It’s Towel Time

An empty loom is a sad sight to see, so I’ve been thinking about what to put on it next. Every time I do this I looking at a three cones of cotton yarn in my stash and ask myself “am I ready yet?”.

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These were meant to become towels. A set for me and a set for Mum. The first and only previous attempted I made to weave these was back in 2008, and I got so befuddled by the math and intimidated by the number of warp ends needed when using 16/2 cotton that I packed the cones away without even taking off the labels.

Well, I’ve got a bit more weaving under my belt since 2008. Some of it involved projects with a few hundred ends, and some used cotton. If I did plain weave and just played with colour that would keep the project as simple as possible. It would keeps the number of ends to warp as low as possible too. So I measured up an average size tea towel in our kitchen, did the math and came up with 617 ends at 30 ends per inch for plain weave.

617 ends. I have 320 heddles.

I have plenty of handmade temporary heddles, but not enough to make up a shortfall of nearly double what I have. And I don’t relish the idea of making so many more of them. So what to do?

In the small hours of Saturday morning the solution suddenly hit me. I would be going to the Handweavers and Spinners Guild that day for their weaving demo day. I would just buy the thicker 8/2 cotton they stock and then sell the thin stuff. However, when I got to the Guild I started chatting to a lovely weaver who suggested that I simply use the thicker cotton as warp and the thinner one as weft – perhaps even doubling up for the weft.

Talk about a smacking-self-in-the-forehead why-didn’t-I-think-of-that? moment.

So that’s what I’m going to do. Here are the three cones of 8/2 cotton I bought for the warp:

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So if I use the 16/2 yarn for the weft, I have six colours to mix together. This could be fun.

While I was there I also bought this:

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Yes, I could have knocked one together myself, but it was there and so was I. I’ve been thinking about getting a pin loom for a while, as I have a heap of sock yarn that would look nice woven into squares and sewn together into a blanket. And I reckon I could make the squares while watching tv.