Clean Dishtowels

All this knitting really slows down my weaving. So this post is dedicated to my poor dishtowels, which have been finished for over a week and have been patiently waiting for their moment to show off. And seeing as these are my first dishtowels ever, I really need a moment to toot my own horn. Oh wait, I was writing as if my dishtowels were alive and had feelings... but who are we kidding.It's my blog and my bragging rights. Rock on!

So above is a photo of my Fibonacci inspired towels fresh off the loom. Kind of stiff looking. Kinda eck. But the beauty of weaving is similar to the thrill of blocking lace. Give them a hot bath and a hot iron and ta da!


They shrunk about 2 inches in length and one inch in width. They are much softer, though still burlappy. A little thick. And then I remind myself that they are handwoven dishtowels, not machine made towels from Williams Sonoma. That's right. Snuh-ap!

While admiring them, Hotty Hubby asked if we could actually use them. Use them? As flattering as I think it is that my very Hotty Hubby actually wants to sop up whatever dark, greasy whoknowswhatthatgoois with them, I am not ready to stain these towels. I promised him that I would make him his own set that he could trash with coffee grounds all he wanted.


Knowing that the fibers will bloom when washed, I was still nervous about my very obvious threading sequence remaining visible. See how the vertical lines in the towel are making their own little pattern?


After two hot washes and two tumbles in the dryer, everything bloomed just fine. The only thing that bothers me is that even after ironing, the fabric is very wrinkly, like a brown paper bag that was crinkled and that flattened out. I don't know why this is, perhaps it had to do with tension? Or the cotton used? Or my sett? I don't know. Overall, I am very happy with my first go at dishtowels and I look forward to making more. I have another warp for a different project ready to go and I am debating winding it on the loom and trying to bust out another FO before we move. Hmmm....

Fun with Fibonacci

One of the things I love about weaving is design. You can take something as simple as dishtowels, use a plain warp and play with the weft like crazy. So I had me some fun with Fibonacci. Fibonacci was a mathematician. (Go read about him here.) So to play with Fibonacci, you gotta make like a bunny and bust out your linear recurrence equation. A linear recurrence equation is a recurrence equation on a sequence of numbers expressing Xn as a first-degree polynomial... Fine, so I looked that up on Mathworld. Stop laughing. Here's how I understand it...start with 1 and 1. Add them together, you get 2. Now take the last number (1) and add it to 2. You get 3. Now add that to the last number and you get 5. Are you following me? 1,1,2,3,5. Those numbers will act as your number of rows for a given color. That's the basics. Now play.


I actually started with the number 2, and I took it to the number 10, and then came back the other way. I assigned that sequence to green. I then reversed it and assigned it cream.

Green - 2, 2, 4, 6, 10, 10, 6, 4, 2, 2

Cream - 10, 6, 4, 2, 2, 2, 4, 6, 10

Hmmmm. Technically I think there was supposed to be another "2" in the cream, but whatever. That's my Wabi Sabi.

Neato, right? And not just cool for weaving. Knitting, crochet... (Flickr pool, anyone?)


Now a weaving question. Is it normal to see your threading sequence? That will tighten up in the wash, right?