The first project to be started in the studio is a bathroom mat/rug for the yet to be completed studio bathroom (currently used as storage for all the bathroom fittings plus a few light fittings that Anne has managed to find at heavy discount). I wove a rug for a customer in Townsend and wound extra warp as I had always intended to weave another rug using the same style of weft yarn. The warp is heavy linen and the weft was a trial of a method to produce ‘random’ coloring through the whole rug. To achieve this I had to ply three cotton warp yarns together first. Two in solid colors and the third in a variegated yarn that contained the two solid colors as well. When woven the colors come and go and form clumps and stripes as colors match from weft shot to weft shot.

The threading and tie up was straight forward and I was all ready to throw the first shuttle in the Oak & Fern studio. Worthy of a photo (and glass of wine to celebrate).

I wove a few inches using the warp yarn that will eventually be rolled to make a fully reversible binding on the ends. Then on to the actual weaving.

The ply of the yarn makes sloping/diagonal lines appear and disappear – obvious here with the white highlights. The colors in this stripe are the ‘oak’ part of the rug. The new yarn arrived yesterday so I was able to move on to the ‘fern’ stripe. The oak yarn has an ‘S’ twist so the diagonal runs right to left. With the fern yarn it is ‘Z’ twist which runs left to right. This will give a zigzag look as the stripes change.

Each ski shuttle holds enough for two stripes and is a full bobbin worth of yarn. I need to adjust the tension on my Ashford Traditional wheel as this needs a fairly high tension to wind on. The twist goes in fast so the set up has to be fairly free flowing or too much spin ends up in the yarn. I’ll get some pictures as I get into ‘production mode’

In the meantime with another fine day before rain I’m working up on the roof putting on shingles so won’t get to the weaving until tonight.