Finished the Towels

I'm so pleased that I finished my Birthday towels before my birthday!  I had the usually setbacks...I only had a small amount of the linen.  As I had said before I was hoarding it for a while, but this seemed like the best use for it.  I suspected that I would not have enough for all the weft, and I was right.  I only had one bobbin full when I got to the last towel, and I needed 2 bobbins.  I went into the stash to get the other 20/2 linen and found that it was 16/2!!  I went through everything and there was no more 20/2, I didn't want to use the 16/2 as it was enough thicker to make the pattern even more weft dominate and it was slightly weft faced as it was.  I had 20/1 that was possible, but I really wanted the 20/2.

I put out a "help" on the local e-mail list last weekend, and within a few days had a couple of answers.  Monday night I made a drive across the valley to check out the yarn available.  One was too thin (maybe a 40/2) that was unlabeled and the other said white, but was closer to unbleached or half bleached.  The trip was not a loss, I spent a half hour with wine and catching up on families, weaving and what friends had been doing.  (Reminder to self, plan to spend time just talking and enjoying time with other, we don't need to spend all our time "doing" something.)

Tuesday I got an email from about an hour south of me.  She had the yarn and she only lived a few miles from where my son works.  So I made a call to my son at work and he picked up the yarn and brought it home.  I was able to get the final towel woven Wednesday.   I wove up to the very last bit of warp to get the six towels done.  As you can see I have the back tie-on rod right up next to the back of the heddles.  You can just barely see a couple of green threads going back from the rod.  These were loose threads that I tied and hung weights from to be able to finish.

It was great to get the towels off the loom and look at them.  At the time I got them off and I put them on the kitchen table to take pictures, I had the plumber in the kitchen repairing the kitchen leak.  We needed repair to the faucet, replace a drain and replace the disposal.  Unfortunately, the disposal was too large for the space and he needed to cut the shelf under the sink to get it in.  The vibration of the saw caused the hanging wine glasses to walk on their tracks and one fell with a crash.  The plumber was getting a little distressed.  I was just happy to get the leak taken care of and get pictures of my beautiful towels.

Here you can see the lace pattern on one of the towels.

 

Thursday night I washed the towels and got the hemming done on all of them today.  They look great and I am really pleased with them.

Here is how that lace pattern looked after washing.  The color is more true in this picture, too.