Krokbragd Sheep

Day 354: Debby Greenlaw's marvelous book "Krokbragd: How to Design and Weave" contained a draft for sheep which I dearly wanted to try. There was only one problem. It required an 8-harness loom, and both my floor loom and table loom are only 4-harness. I thought I might be able to effect the same thing on the rigid heddle with multiple pick-up sticks, but that proved to be more bothersome and time-consuming than it was worth. The pattern kept rattling around in the back of my head until a few days ago when the light bulb lit: the sheep were only three throws. The additional sheds which necessitated the extra harnesses were there only to weave more green between them! That had bothered me from the get-go. Sheep are not creatures who take well to social distancing, and having them a full sheep's-width apart seemed contrary to their herding nature. By changing the pattern up just a little to eliminate unwanted sheds (weaving sheds, not housing structures), my sheep were compelled to pasture in closer proximity. Satisfied that I could now make sheepie inserts at the ends of towels, I then went on to figure out how to do plain tabby weave on a krokbragd (three-point twill) threading. Yes, it can be done on a rigid heddle (white band at the top), although it leans toward being weft-faced instead of balanced. It's a small trade-off, and one I can accept. Next in my list of experiments-to-be-performed will be to turn the sheep 90 degrees so that I can weave them on the inkle loom: "warp-faced sheep," if you will, a whole new breed engineered for weavers.