Studying doubleweave

I woke up early this morning, meaning I get some quiet time before the day begins.  I grabbed the chance to study the articles Bonnie sent me on doubleweave, and feel I understand it much better now.  I don’t think I’ll fully understand it until I weave up samples (impatience, impatience, must assemble warping wheel and weave off remaining warp first) – but I do understand some of the theory now.

The fuchsia yarn, it turns out, is drying to a much lighter shade (sigh of relief) so I think I will be fine just using it as it is.  So now it’s a matter of weaving off the current warp and winding the warp for the doubleweave samples.  I will also need to dye some weft – I think I will do several batches.  Black, navy blue, medium gray, light gray, white.  Maybe some browns.  I can also use some of the warp yarns as weft, which would be interesting as well.  I plan to turn as many knobs as I can while weaving this project – using all those different colors and values will give me a better understanding of what happens when you combine different colors!  I have read several books on color theory, but so far it’s all, well, theoretical.

Also, dyeing various shades of black will give me a better idea of color strength variation with various percentages of dye – so will teach me something about dyeing as well.

Of course, it will also use up lots of yarn.  Good thing cotton is fairly cheap!

I think I will dye more yarn (and do more weaving) this afternoon.  The nice thing about doing small quantities of yarn is that I can do it using quart jars in my canning kettle, and do many colors at once.  Larger quantities I have to do in the canning kettle or in a bucket, and that takes longer.

And now, it’s almost time to go to the farmer’s market, where they will (hopefully) have dry-farmed tomatoes.  These are grown with very little water so they are small but intensely flavorful/sweet.  If I can find some I think I will make cream of tomato soup with fresh basil – one of my favorite dishes.  It’s hard not to turn into a glutton in the summer – there are so many delicious things to eat!