weaving in my blood?

I received a " my mom loves me " package from my mama in Germany and with all the goodies she send me a stash of cotton kitchen towels.

At closer inspection they did not look store bought so i got on the phone and called my mom to find out where she got them.

And here is the story:

apparently those towels are about 50-55 years old and hand woven by her mom!

I didn't know my grandma was a weaver! I knew she was a seamstress making clothes for the wealthy people during and after the war. Looks like she also wove a lot. My grandma passed away 15 years ago and my mom told me when they cleaned out the house she had a big floor loom with lots of heddles( my mom thinks at least 8-12) and a bigger (she thinks about a at least 40 inch ) table loom.

I was afraid to ask what they did with it but asked anyway:

i shouldn't have :( , i now will forever have the picture of my dad hacking the looms to bits and burning them in the back yard in my head!!

What a crying shame! those looms where at least 50-60 years old.

The towels are woven with sewing thread thin yarn. Some of them have a very tiny waffle weave pattern ,some are plain weave.

I will have nightmares about this for a while.

But at least i got a little more insight of my love for fiber arts.

...and another Towel

I finished my second huckaback towel :

actually i like it better than the first one, more colorful, i liiike colors!!

now i have to find my sewing machine out in the studio. i haven't seen it in a couple of years. it's probably buried under tons of fleece/yarn/fibers.

but i do want to finish them pretty quickly and be able to use them.

These came out pretty big:23x35 before washing.

already got a new project lined up, I'll post about that later.

WEEEE...

Just took my first huckaback towel towel off the loom. I used the Two Stick Heading described by 'Dust Bunnies under my Loom" here , because i still have warp left for a second towel but wanted to see how the first one came out without having to wait to finish both.

I had intended for them to be one color each, one blue, one red.

After i started i realized i didn't dye enough yardage of each color so i decided to stripe it , i call it "Red, White and Blue".

I had one warp string break, which i fixed:

and i discovered a threading error about halfway through(fifth square from the left) in one of the squares. It shouldn't be at all noticeable after finishing

and here it is

unfinished size : 22" x 35" its BIG

sock order finished...on to new project

I finally finished this huge sock order i've been working on for several weeks.
This is just half of it...


now i will try to finish the towels on the loom ( i hope my arm will be ok) and i already have picked out another set of towels using hand dyed 8/2 cotton yarn.
i also want to play with the little diy inkle loom i made a couple of weeks ago.
Plus i need to dye some yarn and card some fiber to stock up my store. and i need to wash all these pounds of raw fleece i have stashed away since last year plus i want to spin some too... so much to play with sooo little time...
i guess i start with the towels and get them off the loom first.
i got an appointment at the bone and joint clinic wednesday ,so i'll stress my arm a little the next couple of days and see if it flares up again, if it does i'll see what the bone doc has to say about it...