Comfort Weaving

After completing a major project, like my jacket for Bendigo, I often feel that it’s time for a little comfort weaving.

What's comfort weaving?  I think it's a bit like comfort food - the familiar foods of childhood, craved and/or eaten when life isn't going smoothly - only in weaving it's the simple plain weaves and straight twills from Weaving 101, often done when while watching TV, and when you want a break from more complex weaving

Over the past 3 weeks I’ve managed to make 4 plain weave scarves, 12 herringbone tea towels and a bread cloth

while binge watching Kitchen Cabinet. It's a local TV programme where Annabel Crabb, a political journalist and keen cook goes into politicians' homes, cake or dessert in hand.  The deal is that she brings the second course and the host cooks the main course.  She hopes that in a familiar environment, distracted by cooking - the politicians who are keen foodies like to show off their skills, those who are not,  just pray that no disasters happen - they will open up in ways not seen in formal interviews.  It works, they do open up and seem much more human, even ones who would not normally get my vote.  It all makes good TV for weaving.

The scarves were just simple plain weave using an alpaca weft for 2 and a boucle loopy mohair for the other 2.  I thought the mohair was the sort of yarn that should be brushed, remembered that I had a little brush just right for the job, and even managed to find it. 

A quick brush raised the pile to give a soft and fluffy surface, just the thing for the cold weather we’re having at the moment

The tea towels are from the warp of leftover yarn I wrote about here.  While width of the coloured stripes was dictated by the amount of yarn available, the grey and black stripes helped to bring it all together.  I used a herringbone draft and wefts in the same grey as in the warp,

natural,

red

and a greyish blue, hard to say which worked best, maybe depends on the kitchen colour scheme. It's always good to get to the end and see all the towels on the cloth beam.

I was reading something about kitchen design recently where the author suggested that tea towels are the ‘cushions of the kitchen’ – an inexpensive accent of colour to make the space look more interesting.  I guess there might be something in it

I went to the Hawthorn Craft Market on Sunday and some additions to the stock were needed. 

I managed to make a couple of sales and learned quite a lot about the new credit card reader in the process.  I thought my limited technical skills were the reason it wouldn’t work but found out later that while there was an updated version of Android on the phone it wasn’t compatible with the card reader as its app had not been updated.  It’s all a learning experience but I’m still trying to work out why I didn’t just enter the card details on to the screen as I do at work regularly when someone has a card which can’t be read

Helen