Back a couple of entries, I ended with all the unfinished bits I had to clear before the trip. This is the only one that I did clear. Couldn’t do anything else on the loom until I got this off the loom, and I was dreading it: about three feet of warp, of which I’d woven about six inches, in a technique I had entirely forgotten. But I applied myself. This is pickup weaving: pick up this thread and/or that thread, which then floats over the fabric, to make the pattern.
This is a most simple pattern, photographed in monochrome, which you do to check that your colors contrast appropriately (or if you don’t like the colors you’re working with and think this is prettier). I since dug up the braid and took a color pic. Isn’t it ghastly? Whatever will I do with it?
During that class, taken three years ago, we did two warps. We learned to do tie-ups, here, there and everywhere so that one could, theoretically, take the warp off the loom, put it back later, and finish it. This is the second warp. And I am going to find the baby blue weft, put it back on the loom and finish it. After … I get the “Introduction to Tablet Weaving” off the loom.
Isn’t it scary looking? The pink strings are the regular heddles. They’ll go back onto their post easy enough … if I’m careful. The white strings are the pick-up heddles, and they are tied into four groups. In the braid, one baby blue block was created by manually lifting one of the four groups.
This is my second Introduction to Tablet Weaving, and I did not cry. Which is not to say there was not some level of frustration. But I turned the cards forward and made this pattern, turned the cards backward and made another, and then I fooled around a bit. All you have to remember that every turn of the cards puts twist into the four strands threaded through the cards.
So as long as the “forwards” counter the “backwards” … you’re ok. But it can be demoralizing to realize how much trouble a person might have … consistently counting to four. Howsoever, the people who thought this up several thousand years ago were brilliant. The pattern making possibilities are vast. Some people, Elewys of Finchingefeld, for instance … yes, YouTube … make braids wherein the pack of cards is split, one set a little up and the other a little down the warp, and you turn one set up, and the other set down, and do all kinds of classy stuff. Watching her bolstered my confidence … it’s not THAT hard. I intend to finish this warp, and when I’m done, I’ll have created some inches of a regular pattern I made up myself … and make a bracelet of it.
An Old Knitty Lady 