As the stash reduction continues, I came upon some large cones of red cotton. One is conshohocken softball cotton (which makes it pretty old) that is a 3/2 cotton strand wrapped with a fine cotton strand to create a uniform texture in the yarn. The other cone is a darker red in mercerized 3/2.
The textured yarn has charm that is better shown by having longer floats. I stumbled upon an interesting draft that I had saved on my computer without any notes that really explained who/what/where except the file name "networked-weaving-draft-3". The draft below is my modification to exploit the motifs I found most appealing in the target width of approx 15inches.
The project will be woven on a LeClerc Dorothy 8 shaft table loom...that has been made more user friendly by adding some ergo touches. I added some sugru handles to the beam takeup cranks, some bumpers to the front where beater strikes, and perhaps most important, finger pads on the hard plastic shaft pull. Before adding these improvements in 2011, I was ready to retire this loom because the hard plastic pulls were too hard on the fingers for hours of weaving. With the padding, it is possible to weave long periods. If you have one of these older looms, Sugru is a great product that is now widely available.
