Bookmarks Finished!

I cut the bookmark warp off the loom, wet-finished and pressed them, and trimmed the fringes (aren't rotary cutters wonderful?). Speaking of selvedges, I can tell which bookmarks I used the fly shuttle on because the selvedges are uneven on one side. Sigh.

Here are some of my favorites:




This isn't all of them - some were woven with a weft only slightly different from the warp, and the scanner couldn't capture anything except solid red rectangles. In the flesh, so to speak, you can see the patterns clearly, because the bombyx weft is much more lustrous than the tussah/bombyx warp, making the pattern show up as gloss that comes and goes as you turn the cloth in the light.

On a 5-yard warp, I managed to squeak out 17 bookmarks. I think next time I'll leave less fringe allowance and get 18 or more out of 5 yards. There will be a next time, too, because the little cellophane envelopes that are just the right size come in quantity 100, minimum! Not expensive (I paid $7.00 online, plus $4-ish shipping), but I hate to throw the extras away and what else am I going to do with 183 little envelopes besides weave more bookmarks next year?

Next project up: serviettes (aka dinner napkins). I owe a couple of friends hostess gifts, so I'm digging out some 24/2 cotton I bought years ago at a CNCH conference. There was an unofficial vendor who spread out hundreds of cones of undyed yarns (mostly cotton) on the lawn out back of the conference venue and priced everything at a dollar a cone! Needless to say, I grabbed all the fine cottons and loaded up my car to the roof. Dunno when I'll use it all up, but at that price I couldn't help myself.

Stay tuned...