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.