I could at a pinch get away with calling this gold, it’s bright and shiny but too yellow to be copper. This was a set of batts that fell out of the shop, no-one wanted them – their loss, my gain. They were bfl and merino, copper angelina and orange tencel so managed to be soft as well as bright and shiny. I spun and plied them while sitting at a craft fair, it’s hasty yarn, woollen, imprecise and quick. Somewhere in the stash bins I have a bright yellow/orange and a pumpkin orange/brown and I’m seeing them all in the same warp with a plain weft. The significance of this particular skein is that it is evidence of spinning – the treadling embargo is over. My dodgy knee had nothing to do with treadling and everything to do with my move into sandals. Once I’d reverted to lace up shoes the knee of pain was no more.

That meant that I could finish the last few inches of the first teatowel. I cut the first one off because I was unsure what the last inch at each edge would look like. There’s a warp chain at each edge that isn’t wound on the back beam but weighted separately. If I get the tension of the chains the same as in the body of the piece then there shouldn’t be any visible difference in the weaving. It looked passable on the loom but I wasn’t entirely convinced, certainly not convinced enough to weave another four tea towels. As it was, it came out well enough on both sides and I can continue with the rest happy in the knowledge that I’m not wasting my time. I know now that I can weight a warp chain and tension it the same as the rest but I’d have to have a good reason to do it again. It’s a faff having to fill two water bottles every time I want to weave and to keep on moving them as the warp winds on and now that I’ve learned the lesson I’m trying to find a good excuse not to continue doing it. It’s made a nice sized teatowel and seeing as I don’t want to lose 2″ off the width I’m stuck with the water bottles until the end of the warp. That may be a while as we’re only half way through the school holidays.

This does look better in its second incarnation, it was the light green that I didn’t like and leaving that out fixed it for me. The light green is also fixed in that it is now olive and brown and back in the bag of sock scraps. From the front it looks like a baby surprise jacket but the back is plain vertical stripes. It’s a DROPS pattern (b20-15) and it’s made in two pieces with sleeve and side seams and a join at centre back. I ended up with the first size, 20″, by using the stitch count for the third size and the lengths for the first size. I have knitted sock yarn before at six stitches per inch and I didn’t like it, I prefer the fabric that results from knitting it at seven stitches per inch. There’s only one thing I don’t like about this pattern and that’s the amount of overlap on the fronts. If I knit it again I’ll stop the increases a few rows earlier which will make the fronts narrower and shorter and then add a few more rows at the bottom to make the fronts the same length as the back. It’s likely that I will knit it again because it eats up left over sock yarn and I could do with more of that.