A finished project, at last! The kitchen towels from earlier this summer, hemmed and washed. The two on the left are twill and the two on the right are plain weave, all from the same warp. I seem to be compelled to pursue more complicated patterns, but I really enjoy simple treadlings when I can lose myself in the rhythm of the weaving.

Here’s the first huckaback towel I just took off the loom. You can see the long floats that I’m unhappy with. I’m in the process of rethreading this warp and hopefully I’ll come up with a treadling I like that will avoid this problem. I like the huckaback texture between the vertical stripes.

The new pattern is not much different from the old in threading. The first treadling will echo the huckaback threading and the tie-up is straight twill.

The second treadling, since I’ll be ready for simplicity by then, will be a straight twill.

(Tabby on these tie-ups would be 1-2 and 3-4.)

I’ll probably have enough warp left for another towel, and I’ll experiment more with this WeaveDesign program. It is available as shareware for a donation from Pike’s Peak Weavers Guild. So far I like it a lot and I plan to send my donation now that I know that I’ll be using it. Unlike another freebie demo program I tried, I appreciate that this is true shareware and that I had a chance to work and experiment with it without time limits or limited capacity. This was very generous on their part!

See Update

This is what I’m working on at the moment: a set of cotton striped towels in a variation of huckaback. It’s been a frustrating project. I don’t know why I decided it was time to design my own pattern blocks, after only having gotten back into weaving recently, but it’s a little late to change my mind now! I’m trying to look at it as a learning experience. The inspiration came from Marguerite Davidson’s classic A Handweaver’s Pattern Book

This pattern is not so bad. I like the texture but it has some rather long floats in the pink vertical stripes. I think that it will be okay.

I enjoyed all parts of this, including measuring the warp and threading. I found the repetitive motions relaxing, especially since I can get WVTF on my radio in the studio. What I hate is winding on the warp. I should have gotten Sandy to help me with it, but I find that frustrating too. What I need is three arms. So the tension is not as even as I would like it to be.

I made a threading mistake and caught it after I had hemstitched the end and woven a couple of inches, and so I struggled with a common choice for weavers. I could have left it alone and it would have been flawed but not very noticeable. I thought about making this one a sampler. In the end, I unwove the two inches, cut it off, corrected the threading, and retied it to the front. I’m glad that I did it because I know that I would have never seen anything but the mistake; that’s how I am!

After this towel, I’m going to change the tie-up on the treadles and see if I can come up with a design that doesn’t have the long floats. I might cut it off again, change some of the threading, and re-tie it. It really didn’t take that long when I did that.

I’m happy because I found a freeware weaving design program that I’ve been playing with that seems to suit my needs, that is, when I feel the need to play with pattern. Usually these kind of programs cost over $100. The WeaveDesign program is sponsored by Pike’s Peak Weaver’s Guild in return for a donation, which I plan to mail off now that I see that I’ll probably use the program. This website has links to more weaving design programs.

The big thrill for me today was that I hemmed my previous dish towels on my sewing machine. That might not seem like a big deal, but I have what I think is a psychological block toward sewing machines. This one was a gift from my mother in 1981, who is a talented seamstress. So I’ve got the genes for it, I just have to get over my sewing trauma now that the machine is repaired.

I also bought a new tension bar for the inkle loom, so I’ll be able to take it back down to the lake with me next weekend and weave that band for my Lake Waccamaw hat that I wanted!

Much of my energy in the studio has gone to reorganizing the past few weeks. Since this is also the time of year that my tomatoes are at their peak, much of my time has gone to the garden and the kitchen!

Even though I would have rather been weaving at my loom, this was productive work. I’ll feel less distracted and more inspired with all my yarns and fiber supplies in one place. Before it was scattered about in sundry closets and dresser drawers. Now all of my husband’s computer and war strategy game boxes are in the house in the “computer room,” and all my hobby stuff is in the studio, as it should be. 

There is a replacement tension bar for my inkle loom waiting for me at Yarns Etc..  My sewing machine was serviced and repaired at McKinney Sew and Vac on Battleground Avenue and is ready for pick up.  Hopefully I’ll remember how to use it!  I nearly balked at the $79.95 price but the guy working there said that if I bought a new one near that price that it would be a piece of plastic that wouldn’t last.  This Kenmore is definitely NOT a piece of plastic - very heavy!  I’m glad that I was able to use locally owned small businesses to take care of these repairs.

The studio is still not a place that I would want to show off, though.  We have some things, like tents and tent poles and greenhouse poles and tarps and gardening stuff stored in there, and I have boxes of old stuff that I had forgotten about that I need to go through.  But at least it is all in one area.  Now the trick will be figuring out how to hide it.

Some of it I will definitely get rid of.  It is very hard to make myself get rid of good yarn that I screwed up one way or another, but I’ll never use it again and I need to face up to it.   I’m ditching some of my earliest weaving projects from twenty years ago too.  For a while, other weavers were giving me their thrums because I was a tapestry weaver and could use short pieces.  Do you know how hard it is to store and organize hundreds of pieces of yarn?  They’ve gotta go.

I found some great stuff I’d forgotten about too.  Some expensive hanks of silk and cones of perle cotton, for example.