Twisp of Fate

At the Chamber Music Festival last July, I ran into a woman who was interested in some of my undulating twill towels in “black and red” to go with her kitchen colors at their second home north of Winthrop.  I discovered I already had a cone of black 8/2 cotton, about 2 lbs so enough to put on a 12-yard warp.  So, even though I thought I was done with those towels, I tied on a new warp a couple of weeks ago, and on Monday of this week, finished them off.

I don’t remember where I got that black cotton, but it turned out to be a pain in the neck.  Quite “tender” so I had a lot of breakage problems.  I finally figured out how to coax it along – just the right amount of tension, don’t advance it too far so the fell line (where the beater hits the cloth) remains in a narrow area where the reed is vertical, etc.  But it was worth it!  I really like how these turned out – so much so that I have ordered more black 8/2 cotton from WEBS and it is on its way to me now.  It is their own line, Valley Yarns “Eight-Two”.   Good stuff, and a decent price if you order enough to get the 25% discount.

Here are two of the black and red ones:

undulating twill towels, black warp and red weft

I did 4 other colors:  banana yellow, turquoise green, elm green and madder brown.

Also this week I was trying to respond to the final call from Confluence Gallery for submission to a show they will open the first part of November.  It is titled “Visions of Verse”.  They have 33 works from local poets and ask visual artists to respond to the written works.  I was really drawing a blank, and also couldn’t see how I could get anything significant and new, done in time, as I will be gone on and off for most of October.  But then it came to me – these new towels are perfect for a poem by Danica Kaufman titled Prayer Flags of Daily Life !  So there you have it.

Also working on some placemats at home:

new placemats underway

using this fabric!