on the loom!

Here's caramel 

Lime-ade was popular on my FB Thrums page. Over 800+ clicks!  😳

It took me  a while to weave off due to Life intervening (Hub was in hospital again) and also my policy of weaving for shorter time periods and stopping before I get tired or start to hurt (lower back etc). Kind of a less is more philosophy.  

But they were soon off, shown here serged apart, washed and steam pressed, waiting for hems to be turned.

Then I hand sewed the hems while we watched the TV. Thank goodness for longer daylight!  A final steam press on the hems to flatten after sewing and they were done. 

Simple and happy!   Can be a towel or a table runner. 

Hub wanted to keep one of us and I said sure! Which one?

While he was making up his mind, 4 sold to one customer..... I told him to hurry up! 😁

Here's the draft and that's a handweaving.net number so you can go there and download the WIF file and then play with colour.    8/2 set for twill is 24 epi.      Show me what you can do with this!

Simply Silk

Yup, I'm back again....  the sun came out and so did the camera.  It's so nice to have extra daylight once again and it will only get better from here on.

I was digging around in my three bins of silks (gulp)   ... yes, 3 and decided it was high time to use some. I had small skeins of several colours but not enough of any one thing to do a substantial project such as two scarves (so to reduce loom waste).   I thought about it and realized it was never going to be used unless I was willing to combine them, and do one singleton project.  

I reckoned a colour and weave project such as houndstooth might be nice or a tartan.   I have an 8 shaft draft from handweaving. net that is called "The Spirit of Scotland".  I decided to make it a 4 shaft draft and looked at the colour arrangement and my colours were not close but  close enough to say "inspired" by the Spirit of Scotland Tartan.   😉     The colours below were close approximations....   I almost changed the yellow thin stripes for white but left it as it.  The yellow is opposite of purples and so provides a nice tug on the eyes.

Winding it was fun as the colours built up on the mill.  It went quite quickly and I think winding the skeins into cakes took longer to do.    3 yards is a short warp.   My shortest in years!

So what time I saved on winding was soon lost to weaving. It's a slow process changing colours and in some places, such as the smaller stripes, carrying colours neatly up the sides.  I often wondered who thought up this great idea as a day's work was measured in inches..... and that would be me. 😳

But it was worth it. There's nothing like the soft hand of silk.  I set it at 28 epi and I'm not sure that was correct as it covered the warp yarn in places.   So not appearing like a proper tartan per se. It is an inspirational plaid project after all.  Its all done now and I quite like the effect and colour mix together.

Now I have several small balls of left over silk to work out what to do with.  And still 3 full bins of silk to work through. 

Spring is coming.... we have primulas and snow drops up!

🌷🌷🌷

Under Way with Maeve

 It's been a busy time here this October and we're now into November, complete with shifting clocks back an hour to standard time and into what I'd like to call "the Dark Times".   You know, the time period where you can have lunch and watch the sun set at the same time?  😳

It took some time to tweak Maeve up and get her running smoothly. Heddles needed thinning, then layering shaft by shaft so not cause the shafts to float. I discovered that the apron rod at the breast beam (stick is more accurate) is actually 1/4 inch too long and jams under the breast beam when starting a warp. Nothing more complicated other than being simply a tad bit long for the space.  I know a man with a saw who can fix that so not a problem.   

The loom doesn't come with beater blocks anymore like my old loom so we had to make some from maple and install. Funny thing is, they still pre drill it for the blocks and then don't add them. I didn't like looking at the holes, and I wanted the beater blocks as it meant a further reach for arthritic shoulder joints.

The black rubber 'feet' under the loom and bench leave black marks on the carpet, so I ordered clear 1 inch foot cups and after cutting down the soft side to the right height, slipped them onto the bench's feet. No more marks!   The loom's feet will be done at some future date when I have some big burly helpers to tip her side to side to slip them on.   Its little details like this that drive me crazy and so I look for a solution.

In her spot so I can see the garden.... or watch winter storms.  

This plum shade is the start where I wove just to get the feel of the loom and check for errors. Happily none!   I chose a handweaving.net draft #79912 as it used all 16 shafts and is basically a point twill and sequentially a reversed point twill.   The heddles were all bunched up and so each and every one of the 728 had to be teased apart,  cut either top or bottom loop if missed and so this took a fair amount of time to do.

I could see lines in the warp so I carefully checked and they were threaded correctly.  I had used a 14 dent reed, sleyed 2 ends per dent so that reduces warp streaking.     I would stop and check every little thing that looked 'odd' and there was nothing to fix.   

I had double soft butter yellow ends as a design feature in the coloured stripes. I wasn't too sure about that but it worked out okay to have them than not.

It was 7.5 yards of 10/2 cottons from Web's; sett 28 epi.   Approx 25 inches in the reed and I wove each of the 6 towels to 37 inches.    Three has cream weft, one had khaki, one was a plain version of the three main stripe colours and the last was a plaid where I wove a plaid and also included the butter yellow. That one is my favourite.

Here are the group of 6 towels with the Cameo Rose pink stripe facing out.  There was also a silvery purple and a deep mossy green.   The neutral portion of the warp was a cotton colour called Shell and I used a neutral cream as weft on three towels.

This is the plaid:  I also noticed that there were lines in the weft every pattern repeat now that it was off tension.    It also happened on the reverse but in the second portion of the repeat.    It looked like skips!   It affected every towel, front and back.   So I checked the draft, the tie up plan, did the shafts misbehave?     Everything was correct and fine.    So its a feature that appears off tension that looks like a mistake but isn't.    It still bothered me though. 

I have another warp that I was planning to use the same draft again and now was changing my mind on that.  I will use the same threading but a different tie up plan. 

Here my favourite as the soft yellow perks everything up.   I turned the hems and hand sewed them.  I'm not a fan of the 'stitch ditch' line.  Some of my buyers use what I call a kitchen towel as a table runner instead so this makes them more versatile.

The khaki towel.   

The three towels with an off white 10/2 weft.

The towels end up being 21.5 inches wide by 30 inches with the shrinkage and hems turned.   Quite a bit of shrinkage but they are still generously large sized towels.

Things well under way on Maeve: The name Maeve is of Irish origin and means "she who intoxicates" or "she who rules". It comes from the Old Irish name Medb, the name of a powerful warrior queen in Irish mythology, also linked to the Proto-Celtic root *medu- for "mead" (a honey wine). Another meaning associated with the name is "the cause of great joy".  

Well, once we have all our initial  kinks worked out, Maeve will rule the studio and be the cause of much joy !

My newly set up winding station. Current weft yarns on top and the next projects weft yarns on the second shelf.  Third layer has a series of 3 pound weights to use while beaming a warp.  Towel under the winder is by dear friend Wayne Nicholson.

Finally, for those of you out there with 16 shaft looms, the draft and  you'll see there are a few treadling variations to try. I have the number wrong below and the correct draft number is 79912 at handweaving.net.  I call it a senior moment  😉

22 Hour Flip ⏰

 So my Megado 110 looked like this yesterday morning at 9:30 am

Ready for the final parts to come off and for that I needed help.

What I had managed by myself....  

The box contains small wooden parts and bags of nuts and bolts hardware in a separate box. The bench ultimately came apart too.

The dobby  was wrapped in bubble wrap, then into a box and surrounded by towels.

The new owner, Jessica, came at 10 am yesterday and the loom was hustled out the door to a truck with a sliding canopy cover. They had a drive down island, a ferry ride and another long drive to get home. The Summit on the Connector between Merritt and Kelowna had the first snowfall of the season too.    They likely got home last night about 10 pm or 11 pm.

Then at noon today, 22 hours from the first picture, I saw this:   😳

Apart from tweaking the dobby, she's ready to thread!    We are apparently very keen and very excited..... and didn't sleep much last night.     The loom looks great there and will be making new cloth  probably by the end of the day. 

Meanwhile, here : I had a large empty spot and so got it all vacuumed thoroughly but there's no disguising where the loom sat for 9 years.    I moved a few things around to make it look and feel less empty.  So here's the studio view as of today.

You can see her 'foot prints" in the carpet pile.

Just me and the new kid now with her view of the garden. I'm leaving her here and thinking about what's next for the space.  There's no hurry....  

Today is Canadian Thanksgiving and I'm wishing all my fellow Canadians well as they gather for a meal. 

🍂🍄‍🟫🍁🍄🍂

Dressing Up Maeve

So this is part 2 of my new loom adventure.   It's about dressing up Maeve with her first warp. This is 10/2 cotton, kinda clingy and in softer 'neutral' colours.   Approx 7.5 yards for 6 towels and a sample.   At 28 epi, that's 684 ends!   Nice project in principle but that 684 times I must tussle with new heddles that are somewhat tangled.  Well, I'm that patient.... or stubborn, take your pick!

The warp wound on very well using the Helping Hands assist. (from Lofty Fibers)   The only issue I had was the holes in the ends of my new lease sticks is larger than the ones on the older 110's lease sticks.  So the little 3D printed pegs fell out!    So I used some painters tape at either end and carried on.    No binding of threads, no breakage despite the threads being clingy.   

  

Each section of warp had an S hook and a 3 pound weight and I would go back and forth advancing every 2 feet or so.    Not overly fast but it went well and that's the main thing.  I try not to rush any phase of this process as the beaming of the warp is important.   You can't weave properly on a badly beamed warp.

Finally, I was done and this was my view from the front. The beater assembly is lifted up onto support brackets from GingerlocksHandwovens.  They have a variety of 3D printed aids for looms. 

Here you can see the lease sticks and their end brackets have been dropped down to the lower position, at a good height for threading. There is texsolv cord on either side so you can adjust it to exactly where you need them. I generally as a rule leave the main Helping Hands parts on the loom. The lead stick brackets go into the nifty little bag they came with.

Then this was my view for a few hours every afternoon as I grappled with fresh tight heddles. It was very hot outside so I was okay with the AC on and some nice music playing. 

My high tech method of keeping track of where I am in the pattern.  I'm threading what is between the 2 post it notes.   Simple and effective.   Cheap too.

The threaded sections started to add up....

.... and finally it was all done!  Time to set the parts back on the loom for sleying the reed.

Except the 14 dent reed I need is being used on the other loom! So time to get busy over there.....

Back soon.   😉

Meet Maeve... a Megado 90

So how is your summer going?   Between wildfires, floods, heat waves and hurricane season starting its pretty bizarre!    💨 🌊  ☀️  🔥    Even earthquakes and tsunamis! Then there are the weird things going on with people and politicians.     I'm not surprised people are turning off the news, leaving FB and looking for something more calming in their life.    Parks and hiking trails have never been so busy!

As you may have read here last June, we attempted to downsize our home with little success.   There was little to choose from, prices were very high and the whole economy thing was up in the air.   The literal hole in the roof was a life line for us to quit the deal, stop looking and simply stay put. Enjoy what we have and wait things out.   The whole move concept was fine but it appears we were a few years late.

It wasn't a lost cause though as we learned a lot about what we want versus what we need.  Deciding what to keep and what to shed.   How much 'small' space do we need?    Apparently more than the average patio / rancher style home provides.   Then there was the whole Strata deal.... and they are weird beasts.   The ones we came across mostly were 'bare land strata' where you are 99% on the hook for everything inside and out and have a neighbour on one side to listen to and deal with on exterior costs.    Then every bare land strata is different in what they do cover under their insurance policies.     Want to know how they do business?  Make an offer on a home, then they send you 2 years worth of meeting notes and the rules.  In our case it was 450- 500 pages!   They buried us and only after reading endless pages of technical data do you find out that they actually cover very little, and it's mostly lawns, roads and infrastructure.      This made our decision to stay put even easier!   If we have to handle all the costs, we don't have to argue with ourselves if we can plant a garden or put up a privacy trellis.   🪴

Another thing about a smaller home, is that also means much smaller rooms.   My sweet supportive husband gave me the main bedroom (formerly known as the master bedroom but that's not an appropriate thing to say now) and so I have a generous sized studio, with two walk in closets  and a side benefit of a en suite bathroom. It would be pretty hard to find something like this again in a future move someday.  Even if I was to use the larger bedroom again, it's still quite small.  My Megado 110 would swamp the room and I know that I also need a desk and office type equipment to fit in the space too.   We aren't even talking about where the stash would go! 😳

So the idea germinated of getting a smaller loom now, rather than later and be prepared for the eventuality.   I have been downsizing for years and slowly paring down stuff but more needs to go.

The Megado is right for me with my back and joint issues. All that is wrong is its too big.    I had upgraded the dobby to the new version a year ago and held onto the older dobby to use as a back up in case of a problem with the new one.  It works very well and I have set it back up on the 110 and weaving with it right now.   In time, the Megado 110 (or 43") and its dobby, bench and various bits and pieces will be up for sale. Preferably someone local or at least on Vancouver Island. Its a large and heavy loom and the new owner should be able to 1) weave on it,  2) photograph it complete, 3) assist with taking it apart and we can number / name bits..... and take it home with confidence ... and a manual!

Between the Megado 70 (or 27.5") and Megado 90 (or 35.5"), I opted for the 90 so that I have a larger weaving width, plus a place to keep spare heddles. I was advised to get the biggest small loom I could feel happy with. My old Spring loom was a 90 and I was happy with that size for 16 years so it was  an easy choice.  I hummed and hawed about the whole thing and then Jane Stafford Textile Studio told me that there was a 15% off deal until July 31st and I ordered the loom.   It would not be coming until October...... then the next week I heard "your loom has been shipped". When it was a week overdue, I had to hunt for it only to find it was still in Cornwall Ontario on a shipping company's loading dock.  A 200 pound invisible lump that they had to walk around.  Geesh.

I got the name and number for a man named Ryan at Canadian International Logistics, who promptly tracked it down, changed shippers to Manitoulin Transport,  one he knew could handle the entire trip from Ontario to my front door on Vancouver Island and promised it in 5 days.   Even gave me a tracking number and I watched it make runs from city to city across Canada.    My hat is off to long haul truckers... those are long miles and mostly at night.   I told Ryan that it was a very spendy order and I was concerned about it getting to me undamaged. He said he understood completely as his Dad, Dave van Stralen,  worked for Louet and he knew all about the looms  !  Did I get the right guy or what?  😁

So the next thing I knew, my loom was being dropped into our garage and well wrapped in shrink wrap with several stickers showing its journey from Holland via Air France / KLM to Ontario, and then every city or shipper that it changed hands with.... and my name and address as the final destination.   If only the boxes could speak.... what a trip!

The next day we removed the shrink wrap and found this confusing message sticker...

So don't open boxes unless you read the instructions, but the instructions are in this box?  Something was lost in translation!  We opened the three smaller ones and gradually hand carried all the parts into the studio.    The boxes and the packing are a work of art! The heaviest grade cardboard with wood ends and tightly packed.   I found no abrasion or damage to any parts due to load shift.

Hub is going to keep the boxes as they are simply too good to recycle.  You know "good box"! 😊📦

The next day I read the manual cover to cover. I'm familiar with assembling a Megado but not one from scratch out of the box! I also watched a video that Louet has on You Tube on how to assemble a Megado.  Between the two you get a better picture as sometimes the text is lacking and a visual is better. The parts were labeled with letters and the manual doesn't mention them at all. 

I also sorted the 5 bags of metal hardware and tools so I was familiar with the various sized nuts and bolts.  (During the assembly process I only found one bolt missing a washer, but they give you a bag of extra bits and I found a washer there.) Yes, that white pile are the extra heddles I ordered.  They were supposed to have been installed at the factory but fortunately, they have a video for that too.  The bruises on my hands will attest to how successful I was. 

The Big Box had to come in 2 days later with some help.  Friends, Steve and Sean, carried the large box in and brought out the main section and set it up on 2 stools. I can now start to add on and build it from here.

While I waited for the big box, I had assembled the beater. That was the easy part !   I had ordered a bench but they sent the wrong one. I got to unassemble and repack a Louet box and happy to report it all went back the way it came out. The bench is back ordered and who knows when it will come!

Then,  bits and back supports were added and it started to take shape. 

A rubber mallet and a protection cloth are used a lot to set bolts in place.... rather intimidating!

After two days of adding parts myself I ran into difficulty with the bottom side rails.  I asked Hub for help as they were to low down for my back and I can't kneel on my joint replacement. 

We finally got them on but without sounding overly dramatic, there was a mishap, blood was shed and a rest break was required.  Marriage counsellors weren't necessary.  Later, I did add the side rails for the treadle and added the back beams.

Now she looks like a loom and its getting close!

...... next day I added the brake assembly and the floating tension front legs.

Various cords and springs, small finishing touches and I slipped the foot rest in place. 

Then it was time to wrestle with 2 computer dobbies: get the version 1 set up and working on the 110 and then set up the version 2 on the new loom and get it connected.

Success!  I test ran a weaving draft and everything fired as it should.   Phew!

Lastly, I had to count, shift and add heddles. Not an easy job on a Megado no matter how easy Dave makes it look on his 4 minute video.    It's took a few days, much cussing, and actual bruises but they are now on from shafts 1 through to 16.

Next time it will be about dressing her with her first warp using the Helping Hands system.    I've decided to call this loom Maeve which is Irish Gaelic for 'intoxicating' which pretty much sums up everything about weaving from the looms to the yarns to the endless search for colour and pattern.