Beaming the Dish Towel Warp

I've been beaming the warp for the dish towels. I managed to catch a cold, so everything is going more slowly than usual. Here's the warping wheel at work, with 4 more sections to go:



I've gone through the storage closet and brought out all the yarns that might be appropriate for towel wefts. Here they are, along with 3 colors (2 greens and a dusty rose) that I dyed or overdyed. They're all in the 16/2 to 20/2 range, some mercerized, some not. The 2 greens are a cotton/hemp blend, the others all cotton.



I've had fun trolling www.handweaving.net for drafts. The warp is long enough for 14 towels, and I've found plenty of drafts to choose from.

While I've been working on the towel warp, Mike has been upgrading my computer to a newer, faster model with more memory. Plus, it has speakers so I can listen to classical music over the internet while I weave. The old computer had no external speakers, and wasn't powerful enough to play music and drive the loom at the same time. Once all the components are installed, I'll post some pictures of the new setup.

I love the area we live in now, but it lacks any good (by my definition) radio stations. From the studio, I can only get one country music station and one Spanish-language station, neither of which plays the sort of music I want to hear while weaving. There's an NPR affiliate in San Luis Obispo, but because of the mountains between here and there, the radio in the studio won't tune it in properly - and it plays classical only for a while in the morning anyway. Since my typical studio time is during the afternoon, that wouldn't do me any good even if the radio could receive it. :(