Here they are, the first two fabulously ugly scarves, woven with the fabulously ugly yarn I hoarded for years because I couldn’t decide if it was fabulous or the most hideously ugly yarn I’d ever seen. Somewhere in the two studio moves the labels were lost, so I’m not sure of the content. I got the yarn at a swap, and at the time I was pretty snobby about natural fibers, but who knows where my head was when I voluntarily adopted this yarn. I might do a burn test, but the left one sure wrinkles like cotton. Anyway they look much more beautiful worn than this scan shows, and are soft and cuddly.

The left one is totally fab ugly yarn in a plain twill. The right one is tabby and alternates fab ugly and red cotton flake in the weft.

I think that I have enough yarn left to make one more, and my goal was to use every bit of it. If I was not lazy and liked math, I would have calculated first whether I had enough. But since I am a wild and crazy woman, I decided to live dangerously and do it this way. It was more fun because I approached it as a puzzle.

I decided to tie on to the original warp so that I wouldn’t have to rethread the heddles and reed. I had 82 ends at 12 ends per inch. First, I wound as much of the fab ugly yarn as I had for a length of about 7 feet. (Tying on to the original warp reduces the warp waste.) I had 54 ends, so I had to rework my warp design a little. I made the red and blue stripes wider to bring it to 82 ends, and I hope to have enough red cotton flake to weave the whole thing. Using this shareware WeaveDesign program helped a lot, and the design is below. The red stripe on the left is actually in the center, and it is symmetrical. We’ll see if the treadling drives me insane. Well, more insane.

I have it tied on the loom now and hopefully will begin weaving this afternoon.

I started wondering what it was about this pattern that made it “huck-a-back,” especially since I fooled around with it so much, and went back to Davidson’s book where my jumping off point was “Huck-a-Back Blocks” on page 82.  I’m a little unsure that there IS a definition of huck-a-back, and if there is, my version is one of the more unlikely ones.

Marguerite Davidson writes in the beginning of the chapter, “It may be a surprise to handweavers to find so large an assortment of threadings in this weave, since the commercial towels are practically the sole surviving use of the very old favorite.  It could have been included in the previous chapter on Texture Weaves, since it is also a small threading, with unique tie-up, and has its own treadle development.”

Although my threading almost matches her “Huck-a-Buck Blocks,” the tie-up is now twill and the treadling doesn’t match anything else in the chapter.  So if you’re reading this looking for a traditional huck-a-back pattern, you may want to look elsewhere!

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!

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