Towel Warps

The warp yarns for the towels came out of the dye pot and began drying today.



My first thought was to dye the yarns a very pale blue (to go with the various blues I have for weft) but the difference between the bleached white skeins and the natural skeins was much to obvious with a very pale value. I decided that if I needed to make these skeins a light value rather than a very pale one, it should contrast in hue from the weft yarns. So I decided on a light mint green. With this depth of shade, it is difficult to discern the difference between the two yarns, so I'm calling it an acceptable dye job. If I beam the warp with one end of bleached and one end of unbleached, the difference will be negligible.

The smaller skein on the lower tier of the rack is the 40/2 mercerized cotton that I'll use for weft for the towel hems. As expected, this skein took the dye more strongly than the unmercerized cotton. Not enough of a difference to be a problem, however, so I'm happy with the general outcome.

All these yarns were dyed in one big dyepot - over 750 grams of yarn, which is the biggest dyebath I've ever worked with, and my biggest stainless pot. It was a lot of weight to manage, but at least the yarn all dyed the same color, or near enough for my purposes.