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~ Jean Williams, Handweaver

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Category Archives: Yarn Stash

“The Good One”

11 Thursday Sep 2014

Posted by jeanweaves in Planning, Towels, Yarn Stash

≈ 5 Comments

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Color, Cotton, Handweaving, Towels

Cotton Lace Kitchen Towel

Cotton Lace Kitchen Towel

One of my sons-in-law made me laugh recently. Here’s the story.

Many years ago, more years than I’d like to admit, I decided to make Roman shades for my daughters’ room. I had some commercial fabric with red and blue flowers on a pale pink background. That was my starting point. I chose yarn to match those colors and chose lace as the weave structure. I wound the warp and started weaving, but the colors just didn’t “sing” the way I had envisioned them. Being a new weaver, I thought they would grow on me. Not so. After 11 yards, the cloth came off the loom and still, no “song.” I was so disenchanted that I folded the fabric and stowed it away. The curtains never came to be.

Fast forward to this past winter when I decided to clear some of my stash. At the time, I was thinking about using yarn that had been on the shelf too long, but my curtain fabric still haunted my linen closet.

Because I had used cotton in a lace weave, this fabric was actually a good candidate for towels. So I put scissors to fabric, cut the yardage into several towels and gave them out to my family. They aren’t pretty–the colors still don’t sing after all these years–but they work as towels.

And this is how my son-in-law made me laugh–my daughter has been using her towel and on laundry day, put it in the wash. Her husband happened to be washing up in the kitchen and looking for something to dry his hands, asked her, “Where’s the good one?”

One weaver’s failed project is another family’s “good one!”

Now I am working on towels in the same weave structure, but with colors that work much better than my original ones. Can you hear the song?

Busting the Stash–continued

01 Saturday Feb 2014

Posted by jeanweaves in Uncategorized, Weaving Inspiration, Yarn Stash

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Weaving, Yarn Stash

The crinkly cotton towels are off the loom and waiting to be hemmed.  And they turned out very nice in spite of my earlier reservations.  Once before, a long time ago, I had mixed some strands of this yarn with other cottons in a towel and was dismayed when it shrank at a different rate than the rest.  In other words, I had a seersucker towel–not what I had in mind!  So the yarn sat for a very long time; I was avoiding it.  That, and I didn’t know if the darker shades were colorfast.  But this time, I did not mix it with anything else, and I washed it in hot water with a color fixative, followed by a regular wash.  The result was normal shrinkage and no color bleeding; very good.  Weaving can be an adventure and an experiment.

The heavy cotton/acrylic is still waiting to be warped, but it will be used this year.  It is a promise to myself.

And then there’s the Finnweave.  I’ve been looking up information on it so I can use the small balls of perle cotton left to me by another weaver.  She used it for Finnweave, but I have never tried that structure.  According to Alison Irwin in a January/February 1999 Handwoven issue, “Finnweave is a variation of doubleweave pick-up…”  She writes about both doubleweave pick-up (p. 36-39) and Finnweave (p. 40-43).

Say you want a cloth with two different faces, dark on the back and light on the front, and designs that alternate those colors.  In doubleweave pick-up, you manually pick up and alternate the dark and light threads to make the pattern.  You can do larger areas with loom-controlled doubleweave, but with pick-up, you can be creative and do things like sign your name and “draw” free hand. Draw your design on graph paper and follow row by row in changing the light and dark threads.

Finnweave exchanges pairs of threads rather than single threads, so it weaves faster.  You can pick up your pattern, weave two rows, then change the pattern, whereas with doubleweave, you have to pick up a new pattern after every row. Doubleweave is reversible; Finnweave is not, according to the articles. But Finnweave allows you to weave diagonal lines, whereas in doubleweave, those diagonals appear in stair steps.

This is intriguing and I will have to try samplers in both structures.

Busting the Stash

17 Friday Jan 2014

Posted by jeanweaves in Uncategorized, Weaving Inspiration, Yarn Stash

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Weaving, Yarn Stash

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about looking at my yarn stash and planning projects accordingly. So I have two batches of yarn that have been on the shelf for years–honestly! One is a heavy cotton/acrylic blend. I have several shades that remind me of orange and strawberry sherbet. My original plan was to weave sturdy block design placemats with it and I did weave some, but obviously not enough to use up the yarn. Time to revisit that plan!

The other yarn is a crinkly, thick and thin cotton novelty yarn in several shades of blue, nutmeg and natural. I inherited this yarn from another weaver several years ago. The balls were wound with two or three strands together; not my usual put-up, but with some patience, I’ve rewound it as singles. Because of the fiber and texture, I’m envisioning terry-like towels. We’ll see what comes off the loom.

My goal is twofold: first, I want to stretch myself to use what I have on hand. Accumulating more and more without using what’s there is inefficient and wasteful. Second, I need to make room for the finer perle cotton yarns I use most often, many cones of which are stacked in precarious places. It’s all part of the New Year clean-out.

After I finish with the heavy cotton/acrylic and the novelty cotton, there are several small balls of perle cotton that a friend had used for Finnweave and gave to me when she could no longer weave. What’s Finnweave, you ask? That’s for another blog!

Happy New Year!

28 Saturday Dec 2013

Posted by jeanweaves in Planning, Uncategorized, Weaving Inspiration, Yarn Stash

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Weaving, Yarn

I hope all of you have had a joyful and peaceful holiday season with those you love. In our house, the holidays continue through January 6, so I’m still breathing balsam scent and eating cookies. The thoughts of what projects to start next are just tickling the back of my mind.

As I think about what to put on my looms next, the supply in house is the obvious place to start. January is a good time to look at the stash, those drawers and shelves of yarn that sparked my interest sometime in the past and now await fulfillment. How can I creatively combine the colors and fibers? What patterns will let those hues shine?

Among the cones I have purchased are others that I have inherited from weavers moving on to other things. Sometimes these yarns just don’t fit my style anymore and have languished on the shelf for who knows how long. If you have some of these, consider donating them to a local craft studio and fellow weaver. Maybe someone else is looking for just that fiber to finish a fabulous project.

Whatever your next project is, I wish you happy creating, and a Happy New Year! May you have a healthy and fiber-filled 2014!

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