3.26.18. Wound the warp and dressed the loom for another round of Cat’s Track dish towels, since I enjoyed the last ones so much. I think I measured about 7 1/2 yards for warp, so I think I’ll get 6 nice size towels.

21.3 inches in the reed, 30 epi, 640 ends, 2 ends per dent in 15 dent reed. Two inches for each hem, 1 inch plain weave, 6 repeats of the twill part of the draft for border, 20 picks pw, then begin regular treadling.

The warping didn’t take very long, although threading seemed to go on and on, and I may have an issue with tension on the left side, since that bout was substantially shorter when I finished than the other two bouts. Not sure of cause, but I guess I’ll find out if it was funky beaming or funky winding. Will deal with it as I go along.

Started weaving this morning. So much fun, but I promptly discovered a little treadling error. Always have an error at the beginning. I will cut back and fix tomorrow morning when I am back at the loom.

3.28.18. Still fiddling with some problems, a threading error discovered after I wove several inches, some breakage of threads on the left side where tension is a bit wonky. Everything fixed at the moment, and I’ve woven about ten inches on the first towel. Darkish teal.

4.29.2018. Was away from the loom for several weeks enjoying vacation and several special family events. Jumped back into this project this week. Finished first towel and started second. I had lots of broken warp threads, even broke 5 at one time near the left selvedges. Yikes. They’re mended for now and I have bee troubleshooting. I put some s-hooks on the threads near the edge, because the tension is loose on that side. I also have been paying close attention to my throw to avoid pulling those threads in and stressing them. So far so good—no breakage in many inches. I just have to pay attention, but looking fine now.

4.30.18. Halfway through towel #4 with no more broken threads. The tension issue has made its presence known, but I think the towels will be ok. One side will just be longer than the other. Wove the third towel with 10/2 unmercerized cotton from Georgia Yarn Company. At first I thought it was too bright, but now I love it. The fourth towel is also GYC in coral. When I unpacked it, I thought it was too orange-y, but it’s a lovely coral, my favorite so far. I guess the white warp and tabby weft tone the colors down. These two are my favorites so far.

5.7.18. Took this fabric off the loom this morning. Not quite enough warp for 6 towels, so I settled for 5 and a breadcloth. Looking forward to wet-finishing and hemming. Loved using the Georgia Yarn Company 10/2 cotton for some of the towels, just lovely. Learned a lot, as usual. I’ll try to remember to allow 1yatd of warp for each towel and two yards for loom waste and messing around, aka sampling. I really did want that sixth towel.

I think I figured out some things about broken selvedge threads—when I added weight to improve the tension and laid the yarn a bit more carefully, the broken threads problem vanished.

Still haven’t figured out why my tension was messed up—left side much looser than right, opposite of usual problem. But it happened, of course, in beaming. I’ll keep paying attention and next time will be better.

Overall, so pleased and happy with this. I like using the same draft and specs for two projects in close sequence—I felt that I could really enjoy weaving the second project instead of spending so much time problem-solving.