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The dishtowel stock needs replenishing, looms are bare, hence a new warp:
It's a skewed view of my warping board, but all colors are present and accounted for in this picture. The draft I will be using for my 8 shaft loom is a simple networked design of the "turtle" variety. It repeats on 24 ends.
Weather here starting to turn "iffy," but so far no indication of the terrible events afflicting other Southeastern states.
My neighbor's tree, with the evening sky behind it:
And in a slightly different coloration, my new shawl, just cut from the loom, washed & dried, and posing for pix on the deck. The evening breeze has picked up and blows things around a little. I also made a movie, but it's taking a while to upload on Vimeo, so here's a still photo. Maybe the movie will be ready tomorrow. The shawl is 100% Tencel, and is butter soft after its trip through the laundry. Network drafting on eight shafts. With echoes.
Peter always makes fabulous desserts for family gatherings. Here's this past Sunday's contribution. This might be his best one yet, as least visually speaking. His kids helped. Is this gorgeous, or what? Yes, yes, I know it's a sunflower, but it's a square sunflower.
Now a complete change of topic. I just finished reading Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. So good. Read this book.
This is the first project I've ever done with 100% Tencel; in the past, I've combined Tencel in mixed warps, and only occasionally used it as weft. For some reason I'm finding the selvedges a little messy. I don't know if it's the material, or what.
Friend Don passed this along. I think he found it at an historic restoration.
The last two dishtowels from the Simulations series, washed & hemmed: 8-shaft networked twills woven on a 40-shaft straight threading. The small size of the repeats is very appealing. We tend to forget these small patterns when we work on our mega-shaft looms. It's good to revisit them.
And now a report from the Department of Better Late Then Never. Yesterday I finally got around to making my matzo balls. First the Before picture, as they were getting ready to go into the boiling water:
And now the After picture, just emerged from the boiling water, nice and fluffy:
They will go into the chicken soup just before serving, with a sprinkle of chopped parsley.
Last night as I was eating supper I chanced to glance up at the loom in the other room, and it was flooded with the late afternoon light in a really enticing way. Like, "Why are you eating when you could be weaving?"
Irresistible, isn't it.
Found the other day in a waiting room:
Although this one is very simple, it suggests possibilities for some interesting dobby designs to me. For one thing, I might try to stripe the warp so that each square of warp floats came up a different color. I would vary weft sequence so that each horizontal band of diagonal spots came up a different color. I might eliminate the pink spots so that fewer shafts were needed. Hm-m-m, it's beginning to get intriguing. Here's my first sketch. 10 shafts. You will probably come up with some more ideas.
I needed some quick 8-shaft network drafting samples on the only available loom. My 40-shaft loom is set up in straight draw, as always these days. I found a threading that repeats on 40 ends, and voilà, my 8-shaft simulation.
Here it is a little closer.
There are all sorts of patterns in my life the past few days. Some of them are very regular and predictable, like this waiting room upholstery:
Other patterns, while predictable, reveal themselves only under certain lighting conditions:
But the patterns that speak to me loudest now are the showy dogwoods in my neighborhood. This is their week to shine. True, there is a strict pattern in the radial symmetry, but that is where their regularity ends. They just explode all over the place! I don't know which I prefer, the white ones…
…or the pink ones…
…but it doesn't matter.