Not Fibonacci Striped Towels

I have another towel project finished to share. It was a windy day - this is the best I could do!

This is the second project I've made from the Gist Yarn Weaver's PlayBox #2 - Cotton + Linen. (The first was the Mixed Warp towels.) The pattern for these is called Fibonacci-Striped Warp, but I did not follow the Fibonacci sequence because I didn't have enough yarn. The pattern creates a towel about 12" wide and calls for 136 warp ends. But I like a bigger kitchen towel and am always aiming for 17.5 x 25", so I've been upsizing these patterns. The challenge is that I didn't have enough of the warp yarn to make the size I wanted.

In this case, the warp is two DK yarns from Cestari: Old Dominion in a light blue (100% U.S. cotton) and Monticello in a darker blue (75% U.S. cotton and 25% French tow linen). Here's an interview with Francis Chester at Cestari if you're interested in this Virginia farm making yarn with U.S. grown wool and cotton. I did a bunch of math and worked out a threading pattern with 193 ends... but when I actually put the warp on the loom I didn't even have enough for that! I made some quick changes and ended up with 183 ends, which is only 18.3 inches in the reed. I knew there was no way I'd end up with 17.5" wide towels. I forgot, however, to adjust the length (which I should have done if I wanted to preserve the proportion of my original target). Oops!

Here comes a gust...

For weft, I used the cone of Gist Duet that came in the box (laceweight 55% linen, 45% cotton). Because the weft was so much thinner than the warp, the warp stripes are emphasized in the final fabric.

I was a bit skeptical when these big hanks of DK weight yarn arrived in the box, but I enjoyed weaving with them. And the resulting towels seems especially nubbly and thirsty, like they'll be really good to dry hands on. I know flour sack towels are all the rage, but I find them to be not very good at drying hands. I think I'll be brave and add one of these to my kitchen towel rotation immediately, rather than "saving" them for something grand.

If you look closely at the photos above, you'll see some diagonal lines in the fabric. I didn't do anything to make this happen. The structure is plain weave, and this effect is called "tracking." It was a surprise to me, but a pleasant one. I like it!

My towels ended up measuring 14.25" W and about 25" L (one was 24.75" and the other was spot on at 25" after hemming). So at least my math was good on the length. I used a 33" guide which included the hems. I would be happy to make more towels using these DK-weight Cestari yarns as warp. Annette told me this yarn is available at MDSW at a table near the entrance - I'll look in May. Or, I may order straight off their website. I see that they also make 2-ply fingering yarns with these same fibers, and those might be worth experimenting with.

I wish I'd had more warp yarn, both to add a bit of width and to put a longer warp on the loom and weave more towels. But I have a feeling that will be in my future!

I've now used (but not used up) all 5 of the yarns that came in the play box. I'm completely out of the two DK yarns and mostly out of the navy blue 8/4 cotton. I will have Duet and Mallo, so I will combine with something else in my stash to come up with some new combinations.