Its electric

Dyeing records act as inspirations

The problem with planning ahead of time is I get all excited about what will be happening next and bored with what's happening now. I have a rug on my loom but all I'm thinking about is napkins. Well, I say napkins. I'm actually thinking some 9x9 waffle weave face cloths. But then I could do napkins...

Drawdown for Waffle Weave.

This is one draft I'm considering. It's waffle weave, that eternally wonderful fabric relegated almost entirely to towels. The cells in this draft wouldn't be square, but the asymmetry would allow more depth then normal in a 4 shaft waffle. To heck with that though! If I want the trouble of setting up 8 treadles, I'll do an 8 harness pattern! For the record, I have no idea what "C 1hr, H 5min" means. I mean, I assume it's related to the dying records on the opposite page, but it's still greek to me.

Hemstitching: You have been Upgraded.

Any way, the reason for all the excitement about making washclothes/towels/napkins/placemats and everything else exciting in the universe is that Santa brought me a Brother 104D Serger. Hemstitching (above) is now a thing of the past! I can now weave 9 yards of fabric, run it through the serger a few times, and suddenly have 27 perfectly finished washclothes/towels/napkins - You know what? They're just rectangles of cloth, you figure out what to do with them.

In my excitement to tell everyone in the world about how utterly exciting this gift is, a lot of people have expected some sort of agonizing over whether these yet-to-be-rectangles would still be handmade, like I needed some justification for mechanizing part of the process.

Bullshit. Machines planted the flax/cotton, harvested, washed, spun, washed again and wound the yarn before I even get it. Plenty of mechanization has already happened.

Moreover, I weave because I love weaving. I hate hemstitching. This serger means more time doing what I love, and less doing what I hate. Perfect!

Oh, and I have an electric ball-winder now too.  I'm basically a cyborg already