D'vorahDavida
Yetzirah

  In more recent news, I just took some cotton towels/napkins off my big loom. I am weaving by the seat of my pants here because I don't have a towel weaving mentor at my elbow. I surely wish I did. I think I must be making some classic beginner's blunders. I had, by sheer volume learned quite well how to weave scarves on my little Sample It loom. I knew how many yards of yarn would make what length and width of scarf. And I wove with quite a few different weights of yarn with very good results. But this bigger loom is a different animal altogether. The principles are the same, but the larger size of it has inherent issues of its own. The sheer volume is daunting. The main reason I wanted to get a bigger loom was to make cotton towels on it. I didn't realize that the towels I was admiring so were made of such tiny..... string! And as you can see, I am not fully aware of how much of this string is necessary to warp my loom. Because of this oversight, I ended up with a less than optimal pattern, and I had to weave with blue instead of white. I didn't really know what a 'mini cone' was. Now I do. They should call them.... 'not enough' cones.  :-) I warped two threads into each slot because I realized that one was NOT going to make a very nice fabric. Or at least that's what my gut told me. I don't know where my guts were when I finally realized I only had enough left to wind my shuttle with a single thread. So I wove the whole project that way. I WAS given instructions, [thanks J. !] for how to measure the length of your towels, and put that into practice. It worked great! The threads tended to stick to one another and since they were also doubled in the slots, once in a while a stray thread would not stay in its proper place in the shed, so I have quite a few little errors in the weave. Toward the end, I had to slip a rolled up paper behind the heddle to keep those threads in place. That DID help. So I finally got the three towels off the loom and threw them into the washer and dryer. They turned out pretty nice in spite of me. I discovered and appreciated something about this comedy of errors. That even if you work a less than optimal warp with a less than optimal weft, you are going to produce SOME kind of fabric. That may sound incredibly obvious on the surface of it, but it sank into my consciousness at the end of this project. Just because they didn't turn out the way I had in my imagination, doesn't mean they aren't useful. It was an important lesson for me. It is my intention to machine hem two of them to see how that looks. I ordered some larger weight yarn yesterday on Amazon. And because I'm a stubborn and determined student  experimenter, I will see how that works. In case you are wondering, I have looked at videos on You Tube, and done internet searches for tips and techniques, but I haven't found anything on weaving towels that starts at the very beginning. The Do Re Mi of weaving a cotton towel. But as my Aunt Madge knows, I can learn to teach myself. One summer she had to listen to me practice Do Re Mi on the piano until I knew the whole song. I play by ear. And I afflicted hers during my apprenticeship. Sorry Aunt Madge.....  :-) And I guess I will continue to weave by the seat of my pants until I know what I'm doing.  Just like knitting, in many ways, it's the process itself that I like. The end result is just a fringed benefit. (Ha ha. You made a little pun. . . with emphasis on 'little'. )