Mother Nature Towels

I'm still weaving towels, but just not as much recently.  I got inspired by this magazine ad in colors that are definitely not my colors.  Working with colors that I don't particularly appeal to me is a good challenge.

Color Inspiration

I played around with what colors to use and decided on six.  I didn't have just the right orange, so I decided on a red and a couple of olivey greens to go with the navy and melon.  

Yarn Colors

This is 10/2 mercerized cotton, sett at 30 epi.  These were threaded as an 8-shaft variable point and treadled with a 2-2-1-1-1-1 twill tie-up.  

Full Drawdown

Drawdown Detail

I wove ten towels with weft colors that were the same as the warp colors.  The treadling was mostly an 8-point twill but I used other variations of point twills.

Finished Towels

Details with Yellow Weft

Because I named these Mother Nature Towels, to match the ad information, I kept hearing the Beatle's song, "Mother Nature's Son" so I'll leave you a link so that you can hear it too... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZJMaRMbRro  

A Shawl from the Stash

I haven't been weaving as much recently but I have been working to reduce the volume of my stash.  What better way to do that than making a shawl?  I have been buying Mountain Colors yarns for several years and just admiring them.  I decided to actually use the yarn - novel concept, I know.  The nice thing about Mountain Colors yarn is that many of the yarns have colors in them that are found in other colorways or are complementary to other colorways.  

I wasn't sure I had enough of any one yarn for the warp so I picked Ruby River 4/8's wool as the main body of the shawl warp and Goldrush 4/8's wool for two outer stripes of warp.  

Warp

             

Weft

The warp was sett at 8 epi and threaded to a long point twill on 8 shafts.  The tie-up is a 1-1-1-1-2-2 twill.

Drawdown

The weft was mainly Alpaca Blend in Goldrush with Alpaca Blend (50% alpaca and 50% wool) in Ruby River.  The shawl turned out to look pretty good.  The large "point" and different color selvedges and large "point" design give it interest in addition to the color variegation.  

Finished Shawl

The shawl was machine washed on gentle cycle and laid flat to dry.  When dry, the fringe was twisted with a hair twister.

The color of these pictures is pretty true, although these colors are very challenging for me to photograph.  They often come out very orange.

I am planning to keep looking for ways to reduce my stockpile of yarn.  This does seem to be a great way.