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I returned to the variable size spots, combined with stripes of solid granite; this time I opted for a butter yellow weft. The spots are only visible when the light hits the cloth sideways.
I like this design so much that I decided to repeat it, this time with the peach weft.
Meanwhile, underneath the loom, previously woven towels are making their way toward the cloth storage beam.
Has the weather always changed so quickly? Lately it seems that we are having three seasons in one day. This morning was a balmy spring experience, so much so that I couldn't stand another minute indoors. We packed up the cameras and headed downtown to the Reedy River. As soon as I got my tripod set up, it started to rain. The sky looked like "tomato weather." I did manage to get off a few shots before retreating back to the car.
It's hard to stay focused on weaving today. For one thing, the weather is gorgeous. A perfect spring day. For another, there's a tremendous racket outside; my across-the-driveway neighbor is having a dead tree removed. That's a good thing, because the limbs have been falling in our driveway for the past few months, one of them barely missing my head. The chain saws are buzzing away. Of course I had to take a break and run out and take pictures of the work in progress. I didn't realize that the guy way up in the tree had noticed me, but just as I snapped the shutter, he waved.
On the striped warp, moving on to a peach weft. Yesterday's towel was on its serpentine way to the cloth storage beam before I remembered to photograph it. Here it is on the "wrong" side; it's a mixture of granite and crepe blocks.
More peach. Currently in progress, varied sized blocks of satin and granite weaves.
I'm having so much fun with this warp. The loom is behaving beautifully. It's wonderful not to be fighting with my equipment.
For yesterday's towel I chose an olive green bamboo weft. The light stripe is a granite weave and the dark stripe is blocks of crepe (the green blocks) and granite (the dark blue blocks). Granite selvedge.
And in my back yard, the trees—which were showing their pale green baby leaves a few days ago—are now almost completely leafed out in full green. This picture is just at sunset, overlooking the creek.
In a very dark log cabin at the Foxfire Museum, barely enough light to see where I was going without falling flat on my face, I took a picture of a crude handcrafted bench. When I looked at this exposure on the computer, I found more pixels there than originally met the eye! Instead of just a handcrafted bench, I saw that a loom lurked in the corner; I had never noticed it the day I shot it. There is the warp beam and the turning peg . No doubt there was a live tensioning system in place when the loom was in use.
Out in the woods, there was a little more light. It shone at a slant in the afternoon, throwing the texture on these leaves into high relief.
Sunday I was back at work on the crepe towels. This one has a 16-shaft crepe on the dark stripe and bands of granite in the light stripe. The weft this time is light blue 16/2 cotton. The light blue brings out more of the yellow in the light colored warp stripes, for some reason.
Among the many interesting sights at the Foxfire Museum yesterday was the studio of Sharon Grist, known as The Village Weaver. Housed in The Tiger House, Sharon's working environment is an organic part of the Foxfire Center. She weaves, spins, dyes, and sells her weaving here. It's such fun to watch a production weaver at work. Not a wasted motion. Everything is smooth and fluid. At the low light levels in Tiger House on this gloomy day, Sharon's hands outpaced the slow shutter speeds I was forced to use, but the blur is an indication of her weaving motions.
In another Foxfire building, the display of handmade toys and other folk art kept our group of ten photographers busy while the rains continued ouside. My special favorite is this doll family and their oatmeal box cradle. Friend Greg said I would get a better shot if I lay down on the floor, and he was right. But I did need a bit of help getting back up.
A puddle collected in a sawed-off stump reflected the sky here:
And I was attracted to all the diagonals in this barn door:
Here's one of the photographers in our group (you may recognize him):
I can't end today without mentioning that softball season has started. Here is the umpire giving last minute instructions (love the socks). Mary Beth's restaurant is their sponsor. Our gal is #2.
A quick picture from a rainy, foggy trip to the Foxfire Museum today. Great picture-taking weather! Mist, rain, mystery, color saturation. Couldn't ask for better. More pictures tomorrow.
The latest towel consists of simple blocks of crepe and basket weave. The crepe is a 16-shaft construction that looks like this:
…and the checkerboard on 32 shafts, with the basket weave for the second block (and 8 shafts for a selvedge, total shafts 40), looks like this:
And by now you know the drill—it'll look much better after washing.
In case you're getting tired of blue and white, here's a picture of a spring evening in South Carolina, taken a couple of days ago. This is especially for my friends who are experiencing snow (!) right now.
Just finished reading The Stranger's Child, by Alan Hollinghurst. It's hard to characterize this book—it's part literary mystery, part social satire, and a stylish commentary on the unreliability of memory. I loved it. Which reminds me—two other literary mysteries I have enjoyed are A.S. Byatt's Possession and Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time.
The next towel has unevenly sized blocks of crepe, 3/1 twill, basket weave, and double weave, with granite selvedges. The weave variations don't show up well in the dark warp stripes with a dark weft, but I'm guessing they'll pop out better after washing. This navy weft is a marled 20/2 unmercerized cotton mill end that's been languishing on my shelf for years. Today it practically jumped into my hands and said, "use me." Every dog has its day.
Geodyne asked about the doubleweave hems—they're easy to do on a straight threading on four or more shafts. Weave tubular doubleweave with the following four successive lifts: 1, 123, 3, 134, repeat. After the cloth comes off the loom, tuck the raw ends into the tube and whip shut along the outside folds by hand.