I think I can… I think I can… I think I can….

I think I may finally be ready to start weaving an actual project.  I have been playing with sock yarn on the loom for the past couple weeks which has allowed me to develop a rhythm as well as give me lots of opportunity to learn the finer points of weaving (and the sometimes sorry looking results while traversing the learning curve).

After straining my mental capacity learning how to calculate yarn requirements for each project to be developed on the loom, it was time to sit down and come up with my very own design for a set of 4 tea towels.

I spent last weekend with a pad of graph paper, pencil, ruler and several cans of beer….and this is what I came up with:

Psychedelic enough?

Do you feel like the room is moving?

The top and sides are a regular Twill patterning with the center dots being called a Point Twill.  The whole pattern will repeat from top to bottom along the length of the towel with the pattern going across as you see it.  Once I had a snippet of what I wanted written on graph paper, I created a spreadsheet in Excel to replicate it.  Which was much easier as you can customize how many repeats width-wise and length-wise utilizing the copy/paste function.

Next was to figure out how much yarn I needed for the project, which entailed starting at what you want in a finished size of towel and working backwards.  Lots of math…with lots of eraser being used up.  Thankfully I am still sane after this first go round.

Next is to figure out what colours to use…

Here is some 8/2 cotton yarn (8 being the size of the yarn and the 2 denoting how many plys there are) that I am thinking of using.  Having several stripes of different/matching colours for the warp (the threads from front to back) and using a natural or white for the weft (the threads that go side to side), that should highlight the pattern without making it too busy.

Now that I have the colours picked out, it will be time to start warping…I love the lingo in weaving, it makes me feel like I am on board the Spaceship Enterprise with Captain Pickard.

Stay tuned…