Taking Stock

The start of a new year is always a good time to take stock. Here’s the tea towel stock,

what little of it there is.  In 2018, I made around 36 tea towels and have just 2 left after selling most of them and gifting the rest.  The total is probably more than that as there were several left from earlier years at the end of 2017.  

I even checked the numbers from 2017 and 2016 and found that I made 23 in 2017 and 18 in 2016.  I know there’s a message there, quite simply, make more tea towels.  They sell easily and my friends who are on the Christmas tea towel list, have started to ask, hopefully, if there will be tea towels this year.

I have 5 or 6 left on the broken twill blocks warp, the pale pink one looks particularly nice

and as the weather hasn’t been too hot, it’s very pleasant weaving in the garage with the door open.

I decided I wanted to weave some more Bumberet tea towels but in more neutral colours.  I even found the black and white setting on the software so that I could compare value.

Here’s what I started with 

Here’s the black and white version

And here’s the warp

I used the values to make a plan for the main colours – black, light grey, taupe, dark grey and white, and back to black again – and, as Bumberet needs groups of 9 ends, warped 2 of the main colour and one, randomly chosen, accent colour. After a few repeats, I added the terracotta/pink because I felt it worked.  Hopefully by the next post I will be able to show whether it worked – or didn’t

I also made around 17 scarves and probably sold or gifted much the same number. Here's just 2 of them

I made a coat for the Sheep Show

and managed to wear it a couple of times before the weather got too hot but it will be great for next Winter.

I am still working on the white runners, I suspect there are a couple of mistakes in the one I’m doing at the moment and hope there is still enough warp to start again.

Next week, I’m off to the Guild Summer School to do a workshop in Weaving Iridescence. Here’s the warp,

I’ve followed all the rules, but only time will tell if I achieve real iridescence

In my spare time I’m back at work though not working too hard as everyone seems to have gone to their beach houses for the Summer, and trying to convert the jungle that is currently where my back garden should be, back into garden

Helen