Mixing it up

Now that I have my 25" rigid heddle loom, I want to make towels all the time. I've been having fun experimenting with the cotton yarns I have... but when Liz Gipson (Yarnworker) and Gist Yarns teamed up to make a Weaver's PlayBox of cotton and linen yarns perfect for towels, it felt like it had my name on it. The box comes with 5 yarns and a pattern booklet. The pattern includes 3 different warps and 9 different towels. Supposedly, you can make all 9 towels plus more with the yarn included in the box.

I chose a cool colorway called Chicago. These are the 5 yarns that came in the box. I threw a few more cones in to my order, partly to give me more flexibility in weaving and (honestly) partly to get me to free shipping. Here are the extras - two cones of 8/4 cotton and one of 8/2:

I'm starting with the "Mixed Warp" pattern, so named because it mixes two different yarns in the warp. There is a smooth, unmercerized 8/4 cotton (mine is navy blue) and a slubby, 2-ply laceweight cotton called Mallo (mine is a very light green called "frost"). The two yarns should shrink differently and give the towel some extra texture in the form of slight puckering. You can see the difference close up:

I used the direct warping methods for this. I thought about combining the warping board with the direct method, but it seems like people lay the warping board flat to do this, and I don't think I have the right table and/or clamps to pull this off. YET. I won't make the mistake of warping in this room again, though - I had to crawl under the threads quite a few times as there was no room to go around on either end!

I've got this all warped and ready to weave now. This should make 3 towels... stay tuned.

In other fiber news, I finished knitting the polar bear hat with invisible stranding. I just noticed that I completely forgot to take a photo of the inside of the hat, though. DOH!

Here it is on a smaller head (Boy 2):

And here it is on a larger head (Boy 1):

I think the bears are a little stretched out on Boy 1's head, but hey, you don't see the contrast color floats popping through! He likes it and so it's his (Boy 2 was not interested). It's a sweet little hat.