I Am Pleased With My Linen Yarns

This is just a short post to say that I’m pleased with my stash of linen yarns. Here they are:

linen yarns

The pink colors at the top come from madder roots, and also the little orange skein on the left. The browns are from black walnut. The light orange in the center is from orange cosmos. The blues are from woad. The greens are from weld with woad on top. The yellows are from weld. This modest-sized basket represents a ton of work, and I am very satisfied!

After a long hiatus, I am returning to a warp on the loom which I abandoned in January. It’s 40/2 linen and was threaded as huck lace with a heart motif. The warp is only 75 ends and two inches wide, and the cloth is for bookmarks. I have woven many of these before.

However, this time I decided to use a darker shade of pink which didn’t work as well with the lace structure as the lighter pinks I’ve used in the past. The yarn was also just slightly coarser than my usual size for some reason, and it absolutely would not beat in as snugly. So, all my hearts were elongated. All of this is very subtle, mind you. But at 36 epi and only 2 inches across, every thread counts. So, after making a few bookmarks that I wasn’t totally satisfied with, I gave up.

But today, at last, I’m motivated to re-thread and weave off this warp. The deadline for the Weavers of Western Massachusetts “Heddles and Treadles Show” is coming up. I have already had a request for several bookmarks for holiday gifts. My inventory at the Shelburne Arts Co-op is very low. Hence, weaving! (12/27/2023 Edited: The link above to the Heddles and Treadles show description no longer works, but you can read a newspaper article about it here.)

I plan to re-thread in an 8-shaft twill with a different shade of pink in the weft. Hopefully it will look like nested hearts. Then, I plan to put on a green warp and try the same pattern to create a “leaf” effect. Hopefully. You never really know how it will turn out until you try it. But at least I have a wide range of inspiring colors to work with.