Alphabelt (work in progress)

I bought Linda Hendrickson's wonderful book "Weave a letter" and so just had to try double faced tablet weaving. Peter Collingwood has made some fantastic belts using this technique, often with jokes and puns - I like his idea of weaving a belt with the letters b,e,l,t woven in opposite colours to the rest of the alphsabet, so I 'borrowed' it.

Here's the work in progress using an Ashford inkle loom to hold the warp. The tablets are a pack of square playing cards with a circular hole in the middle. The hole is so the pack could fit on the neck of a beer bottle, and was given away as a promotional gift by Bateman's brewery here in the UK on a bottle of Xmas ale a few years ago - wish I could find another couple of packs. The beer was nice too!

Campervan Inkling

Once again it has been time for the campervan holiday.
My little Romahome campervan is a no-technology zone (to make a contrast from my home and work), so reading and weaving are the recreations of choice. The little Tornadowood mini-stick inkle loom is perfect for the confined space of the campervan.

First up was a warp with thin cotton thread as a basketweave background and some #5 red cotton to make some pick-up bookmarks - not sure which side is front or which is back so here are both:

The van really is quite small so I was worried if I could actually put a warp on in such a confined space. As it happens this belt made from #5 cotton was one of the best tension warps I've ever made. Also I made the most of the warp and got a full 50" belt out of the little ministick. Nice to weave plain weave rather than pick-up.