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.

My Chair Is Occupied

Day 37: You must never, ever laugh at a cat. Cats are very serious beings. But sometimes you just can't help it. Merry often sleeps on his back like this, whether he's in his little nest on top of the harpsichord, in a chair like this, even on the hard windowsill, and sometimes when I wake up in the night and turn on the light, this is what I'll see beside me. And he's sleeping so soundly that even when I burst out laughing, he doesn't move a muscle. Yesterday, he had a new experience. It snowed, and he was utterly entranced by the big, floppy flakes coming down outside the window. He got so excited by the newness that he took a major fit of the zoomies and ricocheted off all four walls at high speed for several hours. And then this. Zonk. I wonder if he was dreaming about snowflakes.

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!

Flannel Vs. Fleece

Day 35: I would be willing to bet that almost anyone in my readership knows the difference between flannel and fleece. However, Joann Fabrics' search engine apparently does not, because when I requested "fleece," flannel was mixed in with it. I will accept some responsibility here because I did not read carefully. After all, both words begin with "fl-" and my cursory glance did not catch the difference because I had asked specifically for "fleece" and expected that's what I'd see. Consequently, when my order arrived, I thought there had been a mistake, so I checked the receipt. Damn. Yep, I'd ordered the flannel. I sent Joann a note, hoping that they might allow me to return the fabric. I explained that the search engine was at least partly to blame, and suggested that they fine-tune it to actually give the results the customer requested. Joann's response? "What a wonderful idea! We'll pass that along to management." And that was it, no "Here's a return authorization" or even an apology.

Does it occur to anyone else that technology has failed miserably at making our lives easier and more convenient? Search engines bring up flower arranging when you've asked to see cat food. Customer service has been depersonalized with AI, giving the customer no chance to explain extenuating circumstances. Web pages show only a few products at a time, so we waste precious hours advancing to the next screen and having to backtrack to the products we might want to compare. Paging through a paper catalog was so much easier: just dog-ear the pages and flip back to them. Technology has added annoyances to our growing list of gripes instead of helping us get through our days with some semblance of ease. Now as to what I'm going to do with two yards of flANNEL I didn't want, I don't really know. However, my re-order of the flEECE will become another blanket, one I hope Merry will share with me.

Tools Of The Trade

Day 34: Every discipline has its jargon. If you were unfamiliar with spinning and weaving, you might be able to infer which of these three objects is a warping board because the green thread is an obvious clue. However, could you say which of the other two is a niddy-noddy and which is a lazy kate? Perhaps not, although you'd stand a 50% chance of getting it right with a guess. The warping board is used to measure out the warp for a weaving project. Threads are wound over a sequence of pegs until the desired length is reached, and then the path is reversed (well, not quite exactly reversed, but we'll save that explanation for another time). A niddy-noddy (here shown in dark wood) is used in spinning to wind finished yarn off the bobbin. Niddy-noddies are usually constructed to measure a specific length per pass, i.e., a yard, a meter, etc. The ends of the device are T-shaped, and one can be turned at 90 degrees when in use. The yarn is wrapped over each end, and if you like, you can sing a little ditty to keep track of where you are: "Niddy-noddy, niddy-noddy, Two heads, one body. Here's one, t'aint one, 'Twill be one by and by" (or any of several regional variations). A lazy kate (here shown in a tensionable version, left) is also a spinner's implement, and is used to hold bobbins of single-ply yarn so that they can be plied together. The tensioning spring keeps the bobbins from running away with themselves as they build up speed. Due to a significant lack of space in my Loom Room, these three tools have to share the same hanger until called into service. The warp currently on the warping board is waiting patiently for me to empty the floor loom. It's a good idea to measure it and leave it stretched for a few days before mounting, but I always like to have a "warp in waiting" all prepped and ready to go.

Names

Day 33: At this time of year, you might hear a strange thumping sound coming from the vicinity of Mount Rainier. Don't worry, it's not an eruption, not a lahar. It's me, banging my head on the wall because all my field guides have let me down again as I try to identify the wonderful variety of mushrooms which sprout in my yard. Some I can nail down as to genus, i.e., "Yeah, that's a Suillus. Those are...yes, they are Psilocybe." Others may even be easy or fairly so, like Russula emetica or Stropharia ambigua. Then there are the LBMs which go under the heading "Don't even bother trying." And then there are the pretties, the ones I'd dearly love to address by name and can't, despite my best efforts. I might do better if I actually picked one, brought it in the house to analyze, maybe even to take a spore print or put spores under the microscope, but "pretty" is the operative word in that sentence. My conscience would nag me if I ever plucked one from its habitat. Silly? Probably, but that's me. Respect the fungus, mate.

Inky-Dinky Inkle

Day 32: I seem to be on a teal jag lately. Since I already had a cone of teal 8/2 cotton out to work closed blanket stitch around Merry's new bed, I decided to use it as the ground colour for an inkle band on my inky-dinky inkle. The Ashford Inklette is a tiny little thing, but it holds enough warp to make a band almost two yards long when it's fully loaded as it is here. It takes up about as much space in my lap as Merry does, and doesn't have to be set on the piano bench or a table like my full-sized inkle loom. That said, there are smaller ones out there, but for as fussy as Inky-Dinky is to warp, what with cracking knuckles on the pegs and all too often missing one out, I can't imagine that a smaller inkle loom would be practical (but some of 'em are awfully cute!). When my lap isn't needed by Small Cat (who misses the definition of "small" by a wide margin now), Inky-Dinky can take his place until he needs another mama-cuddle.