Miniature Norse Kitchen - Third Warp

Miniature Norse Kitchen towels

Darker teal yarn used as both warp and tabby in borders

Here you see finished towels from the third warp of my Miniature Norse Kitchen draft. This warp was shorter than usual due to limited supply of yarn. Look closely and you will see a darker shade of teal blue added into the borders. Sometimes I mix in other colors of warp for design interest. Other times I mix in additional solid warp colors due to limited supplies of yarn. It is a great way to use up small bits of yarn. Each of these reasons was relevant with this warp.

Third color way of Miniature 

Right side of Miniature Norse Kitchen

Both sides are beautiful. The variegated and darker teal is more obvious on the reverse side. If you ask me, either side could be considered the "right" side.

Warp On/Weave Off,
RepWeaver

Reverse side of Miniature Norse Kitchen

Bother Number Two

The second thing that really bothered me while weaving "Norse Kitchen" with my usual set-up was the floats. They were too long to be practical for use as a towel. I kept thinking how my rings would snag those floats. This was clearly unacceptable.

Here is the first towel. Warp is 20/2 cotton sett at 30 e.p.i. with 10/2 red perle cotton for pattern weft.
Those floats are far too long. After wet finishing they weren't just long, they were loose. Awful!

Bother Number One

The first thing that annoyed me about this draft was the way the corner pattern blocks compressed. To my way of thinking, that corner ought to be perfectly square. Since I was using the same combination of yarns and the same sett as I had been on other Overshot projects, I expected the pattern to weave to square. Wrong.

Too compressed!
This corner block did not weave to square.

Then I tried using heavier pattern warp yarns to force the issue. In the photo above I switched my pattern weft from 10/2 mercerized to 8/2 unmercerized cotton. The problem persisted. Changing the sett from 30 e.p.i. to 36 or 40 e.p.i. would also be worth trying but then the towels would be narrower. That idea was quickly dismissed.

Another strategy would be to throw more shots for each treading block. I admit to being a purist on this idea -- with the right yarns, setts and beat the design should square itself. Once you manipulate the draft in this way other areas of the design tend to go out of whack. So I discarded this idea almost as soon as it came to mind.

Bother!