Project Round Up

I apologize to those of you who may have gotten a published notification for a post from earlier this month. Something weird happened and it ended up back in my drafts again somehow. I think it may have been crossed wires between editing a post on the WordPress app on my phone vs making edits on the computer. They don’t seem to be syncing well together. Growing pains I guess, I’ll figure all of this out eventually.

I have been weaving my little elbows off over the past six weeks to try to get some towels finished for the shop before the holidays. I finally finished the last towel of my warp on Thursday night and spent all day yesterday pressing and hemming as many as I could. It is really satisfying to see these big rolls of fabric on the cloth beam when a run of towels is finished.

Of course, it’s easy to fall into the trap of believing that just because the weaving is done, you’ve reached the finish line. If you believe that, my snips for trimming ends, ironing board, and sewing machine would like to have a word. I think this pile here is a great reminder (to myself) that just because it’s off the loom, does not mean it’s done. Once the fabric is off the loom, there’s still about an hour of finishing work per towel before the project is officially finished. And there are 27 towels in this stack!

I know I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, but it is so worth it to take your time with the finishing. It really elevates the project and makes a world of difference. This stack of unfinished fabric turned into some really beautiful towels.

I designed these towels to be evocative of icicles and frost. I really enjoyed the design process here. I started with a pattern draft from handweaving.net (any weavers out there who don’t have this resource bookmarked are really missing out!) and heavily modified it, playing around with the design on my computer for probably a good week until I ended up with what you see here. I stuck with cooler colors for these towels for an icy winter feel. of course it wouldn’t be Spring Creek Textiles if Spring Creek didn’t feature in the photo shoot somehow.

And these towels are pure Christmas. It’s really fascinating to me to see the difference in fabric characteristics based on the weave structure for each set of towels I make. The float length (how many threads a single strand travels over or under) really plays an important role. This red/green towels had a bit less interlacement than the first set of towels, and the longer floats stand out in a really interesting way to me, almost reminiscent of a waffle weave which is great for absorbency. All of these towels are now available in my Etsy shop and are truly flying out of here. I posted the listings maybe 9 hours ago as I’m typing this and almost half the towels have already sold. I’m honestly kind of speechless, and so thankful!

I also recently finished my weaving “experiment” that I showed you a while back – bookmarks!

I cut these off the loom back at the beginning of October, but then they sat unfinished as my focus shifted to winter towels until a few weeks ago when I finally made myself wash them, press them, and cut them apart. I call this an experiment because I wanted to see how the fabric would behave, and how feasible it would be to weave beautiful twills in miniature. I designed, I think, 10 different twill patterns and had put on a warp to weave at least 20 bookmarks thinking they would be great smaller items to have for sale, but I got behind on deadlines and had to cut the warp off after just seven bookmarks so I could free up the loom. I think these were a really great success, though, and I am definitely going to come back to the idea next year. The green warp is a 40/2 linen, and the weft is a black 20/2 mercerized cotton. I thought the cotton would give the bookmarks a silk-like sheen, but actually after washing and a hard press, the linen is really stealing the show! I think next time I may try linen as both the warp and the weft to see if I like that better. The warp is set at 48 ends per inch.

These little things are only about 2” by 6” (without the fringe) and I really enjoyed the process of making them. Most of these have already been given away as gifts and I am looking forward to making more.

Lest you think I have been ignoring knitting altogether with all of this weaving going on, I offer you this pair of socks as evidence that things are getting finished on that front as well.

I made these as a gift for someone who hopefully isn’t reading this blog and they are my go-to k2p1 rib. I have made so many pairs of socks identical to this one I could probably do it in my sleep at this point, and the self-striping yarn is the star of the show as usual. This yarn is such a workhorse, too – Jawoll Color in the color “902.0141” that I picked up at The Yarnery oh probably two or three years ago now. (The Yarnery is the best yarn shop in St. Paul, MN where I used to live, and my previous employer until 2016, so you’ll see this name pop up on my blog a lot. They have single-handedly enabled the curation of 80% of my stash.) Oh gosh, it must have been at least that long ago because it was definitely pre-pandemic. The Yarnery isn’t even in the same location as it was when I bought that yarn. It’s amazing how time has been simultaneously at a standstill and moving at warp speed since 2020. But I digress.

99% percent of the handknit socks in my sock drawer are 2×1 rib, or plain stockinette. I always tell myself I’m going to do something more exciting with my next pair, but socks for me are the mindless project I always have going on in the background. No chart to refer to, no pattern to mess up, I can just pick them up and knit around and around without really thinking about it. So it should be no surprise that the pair of socks I’m working on now is…

Plain stockinette. I’m telling you, if it ain’t broke… These plain fabrics let the yarn speak for itself and they feel so comfortable on my feet. These socks are practically knitting themselves. I love seeing the vibrant pops of color show up, and it is total potato chip knitting – just one more stitch, one more row. I always want to see where the color is going to land next and how it is all going to stack up from row to row.

The yarn was a custom colorway hand-dyed exclusively for The Yarnery by Polka Dot Sheep Yarns in support of the shop’s “One Yarn” initiative. A portion of each sale is donated to the MN Transgender Health Coalition. I am really thrilled and also sad to see that this yarn is now sold out, and I am excited to be wearing these socks this winter when we all need a bright spot of color in our day.

And lastly, the red blob, aka the lace shawl in progress, formerly a pile of frogged yarn, has returned to the needles and all is well. Lace is notorious for being ugly until it isn’t, so this will just be a red blob that gets slightly bigger each time I show it to you until BAM it’s a finished shawl.

My sister and I are knitting this pattern with each other as a knit-along (KAL), but I’m pretty sure she has knit along well into the distance at this point and I am going to have to race to catch up. The final chart has beads – it will probably be the most interesting development on this lace journey. I’m sure I’m still a few months away from that thrilling chapter, though. The red blob and I are going to have to spend a lot of quality time together before we get there. I’ll let you know how we get on.

Until next time, stay creative.