Back to the little loom

With my scarf currently sitting on my table loom and progressing, deliberately, slowly so Mary can take me through each step - I need to get my weaving fix. So this weekend it'll be back to the inkle loom.

Here's some bits I made earlier - this jade green band is for a security badge holder that I wear around my neck daily at work. The selvedges are a bit wavy but not too bad and I love the colour.


IBM badge holder 

It uses some stunning Filatura Di Crosa cotton with a lovely golden mixed thread running through it (the yarn came from a thrift shop and sadly looks like it is not currently made any more)


I love this yarn 

This celtic knotwork band is for a belt for my elder daughter. This has pretty good selvedges but the pattern is a little variable in length due to irregular tension/beating. One day I'll weave something perfect.


Emily's belt 

The pattern was lifted directly from inkleweaving.com - thanks Tracy and was woven in #3 mercised cotton which I picked up from Michaels in San Jose when I was over on a business trip last Dec.


Celtic Knots 

Serendipity, Karma or what?

Jon gave me the 8 shaft loom and I am so grateful. I was destined to weave ...

I discover that my local Spinners, Weavers, Dyers guild meets monthly about 4 miles from my home!

Even better 10 miles away Mary Keer runs an informal weaving workshop every other Thursday. Mary is a wonderful tutor with lifetime of knowledge and has a huge weaving studio next to her maginficent thatched home.

Better again, Mary is an avid yarn collector and is happy for students to help themselves at cost, so suddenly hundreds of yarn and colour combinations are within my grasp.

I could go on about the studio, the work the other students are doing, the equipment (including a 16 shaft dobby loom) etc but will save that for another time.

However, one last 'even better', Mary's workshop is in the village of Cheriton which also hosts one of my favourite pubs - The Flowerpots. The Flowerpots brew their own beer and have won many, many prizes at UK beer festivals. What better than a quick thirst slake after a long evening at the loom?

It's my destiny to weave - I'm sure of it.

Oh - by the way, the vest project is now on hold. Firstly my chosen yarns just didn't work and secondly I'm letting Mary teach me properly and take me through the whole weaving process with something simple. So the next loom project is a simple fairly plain scarf - still with 268 ends (24epi) its the most ambitious thing to date!

When will I ever learn?

Talking with my mother on the phone she said she'd love a little piece just to see what I was doing - so I thought I'd try my hand at overshot for the first time. I poked around the weaving archive site http://www.cs.arizona.edu/patterns/weaving/weavedocs.html and found a pattern (in the monographs on miniature patterns by Josephine Estes) that I thought would work with the nice 4 ply weight mercised cottons I'd got from the local hobby store.

Then I had a bright (not) idea - why not use that white wool that I was going to use for the vest as the warp? Why not, because it's got a crimp in it and very difficult to get an even warp tension, that's why not. But a little stupidity has never stopped me trying.

Initially I tried to weave the overshot just using the selvedges to hold the repeated weft throws but with the stretchy warp that was impossible (and with my almost zero skill level a pretty ambitious thing to even contemplate). A disaster made worse by the fact that the pattern was for a down shed loom not the up shed on my table loom. Fortunately it didn't take me long to realise all I needed to do was raise exactly the missing shafts not the pattern ones and also that weaving a row of tabby every other weft would provide the essential stability.

It's not even and the selvedges may yet be declared a United Nations disaster area but if I can persuade Liz to do a bit of judicious hemming it might just make something my Mum will cherish - actually she'd probably cherish any old raggety bit that I made.

Still, the pattern's nice.


Mum's little runner 


... details 

Vestina Lente ...

... make vest slowly - it gets worse!

The idea was to use some 4 ply wool and acrylic mix yarn. The warp would be black which had a nice silver strip in it and weft a matching white weaving into a small diamond/flower pattern. So let's try a sample

Problem one - the yarn had a crimp in it so tension on the loom was a nightmare.
Problem two - the small pattern visually turned the white into a dirty grey and the thing looked dirty even while on the loom!

So here's the result of me playing with some colour and turning the piece into something that will make a small bag to hang on the loom to hold tape, snips etc.


Loom Bits'n'Bobs Bag (to be) 

One good thing to come out of this sample (apart from finding out the vest would have looked terrible) is that I managed to put one thread through the wrong heddle so have now discovered how to make temporary string heddles to fix this. Another lesson learned.