In Memory of Eva te Bokkel

My mother-in-law was a very unique person. She was one of five children who, along with her parents, ate tulip bulbs during the hunger winter in the Second World War. This, along with other events in her life, made her a survivor. Despite a long battle with lupus and macular degeneration, she was determined to enjoy life. Lupus is an auto immune disease that can be very debilitating. But it was the gradual loss of her eyesight that was mom's biggest fear: to not see the colours of nature that she loved so much

As a child she was a dreamer, avid reader, and artist. She loved, and I mean, really loved colour. Mostly this was evident in her love for gardening, for the first crocuses in the spring, for the tulips, lilly of the valley, poppies, geraniums....  Most of her watercolour paintings are of landscapes or vases of flowers.

But mom also loved fibre crafts. One of these was weaving. When my sister-in-law, Helena, and I began to clean out her weaving stash, we were amazed at all the bins of yarns, all labled for colour and yarn thickness. Evidently mom had plans to do a lot of weaving.

One bin had an assortment of acrylic yarns that were, as our kids would say, 'Oma colours'.  These were the pinks, blues, and greys that she herself loved so much to wear.

This past week I took that bin of colours and made a blanket in memory of my mother-in-law. I wove it on the 60" counterbalance loom that I inherited from her, remembering her as I wove with her yarns, in her colours, on her loom. The blanket is woven in a straight twill, but the colours are somewhat haphazard in accordance with the way that flowers in a meadow have no particular pattern. The blanket is for Helena, in memory of her mom.

Here's 2 Ewe, Eva te Bokkel 

March 22, 1925 - May 3, 2009

Just Do It!

 When you want to learn to knit, a good teacher will tell you that if you can learn to do a knit stitch with the bump on the back of your knitting, you have a lot of possibilities of what you can create. But if you can also learn to purl, with the bump on the front of your knitting, you can knit anything. All knitting is composed of knit and purl stitches, so we are told.

If only weaving were that simple! The on-line dictionary defines weaving as: Form (fabric or a fabric item) by interlacing long threads passing in one direction with others at a right angle to them. That doesn't sound so hard! But........

There are also weave structures to consider: tabby, twill, crackle, double weave, overshot, and more. You could spend all your time in twill and never get tired of it, I am sure. (The tea towels I have woven fall into the twill category). But it is always good to learn something new.

Overshot weaving has traditionally been used to weave coverlets and you will find many examples in textile and pioneer museums.Usually two thicknesses of threads are used; a finer one is used in the warp, and both a fine and a heavier thread are used in the weft. The heavier thread makes the design and the finer thread stabalizes the woven fabric.

In writing this may not sound too complicated, but I just couldn't get my head around how it really worked and I didn't want to commit to a large project that wouldn't turn out at all. (Being who I am, I don't want to mess something up, even at the first try, but I also want something useful!)
Well, I found the perfect small project in Handwoven's May/June 2005 issue: pot holders! It called for 4/8 cotton and craft cotton, the kind used for knitting dishcloths. Both of these I had in the house, so I was off to the races. You can see the results below.

 The potholders above are called the Rose treadling.  The ones below are called the Star treadling, although I think of them as the X treadling because of the X 's in the corners.

 At the end of my warp I had just enough left for one more potholder. I decided that, instead of using the dishcloth cotton double as the instructions said, I would use it single and see what happened. It made for a more square potholder but not quite as thick. I think I almost prefer it over the other one.
This little project was a great way to understand the basics of overshot, and I am sure I will be playing with this weave structure again.

Oh, and by the way, the first person (non-family members) who sends me notification of the mistake(s) in one of the potholders wins that set.