what i wove this year

we're closing in on the end of the year. what a shitshow this year has been, watching that spray-tanned satan and his band of evildoers dismantle everything good about the country of my birth is disheartening to say the least. so i'd much rather focus on something positive and creative. like everything that i wove this year!

i started off with tea towels for husband's eldest. we made the warp just before the end of 2024 and i finished them up february 19. 11 finished tea towels! they were made in colors she requested. i managed to make a few of them more my style by going for a madras plaid look adding some orange and red. i keep one from every warp for myself, as a memory of what i've woven. she got six of them and the rest were sold or given as gifts.

on april 5, we created the warp for taylor swift's lover album, starting my quest to weave all of taylor swift's albums as tea towels. i wanted it to sparkle like the lover bodysuit and sparkle it did! i think emmy, my weaving mentor, wanted to talk me out of it, but in the end, we are both glad she didn't. it took awhile, but i finished the warp on may 18. 13 finished tea towels!

on may 24, i started right in on the next album - reputation. it was quite the departure for me to work in black and white and grey, rather than a colorful warp. i broke up the monotony a bit by weaving in a bit of red and green sparkle. i also had a different kind of silver and black sparkle thread in the warp, but it didn't behave nearly as well as the sparkle thread i used in the lover warp. lesson learned there! i took them off the loom june 28. i got 13 finished tea towels from this warp, though there are only 10 in this photo. i had to weave some extra ribbon for the straps, so the last three weren't finished yet in this photo. 

on june 29, we already made the next warp - i took a break from the taylor swift project to weave a good long summery warp that i called rainbow sherbet. i finished it already on august 9 - 21 tea towels! unfortunately, they're already gone - as gifts and one person bought six of them for christmas presents! husband's middle daughter also got six of them for her kitchen. i wove in with some sparkly threads and all the ones she chose had those. 

then the loom rested while i went on a week-long weaving course at skals, where i wove 8 small test weavings with 8 different techniques. i didn't want to put a new warp on the loom in case i learned something that i wanted to try out immediately when i got home. there are two that i will do for future warps in my eras tour project.

on august 24, it was back to my taylor swift eras project. we made the warp for speak now. i had the yarn for that one is more or less why that album was the next one. i've actually not gotten very far on this one, so i can't show the finished product yet. i chose to play with what's called "color effect" and i can feel that i'm already bored with it before i'm even really started. 

i have to pull myself together and get to work on it. this was just the end, or should i say the beginning, where i get the warp started and try weaving a bit with all of the colors to see how they look together. as you can see, i've tried a couple of sparkle threads as well to amuse myself. i have a stack of these weavings to make small bags/purses out of, but i have yet to make any. instead, i've turned to knitting of late, though not on my christmas sweater that should have been finished last christmas, but more about that in a knitting wrap-up post. 

i did finish one more thing on the little loom in 2025. i took a new rag rug runner for the kitchen off the loom november 19. i've come a long way in my weaving ability since i did the first one down in randbøldal 5 years ago. it looks so nice, i really love it! there's still 6-7 meters of warp on the little loom, to make some more rugs, so i just have to tear up some old duvet covers and get going. this one took me most of the year - i can see in my photos (that daily photo project is still coming in handy), that i started this one february 9. it was a bit tedious, laying in each strip of fabric and making them meet and lay just right. but that's why it's nice to have two looms, so you can move between projects according to what you feel like doing. 

i got some wool ready to try my hand at making a proper wool rug on that warp, but have made two attempts and am not keen on it, so i frogged it back again (not sure it's called frogging when you weave) and i'm not sure what i will make next. probably another rag rug with some old duvet covers in shades of pink and green that i can use in the bedroom. 

a total of 58 tea towels and one four-meter long rug woven this year. if i'd kept up my head of steam, it could have been more, but weaving just takes the time it takes and that's a big part of what i love about it. 

long time no see

hey y'all, it's been awhile. time seems to fly by these days, but now that it's summer, it's starting to slow down a little bit. i finally had time to get a cut & color and i went a little shorter for summer. 

my summer weaving project is what i'm calling the rainbow sherbet tea towels. i've not abandoned my taylor swift eras tea towel project, but i decided to take a little break over the summer, while i plan the next ones. i know what colors i want to work with, but i don't know yet know what i want to learn from the next one - maybe a whole new, more complicated setup? so i did another rainbow warp. everyone loves the rainbow tea towels and this will give me some to have on hand. 

i had some time this weekend to work on them and i've finished four so far. i should get around 20 from this warp. it's so relaxing to sit at the loom and play with color as i listen to cozy mystery novels. i'm currently listening to anthony horowitz's hawthorne series. he probably wouldn't like that i call them cozy mysteries, but there you have it. 

last weekend, i acquired this loom. it's a little bigger than my big loom and i will assemble it upstairs, to have even more weaving projects underway. unfortunately, i discovered over the past week, after bringing it in the house, that it is permeated with the most awful cigarette smell from years of standing in the home of a heavy smoker. i'm not sure how i didn't realize that when we picked it up. it only became apparent when we brought it inside here at home. it's really awful. i got some rodalon — a special cleaning product that removes odors and i spent a lot of time scrubbing it down and cleaning it this weekend. i think it's going to work. i removed the søller (again, i realize i don't know weaving vocabulary in english) and soaked them in my jasmine-scented wool wash. it took FOUR baths to get rid of the yellow nicotine, but i think i have saved them. i'm not yet done washing down all of the parts of the loom, but i think it's working and i will be able to save it. 

these are the tea towels i made for the reputation era. it felt more austere, working largely with black & white, but it was also fun. i did a little hound's tooth here and there, which i think rather replicates the newsprint on the reputation album art. overall, i am pleased with how they turned out. i used red, gold and green as accents, for the reputation bodysuits that were (red, gold) and were not (green). 

the child comes home this week for good. or at least back to europe for good, or at least the foreseeable future. i'm very happy to get her out of what is fast becoming quite the shitshow over there. so happy she has options. it will be so good to have her home again. i'll take some holiday and we'll make good food, play cards and hang out together. 

next up - reputation!

 

i've already spent more than 11 hours and i haven't even started weaving on the reputation era. that sounds like a insane amount of time. but it doesn't feel like that at all. i guess that's what flow is about. 

this time, i'm looking to create a more graphic look. and i want it to look like the black & white of the type in a newspaper in some of the fields, to echo the album. i had to add a sparkly thread to the solid black panels as a nod to the reputation bodysuits.

the warp itself is black, grey and white, but i will create some dark green or red horizontal stripes, as an accent that also echoes the bodysuit and the bodysuit that wasn't (the green one that swifties kept expecting). i bought some threads with some small gold sequins as well for extra sparkle in my weft.

i do love this process and i feel like i'm getting better at it with each warp. setting up takes a long time, but i do enjoy every step of it. 

this morning, i was all ready to bind it up, check all the connections and get started. a few had broken (the cords connecting the shafts and the pedals), so it took some time to replace them. i have the old fashioned-style cords, not the newer polyester ones. they're easier to use, but there's something that feels more authentic to me about the cords. they've been good enough for my loom for around 80 years. maybe one day, i'll switch them out, but for now, i'm happy to be learning how to work with the traditional kind. 

i wove a little bit to get started before we decided to visit the linen weaving museum over on fyn. i needed to do something cultural to get my mind off husband driving around ukraine.  we got there just in time to join a tour with one of the docents. she told such great stories, i really enjoyed it. 

yarn porn

i got my latest order of weaving yarn from kinna's today. ordering from them really tries my patience, as it takes them at least a week to even indicate that they've noticed one's order and then another week or so to send the invoice so you can pay it. why not actually have an online payment as if you're in the 21st century? but i digress. look at all this goodness! i think i can do most of the eras now, though i need to restock black, white and some grey because of TTPD, after running the reputation warp (again, more about that soon, i promise). i also got an idea, looking at this picture, for a warp that's cream and that hot pinkish orange color. but that's not really one of the eras, so i'll try to stay focused. or maybe i need another loom. 

i sorted it all into boxes, more or less in color families. that was weirdly soothing. and goodness knows i need some soothing, what with worrying about husband driving all over the place in ukraine, only 30km from the front. 

i'll be able to do another rainbow warp as well with all these colors. it seems everyone i've given some of those to wants more. 

these remind me of my old blue room! i'm looking forward to working with them. 

i'll play around on this long weekend (we have four days off!) with some of the colors, preparing some yarn windings for more of the eras. tomorrow, my friend and weaving teacher is coming over to help me get started on my more graphic warp. i'm trying to learn something new every time. i think what i mostly learn from the loom is patience! 

i couldn't resist the way the sunshine fell on this jar of yarn clippings i've been saving. i want to do a rather fiddly project with them, but i need enough of them. and maybe a bit more patience.

the lover era - tea towel stylie

my lover era tea towels are finished. i got 13 of them from the warp, plus two pieces of fabric that i can make into small makeup or accessory bags. i'm very pleased with the result and the touch of sparkle turned out great, though it doesn't photograph well. 

i've already embarked on the next era - reputation. i'm starting it in hopes that the clowning for reputation tv is actually true this time. and also because i had the right colors for what i want to do.  more about that in another post.

someone came yesterday to buy the last two kittens and she contacted me today to ask if she could buy some of these. i'm going to try to have enough to take to a market in september, so i'm not sure, but i love that she asked. 

i learn something new from every warp i weave. and i sit at the loom and think about all the cloth that's been woven on it. it originally belonged to cis fink, a renowned danish weaving teacher from aabenraa and then my own weaving teacher, emmy, wove many a meter of cloth on it for 50-some years before passing it along to me. i cannot help but think of how much more it knows than i do. and how patient it is with me. 

i can already tell that i somehow must find a way to get a set of these tea towels to taylor swift herself. i have time to figure that out. there are only 11 eras to go. 

 

tea towels inspired by the eras tour

i was chatting with my sister and my swiftie friend on our group chat and we decided that my next weaving project should be tea towels inspired by the eras tour. so i ordered up a bunch of new weaving yarn in new colors. it arrived right before i went to the states. last weekend, i got started on seeing how the colors i ordered play together.

i made vikleprøver/yarn windings to play with the colors. i think i'll start with lover, which is the one at the top. followed by 1989, which is the one at the bottom. i need to adjust the colors for midnights (on the right), as the brown doesn't work and it needs some burgundy. the one on the left is reputation. that one, i want to play with a more graphic look. 

we're going to make the warp for lover this weekend. i'm even going to put that sparkly yarn in there, together with the purple, so that there's a little sparkle to them, even though that's not necessarily traditional in a tea towel.

the planning is actually becoming part of the fun for me! that's not normally my core competence, nor something i like all that much. i'm learning how to achieve the look i'm going for. and even learning what i like and what i don't. i think it's going to be a fun exercise. and with all those eras, it should keep the loom occupied for a few months to come.

 

turning threads into fabric

i turned this... 

into this...

and all clipped apart, hemmed and finished, they look like this...

and here's a closer look at a few of my favorites...the first one, i'm keeping for myself from this batch.  

this has the classic look that karoline wanted.

i'm loving the madras plaid vibe of this one. i did a few variants of it.

i ordered up a bunch of new colors from a new source in sweden and i'm going to do some that are inspired by taylor swift eras. it will be a fun exercise in playing with color even more!

on the loom right now

i'm making another set of tea towels at the moment - these were colors chosen by husband's eldest for her kitchen in her new apartment. 

she wanted blue, green and brown and we also spiced things up with some accents in orange and tomato red, as well as a neutral, undyed thread. 

 i've finished 7 of 10 so far. i like the ones best that are ending up plaid. 

of course, i get quite a lot of "help" from mazikeen.  

 oh, and on the little loom, i've just prepared all the fabric to get started on that new rug for the kitchen.