Working Over a Core

Day 305: When a friend saw my post about making bootlaces on my inkle loom, she asked if I would be willing to make curtain tie-backs for her. We exchanged several emails to settle on the specifics (colour, diameter, length), and I was ready to start experimenting. I put on a 60" warp (pretty close to the least this inkle loom will hold) with about 60 threads and began weaving. It became obvious early on that I needed to reduce the number, so I cut out half a dozen or so, but was not happy with the way the weft was beating. I tried adding in cores of several diameters to space out the threads, but still was not pleased with the result. After two more reductions, I settled on 45 threads around a 3mm core thread which gave just the right diameter and flexibility to the cord. Working around a core isn't as difficult as it sounds. Simply lay the core thread over the top peg, find some convenient spot to put the spool (in this case, on the end of a peg!), and weave as usual, taking the shuttle over the core thread as it is returned to the starting side (remember, when weaving a cord, the shuttle always passes through the shed from the same side). The weaving naturally draws the warp threads around the core. Bingo! And Bob's your uncle!

A Simple Wide Band

Day 38: Inky-Dinky Inkle is just about maxed out insofar as how wide a band he can hold. At this point, I have vinyl bolt covers and/or rubber bands around the tips of almost every dowel to prevent losing threads off the ends. But for all of how complex this wide band is, it's actually a very simple pattern. The checkerboard effect is all done with the threading. Only the seven green pattern threads need to be manipulated in the Baltic style. What does that mean, exactly? Since all threads are either heddled or unheddled, one shed raises three pattern threads and the other one raises four. That means that in order to create a design, some pattern threads will need to be lifted out of the lower shed and brought into the upper shed, or some in the upper shed will need to be pushed down so they don't appear on the surface. Sometimes it's necessary to do both on a given throw. For example, if I have four pattern threads in the natural shed (that would be numbers 1, 3, 5 and 7) and my pattern calls for only the three middle pattern threads to appear on the surface, I have to suppress 1 and 7 to get them out of my way, and I need to raise 4 so that it floats on top. Numbers 2 and 6 are already in the lower shed, so I don't need to do anything with them. The green diamonds are formed in eight passes, with a final pass to close the last one made. Balltic-style inkle weaving is really quite simple, although the notation for it can be very confusing to the beginner. Sometimes it's better to think about which threads need to be on top, and just make it happen.

Ways To Weave

Day 36: A weaving group I participate in on line is celebrating their anniversary today, and we were asked to take pictures of our various looms. This is my collection. From top left, they are Max (Bergman countermarch floor loom), Pippin (a "Weave Ahoy" 2-shaft) ... and Merry helping; Schacht table loom; Jutta (Leksand made by my weaving partner Ed) and Nelda (Glimakra band loom); two rigid heddles and a frame loom; inkle looms big and small; assorted manual looms, including three pin looms, a backstrap, a bandgrind and two types of tablet weaving cards. I usually have at least one of the two rigid heddles loaded, but since I direct-warp them (which is to say I stretch the threads from one end of the living room to the other) and have a Small Helper who loves to play with/eat strings, I haven't set either one up. Inky-Dinky Inkle's band was finished before bedtime last night, and I'll be putting a new warp on it today. Max's project is nearing completion, as are the bands on Jutta and Nelda. Time to reload!

Picking Mushrooms

Day 135: I've been picking mushrooms without setting a foot outside! "Pick" in weaving terminology refers to one pass of the shuttle, and of course that's the context here. Since I was still trying to work my way through a pile of red thrums, Amanita muscaria was a good candidate for using them up. I tried to be as botanically correct as krokbragd limitations would allow, and although I wasn't able to depict the annulus without the stipe being too tall, I did include the volva (cup) which is characteristic of Amanitas in general. After getting these off the inkle, I warped up with a generic "little brown mushroom" somewhat suggestive of a Boleta. The red thrums are history now, but I have eight yards of warp measured to be hung on the bonker as my next project, hundreds of little Amanitas anxious to erupt.

Proto-Ranger

Day 129: Back at the end of January, I began working on a new krokbragd design. My first draft had a fatal flaw, and I wound up cutting it off the loom after the first few inches showed that there was no hope of redeeming it. That said, the idea was sound, so I went back to the drawing board and did some revision. It does well to remind you at this point that designing krokbragd is the weaver's equivalent of drawing with a nine-pin printer. The difference is that I can make the characters taller, but no wider because I am limited to four throws, two of which must be identical, i.e., a sequence of 1-2-1-3. Most krokbragd patterns are geometric for a good reason! Once I'd worked out the pattern, it was time to experiment with colours. Since the bonker loom is occupied by sheep (the best ones yet, in my opinion), I had to weave my test piece on the inkle. I set up a little over two yards, confident that my design would work well enough to be usable. I completed the sample this morning and will be making one small adjustment to the design, and when I weave Version 2, I will use richer colours in some areas and a neutral background. The face will unfortunately have to be a brighter pink. The pale pink I used here is too close to white, but after purchasing four new cones of thread to find a better choice, I am out of options. We'll just have to assume Proto-Ranger forgot to put on sunscreen.

Feeling Sheepish

Day 92: I've been feeling a little "sheepish" these last several days, so I broke out the inkle loom and set up a krokbragd warp with a favourite design. I've been mulling it over, and think I may have figured out how to manipulate krokbragd on the bonker (Glimakra band loom) to make a longer band. Bands on the inkle are limited by its size. This model allows for a warp just slightly longer than nine feet. On the other hand, the bonker loom can hold many more yards of warp. I've never even come close to filling it. Now it has to be mentioned here that I began working with this flock an hour or so before bedtime last night, which may not have been the best idea. It set my mind to puzzling over how best to warp the bonker to get the three sheds required for krokbragd weave. I tucked in for the night with visions of a vast herd of sheep in my head, and counting them as warp threads was certainly not conducive to sleep. In the wee hours, I had mentally drafted several potential experiments with one promising candidate rising to the fore. I intend to run a short test as soon as the current band comes off the bonker despite the fact that I already have measured warp for another project waiting in the wings. Maybe I'll get that paddock built this week after all!

Never An Idle Hand

Day 38: My maternal grandmother began teaching me to embroider when I was roughly three and a half years old. Yes, really, and it launched me on a journey into a world of needlearts far beyond even her vast range of skills. Somewhere tucked away, I still have a handkerchief with a few clumsy and inappropriately-placed red stitches to remind me of her patient tutoring. "Four over, two back," she would explain, counting the threads for a perfect stem stitch, and when I failed to produce the desired results, she did not criticize but rather encouraged me to continue with my work. She was also fond of saying that idle hands were the devil's playground, and saw to it that I never lacked for something to keep mine busy. As I recall, I was about five when I completed my first pillowcase, having by then mastered lazy daisies and French knots. Although my mother swore that Gma didn't know how to spin, I remember distinctly sitting at her broken wheel with wool picked out of the carders. She turned the wheel manually as I let the fibers twist between my fingers to form a coarse and lumpy thread. When I first sat down at a wheel as an adult, it was almost as if I could hear her telling me how to control the wool. My mother, looking on, remarked, "You always insisted that Gma taught you to spin. I never believed you until now." But Gma didn't weave, or at least not in the truest sense. We made looper-loom potholders together and played with sprang and finger-weaving, but there was no loom, not even an inkle loom in her possession. Weaving is one of my favourite occupations now, and with several different types of loom to keep me amused, my hands are never idle and complex patterns keep my mind agile and entertained.

Fiber Adventures

Day 335: A friend recently remarked that she enjoys following my "fiber adventures," and the term "adventure" seemed particulary apt, given that I love to experiment with new techniques and colour treatments. Currently, I'm on a "shaded" binge which began with wanting to use up a small ball of space-dyed 8/2 cotton. The result was the lovely purple and blue scarf I featured here on September 6. A survey of my stash didn't yield any more variegated thread, so I grabbed three closely allied colours of #3 perle cotton and used them to make an inkle-woven band. By arranging the warp with the two medium-hued shades on either side of the darker colour, the finished band had the shimmery appearance of having been made with a variegated thread. I used the same principle to warp the "autumn" band shown in the lower image. The background is brown, and the floats are made with yellow, orange and rust. I must confess that this was not the pattern I originally intended to weave. I inadvertently wound on two extra warps, leaving 13 threads for the floats instead of 11. It would have been difficult to remove them, so I changed the pattern instead. The piece in the upper photo utilizes a fortuitous find for the stripes. Although I had no more space-dyed thread in my stash, as I walked out of the loom room, my eye fell on the bin where I keep my shuttles. One of them contained approximately 100 yards of perle cotton in a colourway called "Mexicali" which I had once used in a tablecloth. I've been trying to figure out how best to use it, and decided to align the colour changes as I'd done with the shaded scarf. However, the Mexicali was a hand-painted thread, so the transitions are more irregular, with the occasional fleck of odd colour appearing out of sequence. Even though the towels are a simple tabby weave, the excitement of "adventure" is held in those space-dyed threads.

Manipulation

Day 114: Warp threads have a trait in common with many of our spouses and friends: they can generally be manipulated into doing things they wouldn't ordinarily consider doing, given a little gentle coercion. When weavers talk about "manipulated weaves," they are referring to a technique where warp threads are brought to the surface or drawn down from it by hand to allow the weft thread to dominate that space. Certainly, surface patterns can be set up with heddles alone, but let's say you wanted to put cute little trees along the bottom edge of a scarf while working the remainder of the cloth in a different pattern. How would you go about it? On a standard loom or rigid heddle, you could "collect" some threads from the upper or lower layer using a pickup stick to bring them into the opposite layer for one pass of the shuttle. When the stick was removed, they would return to their normal position and weaving could continue in the normal fashion. The photo on the right shows this principle in action. I have lifted threads from the bottom layer so that when the stick is turned on edge, they become part of the "roof" of the shed. When the shuttle passes through the shed, they are captured on the surface of the cloth as floats. The photo on the left shows the same principle being employed on the inkle loom. My fingers dive down to pick up threads from the lower layer because I want them to float on top. In subsequent passes, I will pick up different threads from below in order to form a diamond pattern on the face of the band. It's not the job those warps were originally assigned, but they are willing to do it if I ask them nicely.

Making A Shed

Day 111: Today, we're going to make a shed. You won't need hammer and nails, nope, because when a weaver makes a shed, it means that they are using some type of device (dare I say "contraption?") to separate warp threads into two layers, one above the other. When using a standard loom, this is effected by means of foot-operated treadles or hand-operated jacks which in turn raise or lower sets of heddles mounted in harnesses or frames. For the sake of clarity, I will shorten this to "raise" from here on out, and if you have a sinking-shed loom, you can just mentally substitute "lower" where it applies.

So...I heard somebody in the back say, "You're getting ahead of us here. What are these 'heddles' of which you speak?" Heddles come in a variety of forms and materials, but all perform the same function: each one carries a warp thread in sequence so that it can be raised or left idle as the weaver desires. The thread may pass through an eyelet as it does in the metal heddles on my floor loom (upper left), or eyelets and slots in alternation on a rigid-heddle loom (lower left), or the threads may be controlled by strings (shown upper right on an inkle loom). String heddles may also be used on other types of looms including floor looms, but lack the durability required for sustained weaving. In the case of tablet-weaving, rotating cards (lower right) are used to open the sheds. One way or another, raising heddled threads above unheddled threads form the shed through which the shuttle will be passed.

Commercially-produced heddles can be made of metal, wire, plastic or cord, and although cards aren't generally referred to as "heddles," they serve the same purpose. The meticulous threading of the heddles in a specified sequence is the true "work" of the weaver. Once that is done, most other actions are purely mechanical unless, of course, the pattern requires the weaver to manually pick up some threads to form a shed impossible to create with heddles alone. I'll discuss "manipulated weaves" in a future post.