Variations On A Boring Theme

Day 272: The floor loom is finally empty, and I can't recall when it took me longer to get through six towels. Although the weave is summer-and-winter and should have been something I'd enjoy, the fact that there was virtually no way to change it up other than making the pattern areas larger or smaller made it one of the most boring weaving exercises in my long history at the loom. Much (most) summer-and-winter is done on a single-coloured warp with the tabby ground (plain weave) being the same. The pattern threads (floats) are where the fun comes in, creating an almost-but-not-quite-reverse colour scheme on the back side. That's where the name comes from: summer (light) on one side, winter (dark) on the other. While the patterns of these towels do reverse, the yellow never predominates. It's "autumn" on both sides. Switching to a yellow weft made the weave unattractive, so I was stuck using two shuttles of burgundy throughout the whole project. Technically, the weave was summer-and-winter, but it lacked the character which is the main appeal of the pattern. My next project will be "true" summer-and-winter: cream warp and tabby alternating with whatever colour strikes my fancy as I move from one towel to the next. I've had the warp measured for months, waiting in the wings as I struggled, inch by inch, to get this off the loom.