Tablet Weaving.

While visiting my sister a week ago, she set me up with her inkle loom and tablet weaving cards and a very basic pattern.  She is a tablet weaving master.  For those who don't know tablet weaving is an old technique (I think the Vikings used it) that uses cards or tablets with a hole in each of the corners for a different strand of yarn.  Patterns are created by moving the card either forwards or backward.  While I did finish my project, I doubt I will tablet weave again.  I don't have the concentration for it.  Keeping track of how many times a card has been turned one way or the other was rough, and all I had to do was turn them all one direction for eight rows and then the other direction for eight rows. When you get into each card having it's own rotation pattern, it makes my head want to explode.  My sister is brilliant at tablet weaving.  She's good at weaving in general actually.  I'm glad she showed me how to do it and I got to experiment, but overall, I doubt I'll be tablet weaving again.

October 20

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Quickie pot holder.  Short on time today.

August 26

Weaving time.  I miss going to Weave Spa but have not had the time lately.  What that means is I must appease the desire with pot holders.  Not the same, but, one does what one can.

July 30

Potholder!  I miss weaving, but I've had neither the time nor the extra money to go lately.  That means I have to make do with weaving potholders.

June 19

Time for a new pot holder.  At some point I'll actually use them.  Right now I like them too much to get them dirty.  I am not gentle on pot holders.

June 15

Finally a free Saturday.  Time to weave!  It's not as long as I would've hoped, but overall I like how it came out.  And I'm going to gift it.  Time to share some of my creations.

May 23

First pot holder in a while.  I was kind of tired and the loom was being anything but cooperative.  There was a lot of effort involved in getting this finished off.  At one point I honestly thought I'd have to stop and start all over again.

March 22

  

I decided to try weaving with yarn on my pot holder loom.  The last time I went to Chicago Weaving School, Natalie said I could achieve a weft-face weave, on it.  It's a lot more complex without a shuttle or warp stick, but it is totally possible.  I even remembered some of the patterns.  I put the ruler in at the bottom to keep me from weaving down too far to weave the edges in at the end.  It's also keeping some of the warp in place.  A couple pulled off, but it seems stable enough.  It's not great, but it's not awful.  My edges are coming in farther than I would like them to.  It probably has something to do with using a wide-toothed comb to push the weft down.

March 9

  

Weaving Day! Natalie let me give a table loom a try.  I was a little intimidated at first, but once i got the hang of it it was pretty cool.  This is a weft-face weave.  After she saw I had the hang of it she showed me how to weave with two colors.  After that is was all about patterns.  I had so much fun.  This is the finished project with all the ends woven in.

March 8

 I am a potholder making machine!  I'm probably having more fun with this than I should, but I spent 2 hours last night just weaving potholders.  That and rather anally separating all the colors into their own baggies.  I was getting frustrated by hunting down my next looper in the massive bag of assorted colors.  Now I can just grab the colors I want and not worry about it.  Of course if I keep up at this pace I'll run out of loopers really quickly.

March 7

Remember these?  I had some much fun making this.  Since making the scarf I'm a little obsessed with weaving.  I managed to find cotton loopers.  When I was growing up all we could get was nylon ones.  The problem with nylon loopers is the do not insulate against heat (kind of important in a potholder), and they actually melt if the dish you're handling is too hot.  I've been looking up different patterns to try.  This is my no means my last potholder.

February 23

 I had the day free from class today.  Did I sit around and relax?  Of course not!  I went out and wove for four hours.  The Chicago Weaving School is near my house and I've gone there once before.  The owner Natalie was great and set me loose on a two treadle loom.

I started simply, just going back and forth.  It took a while to get my edges clean; they were very loose.  After I wove for a while, Natalie showed me this:

It's a Leno (lee-no) lace weave.  It involves a bit of hand weaving to twist the warp.  It required a lot of focus to find all the strands of the warp, but it makes a really cool design.  I started twisting four strands.  later I tried twisting twelve.  While bolder, the twelve strands seemed a little harder to control in the weaving.

After four hours, I had my scarf.  Here are some close ups of the different weaves.

Now I have to decide what to do with it.  It's toss up between strutting around in it, and framing sections of it.  Many thanks to Natalie at the Chicago Weaving School.  She's an awesome teacher and the school is a great place to learn.  http://www.chicagoweavingschool.com/