Mary Ostler

Its been a few days since my last post. I have been busy doing non-sca-ish stuff, and haven’t gotten around to posting a few things I finished a couple of weeks ago. The biggest project was my first weaving project. Made out of crochet cotton, the warp threads are a bit smaller than the weft threads (except the blue), as I changed brands, as I discovered the super huge roll was a better price than the smaller rolls.

The single biggest pain was the warping of the loom. It took a week of worknights to get 320 warp threads threaded in the right pattern. The worst part was bring 80 threads in before I noticed I was doing the wrong pattern…DOH!

First winding them through the upper sticks

Then lacing them through the right heddle on the right shutter.

Mistress Agnes was nice enough to lend me one of her grandmothers shuttles. It works great so I build one of my own.

This pattern is really nice. I used a different pattern on the blue parts on the smaller of the two towels I made. I had a warp heavy pattern, and it made the pattern want to curl the cloth.

Small sample of some crochet cotton I dyed with purple heart dust (post to follow eventually).

Cutting of the towels. Every six strings I tied together.

I washed the cloths in scalding hot water in the washing machine. I was hoping for it to tighten up the weave a bit. It ended up shrinking ~ 1″ across, and 2″ in length. The towel gain a lot in thickness.  This is the larger with the nicer pattern. Its for the top of my folding aumbry (10′x25′)

Smaller of the two (10″x22″) It has a diamond pattern in the blue that made for lots of weft on the front of the towel, and lots of warp on the under side. I really like weaving, so this won’t be the last project.