Weaverly

Three Towels

The three dishtowels are wet finished & hemmed, and now ready for their group shot. From farthest to nearest: the first and second have center bands, but for the third I eliminated that band and extended the text to meet in the center. It looks better on the towel rack that way. I also slightly elongated the striped hem, which puts the hem in a better proportion to the rest. Now that I have the template the way I want it, I am thinking of further texts. How about a series of Jane Austen dishtowels, with each towel bearing the title of one of her novels? Better yet, a series of Patrick O'Brian dishtowels; that would be 21 towels, total. A goodly project. Is that you, Jack?

Some glamour shots:

Eat Your Kale & Spinach

The new "Parsley" is on its way to the cloth beam.

Here's the back side. If you were Leonardo da Vinci, you could read this easily.

I've started a new dishtowel. This one says "Eat your kale & spinach," and I've found a nice green yarn for it. The border design is the same, but I've left out the center band.

Meanwhile, in my office, havoc reigns. These old, dangerously teetery bookcases are being replaced…

…so this morning my helper and I removed all the books and stacked them temporarily in the living room:

While I'm away next week, the builder will bring in the new bookshelves and install them. 

Modifications

First, a report on the shawl of combined satin & granite. Very drapey, very low-key in its brown & beige coloration. This is not a shawl for the runway. Perhaps it would work for the great-aunt of the bride.

Nevertheless, I'm very fond of it. I love the combined structures (there is a subtle plain weave border around each oval), and I specially like the way the border and double-weave hem came out. Here's a detail:

Next, the "parsley" dishtowl. What I'd like to change is the second iteration of the text. It should be upside down so that you can read it from either end as it's hanging on a rack.

And as long as I'm making changes, I'll change the borders, too. Here's the new plan:

I've just started the weaving.

Got to stop now, we're headed out to the symphony.

 

Blue Parsley

I ran out of green, so had to make the second repeat blue. It's a slightly schizophrenic dishtowel, but the jury's still out. It will have to be washed & hemmed.

Ill Cooks, Parsley, etc.

I wove a tablecloth 15 years ago; I use it almost every day, and it still cheers me up. It bears the text from Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet, "Tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own fingers." These words were spoken by Juliet's nurse, and I imagine they are slightly scatological. No matter. I still think they make a great tablecloth.

Lately I've had the urge to weave more text, but instead of using a computer font (of which there are many great ones to choose), I thought I'd use my own handwriting. Here's a working sketch; the text is the refrain from the English ballad Scarborough Fair:

My old tablecloth was woven of 10/2 cotton @ 24 epi on 24 shafts. The weave structure is broken 4-end twill. For the new project (a dishtowel), I will use 20/2 cotton @ 44 epi in 5-end satin on 40 shafts.

I'm still weaving on the brown warp. The hem is a few inches of striped satin in green, then there is a border motif in lavender, then the text begins in green: Parsley sage rosemary & thyme. 

I don't have much green yarn left, so I think I'll intersperse the lavender motif after each rep of the text to help eke out the green for an entire dishtowel. 

That's pretty much the way I cook, too. Throw in whatever's left in the fridge, and it usually comes out OK. No ill cook, I.

 

A Dozen Deep Breaths

If you attended Complex Weavers Seminars this past September in Chevy Chase, MD, you may remember the video "The Boob Tube Hour," created to complement the noon lecture by Edward Meader: "The Rise and Fall of the Female Breast." The video was a compilation of work by several CW members, and in the process of assembling it, I did a short woven animation as my segment of the project. It was a lot of work, and at the time of the presentation it all went by in the blink of an eye. So before letting it die a natural death, I decided to abstract my portion and create a very short separate video for posterity. 

I designed eight separate panels, based on a Photoshop checkerboard image with a grayscale bump map applied. These eight panels were woven in doubleweave on my TC-1 in black and white mercerized cotton, scanned, then sequenced in Photo to Movie software for the animation. I think the effect resembles a heaving bosom, the kind you might see on the cover of a romance novel. At least that was my intention. I hope you enjoy it. Pass the popcorn.

Positive, Negative, Positive

The satin & crepe shawl as it snakes its way through the loom. First the positive side from the weaver's point of view, then the negative side, as it travels away from the breast beam, then the positive side again as it inches down toward the cloth storage beam.

Yes, we do like dots, don't we?

Polkadot

You may recall that we started a sailmaking venture just over a year ago. The project was put on hold after the sail was complete, but I'm happy to report that the boat itself is now finished. Willy has sent me the following pictures. Intoducing Polkadot, Catalina's new sailboat, built by her dad:

And here's the proud skipper (still in her pj's):

A Beginning

The draft I've decided to run with, from yesterday's sketches, is this one, with 5-end weft satin inside the shapes, plain weave outlining the shapes, and a twillish granite as the background (click on this to see it without the annoying moiré artifacts):

Here I've started in on the loom. First, a double weave hem, then a little separator of satin stripes, then the actual pattern.

In this closeup you can see the three different weave structures: satin, plain, and granite.

And yes, I'm weaving it in reverse order; I know you eagle-eyed weavers will notice that the twill line is running up to the right.

What If…

Today I'm thinking…I like the way satin looks against granite weaves, shiny against rough…and I'd like to combine them in a new way. Sandra is thinking along the same lines, but is working from the opposite direction, rough against shiny. It will be interesting to compare results. 

For starters, I've drawn an ogee shape, with a 3-pixel wide outline. I've repeated it vertically in satin order, so that you need five ogees to come back to starting position. The background will be granite (which granite?), the centers of the ogees will be satin (warp satin? weft satin?) and the outlines will be plain weave, to sharply delineate the borders of the other weaves. That's as far as I've gotten. More tomorrow.