Lemonade, Anyone?

As the saying goes, when you get lemons, make lemonade.

Here's the warp, sleyed and ready to be tied onto the front apron:



Last time I used this dark brown merino, it shrank nicely for me, so I was sure it would behave the same now.

I wove about 6 inches, using a rusty orange silk weft. The lower part is all plain weave. In the upper part, the dark brown merino stripes are broken 2/2 twill. Also in the upper part of the sample, I put rows of 8-12 picks of a beige wool (testing for future shrinkability). Then I cut off the sample, zig-zagged the raw edges, and washed and dried it.

Lo and behold, no shrinkage what-so-&*%^#(-ever. So I washed it again, by hand, agitating fiercely. And dried it in a HOT drier.



Okay, the upper portion shows a tiny hint (but only a hint) of shrinkage in the wool stripes. Back to the drawing board. I have now resleyed in a 10-dent reed, same as before with 2 ends of wool in each dent and 3 ends of silk/tencel.

Tomorrow I'll weave another sample and wet finish it. If nothing shrinks at the more open sett, I'll take a different route for bark-like texture, and put it into the weft. I've got some Jump yarn from Silk City that's almost the same color as my rusty orange weft, and some Merino/Elite from Textura Trading (no longer available) in a milky brown that's similar to another weft yarn. In horizontal stripes, I KNOW they'll produce texture.

And so it goes...