The object of the past week's obsession

Although I have been weaving at least one tea towel a day, for the most part, my free hours have been taken up with this jacket.





As noted earlier, this is for my youngest son.  He's a musician and has a Reggae band in Denver, CO, and requested a neon green jacket for a big gig this summer.  You can probably tell just from that statement, and the above photo, that he is not bound by common fashion requirements.  I hope he'll be happy with it.  It's the bulk of his birthday gift.  (I'm pretty sure he doesn't read this blog).   I plan to ship it off this week.

It was supposed to have buttons, but any button I held up really cheapened it (I mean, really, it did, although it's not quite a high-end couture fabric, etc), so I decided to do away with buttons.  I can't tell you how glad I am to be done with it.  I feel like I can get back to concentrating on weaving!

I have ordered some 8/2 tencel.  I tried to find 10/2, but it appears to have gone out of existence.  I did reach one person on the East Coast who has some that he called defective because of weak spots and, if he can ever find it in the warehouse, I'll have a few pounds coming to me.  It's cheap and I need to see for myself if it's unsuitable for warps.  I thought I probably should go ahead and get some 8/2, though, so I can forge ahead on dye plans.

I want to paint another shawl warp, and probably a scarf warp, too.  I'll just have to sett the 8/2 so it will take 10/2 weft, since I still have a lot of colors in 10/2 tencel.  My goal is to resist buying more colors and get some of my stash woven up.  It's a shame 10/2 has gone by the wayside.  It's such a nice size for wearables. 

I'm nearly done with the blue striped tea towel warp.  That should be finished up early this week, and I'm planning another tea towel warp, this time in a miniature overshot pattern.  It will be my extensive sample warp for another blanket, if I end up liking the pattern enough.

And one more word on sewing, although I'm very glad to be done with the jacket project, I did learn an important thing.  I haven't done much sewing the past 10 years because a) it's slow and a time-eater b) my neck hurts if I go at it like I used to (few breaks).  I found that keeping the sessions at the machine to an hour or slightly over, then doing something else kept my neck pain free.  Yes, it's even slower,  but I'm not on a time line like when I was production weaving, and I could see the progress, and the pain free thing is huge.  So, I found a pattern for a tiered skirt online.  I'll have to see where that goes.



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