Inkle Pickup

Day 142: In the last few days, I finished up two inkle-loom bands. The sheep krokbragd went quickly, even more quickly than I'd expected. The green-gold band took a little longer because it used regular sewing thread for the ground (background threads), but I enjoyed working with the fine thread so much that I immediately replaced it with another sewing-thread band. If I had thought the green threads were difficult to see, that was because I hadn't tried dark purple yet! Each gold thread in the pickup design has to be separated from the next gold thread by two purple threads, and these purple threads have to be kept in precise order. Even slight variations of tension in the warp threads can make this hard to achieve. I've found that if I separate the threads as close to the heddles as fingers will allow, I am less likely to make mistakes. The finished band will be approximately 60" long.

Scaling It Down

Day 51: Although I am working on a band on the big inkle (it needs a name, I think), Inky-Dinky Inkle was reluctant to go back on the shelf just yet, and in fact appeared to be asking for a long-term project. Why not? I'd bought two spools of green sewing thread with a band in mind, but hadn't selected a design. I'd intended to weave it on Pippin, my two-shaft "Weave Ahoy" loom (also currently empty), but Inky-Dinky fits better on my lap when Merry is otherwise engaged, so this morning, I warped with nine pattern threads, still unsettled on exactly what I wanted to weave. Browsing through Heather Torgenrud's "Norwegian Pick-up," I found this pattern and liked how the hearts were formed by the green ground threads (standard sewing thread) against the significantly heavier 10/2 gold and white. The idea of negative-space designs is not unusual in band-weaving, although it is more common to place emphasis on thicker (or doubled) pattern threads. With the full 60" of warp on the loom, I'll be here a while.

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.

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.