Project: Stash busting tea towels

It has been a while since I last posted but I was weaving up another mess o' tea towels using up some leftover stash yarn I had on my shelf and I wanted to wait until I had completed the second set before posting.  

Santa brought me a lot of yarn for Christmas, including some 50g skeins of Cascade Luna in white and 100g skeins of Cascades Luna Paints in Spring Meadows (green and blue combination).  I had enough white base (not sure how many skeins I used!) and enough of the green (2 skeins) that I could warp up 5 yards for 4 of the tea towels based on Angela Tong's Rigid Heddle Weaving class on Craftsy.  I know, I know, I swore I would stop making these tea towels after producing them on an industrial scale over the holidays, but the pattern is so pretty and the towels are so quick and easy to weave that they are a lovely little weekend project. 

I also had some leftover Lily Sugar n' Cream yarn in both a 14 oz. cone of white and a 57g ball of Lily Sugar n' Cream Stripes in pink, which although not enough for 4 towels was just enough for 2 towels on a 2.5 yard warp (with a half a bobbin of the contrast pink to spare!). 

These towels are perfect for hostess gifts and for housewarming gifts, and in fact a pair of the green Cascade Luna towels and one of the pink Lily Sugar n' Cream towels are intended for these exact purposes. 

Over a couple of weekends I wove up these two sets of towels, the green and the pink, both of which turned out to be lovely cheerful spring-like colours.  Which is especially nice because most of the time that I was weaving these towels the weather was a nasty -20 degrees celsius outside and snowing.  At least something was springlike!

There were no real surprises with these towels.  They wove up just as readily as I was used to on my trusty Kromski Harp rigid heddle loom using an 8-dent reed.  I removed the front heddle holder and worked solely off the back heddle holder to increase my working space and give me more room before I needed to advance my warp, and this worked very well. 

My Kromski handles a 5 yard warp with ease, but you can sure see how thick the cloth beam gets when working with these chunky cotton yarns:

While the Nerd and I were out braving the frigid temperatures yesterday I visited one of my regular wool stores, the Purple Purl on Queen Street East, and cleaned out their entire supply of Cascade Luna in white - all 10 skeins of it.  I also picked up some lovely Cascade Luna Paints in "Rose Dust", a pretty variegated pink.  I should have enough white and contrast yarn for another 4 towels once I swift and ball the skeins.  This will take a while, and frankly it is the only thing keeping me from immediately warping up another 5 yards of cotton, just to build up my towel inventory.