A rainbow of tea towels

The tea towels are finished, even hemmed and wet finished.  In the end there were 17 exactly with nothing left over for a bread cloth, all different colours which probably says something about my stash.

I think that as I chose the colours, at the back of my mind was the market customer who claims that ‘they wouldn’t match my kitchen’.  I’ve covered a lot of bases this time.  The only towel which wasn’t really great was the yellow one, simply because there wasn’t enough contrast between the yellow and the natural.  On the other hand, it would have been perfect in my 1970s kitchen, the very first room I decorated in my first house.

I had already woven the light orange and the lime towels, the other colours in the wallpaper and knew I had to do the yellow one just in case anyone is still in their 1970s kitchen or maybe it’s come back into fashion again.

I can do modern classics – black and greys

I can do naturals

I can be patriotic – red, white and navy

I’m ready for Christmas

I’ve also got:

Cool colours

Warm colours

High contrast

Low contrast

Primaries

Secondaries

A rainbow

The purple one which works well by itself

and the terra cotta one which is another loner

And here’s the complete collection

I’ve had fun with these and even if the colour isn’t an exact match, well it can always contrast and show that ‘tea towels are the cushions of the kitchen’ 

I’ve still got a few days before the Glenferrie Festival, the forecast is a coolish day with 30% chance of 1 mm of rain so all things considered, not too bad.  I’ve still got scarves and glasses cases to finish, so enough playing around with colour schemes, there’s work to be done

Helen

It's here

My parcel finally arrived last Tuesday which was Day 13 of the estimated 6 to 10 day delivery time, I should probably be glad that it didn’t take longer. 

After its whistle stop tour of the US and the stopover in Auckland, it cooled its heels for 5 days at the Sunshine West Mail Exchange, known locally as the Bermuda Triangle of parcel deliveries.  The USPS tracking eventually told me it was at my local post office while the local tracking site told me it was still in Sunshine so I went up to try my luck and after searching several times they eventually found it.  The post office just asked me for feedback on their service, so I told them what I thought

Here’s what was inside

About a third of the natural 8/2 cotton has been made into a warp already and weaving is underway. 

The warp was 15 metres long, 528 ends and not one knot in the yarn.  There are some cones of basic black and white 8/2 cotton and some cones of Brassard 8/2 which I’m looking forward to trying.  The Bluster Bay shuttle is so beautiful that I just had to stroke it every time I walked past, black walnut in case you wanted to know.  I’m now weaving with it and know why people rate the Bluster Bay shuttles so highly.

I planned for 24 ends per inch, 3 per dent in an 8 dent reed.  One look at the reed marks told me they would probably not disappear with wet finishing

so I started again with the 12 dent reed which was much better.

The first towel has a black weft,

the second is terracotta

and the current one is sage.

I have plenty of colours in 8/2 cotton so may run out of warp before I run out of suitable wefts

And what did I accomplish over the weekend, where the weather was so hot and humid that I wouldn’t have been able to work on the big loom in the garage, even if I’d had the yarn?

I finished the fringes on the silk/linen scarves.  They both probably need a second wet finishing to give them a bit more drape, particularly the one with the linen weft.  I finished the band for the glasses cases and put a chenille warp on the 4 shaft loom.  I’ve made good progress there, 2 are woven but need to be finished and another chenille warp is on the loom.

Then I retreated to the air conditioned bedroom to watch the final of the Australian Tennis because it was the only comfortable spot in the house.

Fortunately it’s now cooled down and it’s on with the weaving with the first market of the year coming up on March 4