I finished another rya! I wove it in record time between July 13-July 20. That was the week of our recent heat wave, which was grueling in every way. The one good thing about it was that, thanks to the heat, I spontaneously woke up at 5 each morning, and got busy weaving by 5:30. I wove a few rows before work, then wove a few more in the evenings, plus a couple marathons on the 13th and the 20th.
Why didn’t I cut it off until this morning? Well, I was obsessing over the fact that the top half of the rug was longer than the bottom half, and I couldn’t make up my mind whether I ought to just leave it or to unweave the hem and take out the top row of knots. Many days ago Matthew advised me to leave it, and I should have taken his advice way back then. But when I get stuck in a loop of second-guessing, it’s hard to get out. Finally I enlisted the help of fellow weaver and flax study group member, Lisa Bertoldi, who kindly came over this morning and advised me to leave it as it was. Phew! Thanks, Lisa!
All the blue wool is dyed with woad. I used three shades of blue singles and three shades of a finer plied wool (an 8/2 mill end from Webs). The plied wool has a bit more sheen than the singles, which I really like. I combined the sizes and colors in different ways to get the color gradations. At the center I used Bartlett’s 8/2 bleached white. The plain weave background is Harrisville’s Highland white, which is a natural/unbleached shade of white.
Here are many photos. This one shows the rya on a white sheet outside in the shade of the maple tree in front of our apartment.
Then I cropped the image to make the sheet less obvious.
Here are some close-ups. The lower half of the rya:
The center:
The upper half:
