I bought a large 3 pound cone of natural 8/2 unmercerized cotton “ring spun” from Unicorn Weaving Yarns (Quebec) on Etsy. I planned to do a long 11 yard warp and then weave 10 towels and each one a different tie up / treadling on my Megado. The cotton showed me a hint of what was to come when I took the first bout wood off the warping mill as it all twisted up on itself!
Beaming the warp was tricky due to the curl or energy in the yarn. It looked like a nice even two ply but…. (Oh, I have two more cones of this yarn so I hope they aren’t all like this!)
We (I had to get help… lucky Hub ) and we fought all of it on. Threading went okay. 16 shaft point twill with a straight draw on either side. Sett 24 epi.
Weft was from 3 colours of Bockens Nialin cottolin in a green turquoise, mid blue and an oatmeal shade. I’m trying to use up the last of this stash. ⭐️ Gold star for me!
I woven 4 towels and was about to weave #5 when I noticed something iffy. I looked carefully under a pick glass and saw that I had ONE thread missing from the sequence. It didn’t show until I changed to the new treadling and then became obvious.
I cut off the 4 towels and rethreaded the left 4-5 inches of the warp, resleyed and tied back on again.
So I have some samples and 9 towels. Only one towel has an obvious mistake and all four of the first towels are being gifted to relatives, who either won’t notice (brother) or if they do, know enough to keep quiet as they won’t get anymore. Towels work perfectly as seconds regardless.
One towel was gifted immediately to our painter for his Dutch wife so I wasn’t able to get a picture of it before it went. The man had just single handedly painted the whole exterior of our home and 2 garden sheds in 5 days so they earned a gift of a blue and white towel.
So in the future I will wind only a short warp with this cotton as its not worth fighting the curl. Or use as weft? It will be used up though… the hand and softness of the cloth shows it was worth the battle.
The very last picture is the pattern I chose for towel #5 and then discovered the error. Its now nice little samples for my weaving notes.
Susan
July 12th 2021