The Dragon's Lair

The weaving bug made it's entrance a couple years ago, but it's recently taken a sudden spike in how strongly it has taken hold of me. I have more ideas rattling about in my head than I could weave in two lifetimes, let alone one, so there's no time to waste between warps with an empty loom!! I'm not by any means fast on the turn around - everyday life has a way of intruding on weaving time quite frequently. However, I've gone from one warp in a year, to one every six months or so, and now nearing one a month - so definitely an improvement, which I hope to perhaps make even a little better in the future.

There are consequences to pouring more time and focus into weaving though -
I believe my house has been declared a Dust Bunny Sanctuary. A place free of brooms poking into dark corners and venturing under the couch! Vacuum hoses snaking under the bed and wreaking havoc? Unheard of! If you are a dust bunny that has been chased from your home, you can find a safe haven here.
And I have dire suspicions that a giant sock monster has taken up residence in the laundry pile - but in a laundry pile that size, it's hard to tell for sure what's lurking in there...

But when you have cones of 8/2 cotton in jewel tone pink and green, with a black one nearby to set off the colors in an excitingly vibrant way, that have been calling your name since February and begging you to empty the loom so they can come play - how can you refuse?

I'd been contemplating various ideas for these lovely colors for quite awhile. But despite having this tantalizing wisp of an idea in my head of how beautiful these could potentially be, it was sufficiently vague as to be hardly more than a taunt... teasing me with the fact that the idea was there, but not willing to actually show it's face and tell me how to weave it.

I tried to nail it down with one structure after another... monk's belt, Fibonacci stripes, overshot - what did these colors want? Nothing seemed right. The one that kept coming back the most often though was twill... point twill diamonds, M & Ws... twill... hmm...

The loom was empty last Wednesday, and I knew I needed to decide. Playing with the twill again sounded interesting, and I knew from my "Hidden Diamond" towels that it worked great to show off contrast. So twill towels it would be. But then came the interplay of the colors. I had three this time. Warp stripes? Weft stripes? Both? Wide stripes? Skinny? Patterned? Varied? So many possibilities!! So that night I sat down with my little weaving journal, armed with three pencils - a pink, green, and black - determined to make this elusive little idea show it's face.
I'm much more of an analytical, symmetrical, repeating-pattern kinda gal, but I had this feeling that symmetry wasn't what these colors were after. They wanted variety... a little touch of chaos just for the fun of it. Let me tell you though - a symmetrical pattern is MUCH easier to plan than a random one! I sat down with those pencils though, and went to work. Drew a miniature "towel" on the page and marked off (to scale) tiny "one inch" increments. Then I just started randomly coloring in stripes. Finally, my pattern began to take shape!

(The colors of the cotton are rather over saturated in this picture. I discovered that making somewhat lightly sketched colored pencil show up in a photo is a lot harder than I realized)

So I had the stripes - Step one accomplished! This idea could no longer hide in the shadows. It was headed to the warping board!

This project had really sunk it's claws in, and I had it warped in what is for me record speed. The 480 end warp began to come into being on Friday, and the loom was fully warped by Tuesday! That's completely unheard of in my little corner of the weaving world.

While what I wanted to do today was just weave away and watch the lovely towels come into being before my eyes, I figured I had better go on a sock monster hunt instead. So if you don't hear from me again soon, send rescue! You never know with those sock monsters...