And Towel #18 (I Think)...

... which is now officially the last towel on the warp. There might be enough warp left for a bread-basket cloth (same length as width) but not a whole towel. And I'm pretty tired of this warp, so it's more likely that I'll simply cut off after this towel.



The treadling is the same structurally as the previous towel, but the relative sizes of the treadling blocks has changed to one long block and one very short block. The trick to changing the block sizes is to keep in mind that the design is a base-5 system and the selvedge is a base-4 system, so blocks (or combinations of blocks) have to add up to numbers of picks divisible by both 4 and 5 so that both the satin structure and the basket structure come out even. The next time some elementary or secondary school student complains in my hearing that they can't see any reason to learn arithmetic or math, I've got the perfect answer here: there's a whole lot of arithmetic involved in weaving.

The weft is fine (14,000 ypp) mercerized cotton in navy blue. I'm finding that with these fine wefts, if the pirn isn't absolutely perfectly packed, that is, if there are any places where the weft catches and doesn't feed off smoothly, it really makes a mess. Not only does the selvedge get pulled in dramatically, the weft breaks and springs back into the web in gathers and loops. The tag end of yarn inside the shuttle leaps out of the tensioner and forms loops around the point of the shuttle. Yow! Keeps me on my toes...