After setting up for the Guild Christmas party and having projects on 5 of my looms I had no choice but to get stuck in and get some results. Two projects could definitely be classed as ‘faster’. The cotton towels and the Abalone colored scarf were both straight weaving with easy treadling and minimum weft color changes.

So while I concentrated on finishing them, Anne took up the weaving on ‘Bernie’ – the tufted rug and I took occasional breaks to make progress on the Tartan throw. First finished were the cotton towels on ‘Big Mac’. I had allowed for 6 towels as a test run for a larger run this year. Unfortunately and despite my careful counting I had wound on the warp in sections and miscounted one section by one turn so it being short limited me to just 5 towels. I thought of trying to tie on enough for one more towel with the knots at the join between two towels, but the amount of work for one more towel changed my mind quickly.

The idea behind these towels was to use the same design as the 2021 Christmas Towels but re-sleyed to open up the weave a little and using just one weft color per towel. They worked out well with some of the bold colors I had sitting around in the stash. The huck lace gives them a nice texture overall.

The second project finished was the Scarf in Abalone colors. The warp was variegated black, grey, white and the weft variegated blues and greens. Both in 8/2 tencel. With long twisted fringes and a long scarf it looked great and after wet finishing it softened up even more. Anne claimed this one! I’ll now go ahead with a run of 3 or 4 in a slightly modified design.

Work has continued on the tufted rug with both of us working on it when we have time and we are now at just over 13 inches (of 50 inches total. Once the fingers develop some muscle memory you can speed up to a reasonable 11 knots per minute, with up to 2 inches a day achieved (weaving about 4-5 hours on this project). As this speed falls within Peter Collingwood’s ‘reasonable’ rate I’m happy enough. I shan’t be going into intricate designs a la Middle Eastern hand knotted silk rugs, I think some geometric shapes and colors should be achievable and a complete 4 x 8 foot rug in 2-3 months a reasonable goal. The tartan throw is now half complete and now that I’ve worked out the ‘throw’ to take the shuttle across the full width of the loom, it’s going easier.

We also acquired a commercial rug for the floor of the studio. It was straight concrete and needless to say rather cold if you are working in socks (necessary when treadles are close together (Big Mac mostly). Anne found a large rug down from $350 to $70 plus her work discount on top of that!

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Left to right: the new rug and weaving progress in December. Tufted rug, and Tartan throw as of today. I put the heater on when I went to take the photo’s above so it should be warming up enough to head out and get some more weaving done.