It has taken me ten days to get this far. This is the start of a set of teatowels and I was determined this time to take my time with the warping and not create problems that I would have to fix later. I was really careful counting out the warp threads, or so I thought. When I got to the end of threading the heddles I had eight threads left over and then I found two more hanging around in the middle where I’d dropped them. I was really careful in threading the heddles, again to no avail because I still had eight wonky threads when I started weaving. I fixed the errors and got something where the threads went up and down like they should, except that it still wasn’t right. The diagonals are nowhere near the forty five degrees that they should be so my squares aren’t square and I can’t beat it any harder than I am doing. I cut it off, washed it and called it a sample. What it tells me is that the rectangles don’t become squares on washing, the sett is too dense and so I spent the best part of another day resleying it. Today I’ve avoided it altogether and tomorrow I get to start sorting out my errors all over again. I’ve made a deal with myself that if I weave enough for one teatowel I can cut the rest off and pretend it never happened.

My knitting is moving about as slowly. This is the start of a hat except that I parted company from the pattern right from the cast on and sometime soon I have to work out what I intend to do about decreases. No doubt it will take me all of five minutes to work it out but the hat has been stalled for two weeks waiting for me to give it five minutes attention. It’s been warm and sunny, sandal weather, and that kills my enthusiasm for knitting every Spring. At some point I’ll remember that I like knitting lace and I’ll pick up the needles again. Hopefully I’ll finish the hat first.

Spinning isn’t causing me any problems at all so that’s what I’ve been doing while avoiding looking at the loom. This is 1100 yards of merino (218g) that I’m currently planning to weave with some midnight blue wool. At the moment all my plans involve midnight blue wool because I bought a 1.4kg cone of it the other week. The skein on the left hadn’t been washed at this point which is why it looks a little tense. It’s headed straight to stash because those teatowels are going to be sitting on the loom for a while yet. At the rate I’m going, months.

I am in need of a project pick me up and this ticked all the boxes. Decorative, shiny and small, in fact the polar opposite of teatowels. Today I get to play, tomorrow I get to face my mistakes. I wouldn’t mind fixing them quite so much if I could see the thread to do it. Note to self – in future stick to thicker yarn.