linen yarns and inkle weaving

In August I got out my linen yarns, warped up the loom and wove Janet Phillip's twill sample blanket in linen. I shall write about that soon, in another post (or two). I loved the look and feel of the linen so much I went off to GTM Sales to buy more of their lovely yarns.

When I got back, I got side tracked. I had four colours of yarns that looked so lovely together I wanted to weave inkle bands. Inkle weaving is warp faced (i.e. the weft is hidden) is a great way to show off a special yarn.

I love that American English expression, "it followed me home..." here's a group of lovely yarns all waiting to get in my workshop..

The queue trails back down the stairs...

That's a job to sort this weekend, before it gets in the way of the work we are doing around the staircase - as you can see the walls need finishing.

My first two inkle bands had somewhat random thread order, just to see what happened.

Here's another photo, so you get the idea of how the bands look in different light.

The loom I used is a little Ashford Inkle loom, a really nicely designed loom, made of N.Z. beech, see next photo.

If you look at the shuttle next to the loom you can see that I have wound the weft thread on it in a figure of 8 pattern. This works so much better than winding round and round, if you use a stick on a band shuttle at all, do try it and see! I learnt this from someone else's blog, and I didn't bookmark the entry and now can't find it again.... whoever it was, thanks very much.

Other essential equipment for me are the lolly sticks and cotton heddles, which I made from a dk knitting cotton, in the manner demonstrated below. Well, umm, this heddle was tied around the pegs as shown when new, it must have streched a bit in use.
First heddle around a warp thread (they loop over alternate threads, all the threads that go over the first peg - the threads in between miss that first peg). Here's the first heddle going on. Note that since I wove this band I have changed technique, I put the heddles on each thread immediately after it is tied on. It's less fiddly like that and none get missed out (oops! yes, been learning by my errors again).


The next three photos show how a "shed" is made on this loom to pass the shuttle through in front of the heddles. Unlike other looms, the threads in the heddles stay put while the threads that are free are raised or lowered.











A nest trick I have learnt to get a neater start to the braid is to commence by putting a couple of little sticks in the warp, one in each shed, just as you'd weave a header row on a floor or table loom.


The same little sticks are useful as beaters and for lifting the threads either for opening up the shed or for weaving pick-up patterns.

My third band was properly planned out before I wove. Partly because I read Kaz's post about design for inkle weaving,
(thanks Kaz!) partly because I was looking for a more organised pattern.

I have Karisma coloured pencils which make lovely bright soft coloured marks on paper. One morning I sat down and tried a few patterns. Then I wrote out how many threads of each colour were needed, in order, so I could warp up without errors.


I like inkle weaving. I've also tried out tablet weaving recently, no room to write about that here, I'll tell you about that another day.

Last week I made enquiries about a floor standing loom. I've been thinking of getting a larger inkle loom for wider or longer braids, not least because I think it would be more comfortable to work at. I went to look at one a year ago, it was Dryad make, and turned out to be much smaller than I expected, so I could not see how I would sit at it comfortably. I think it was something like 2 foot tall. I've been looking at Harris looms and other odd makes that pop up on ebay, but wasn't sure they'd be much better. Some seemed to be designed as a warping frame that you could weave bands on if you liked, which to me is a compromise not worth making.

Then I discovered the Mike Crompton floor standing inkle loom in my Frank Herring's catalogue. I googled "Mike Crompton" and "weaver" and found out that he is a tapestry weaver living in Yorkshire. That seemed a good start. I looked at the black and white photo in the catalogue, and liked the proportions of the loom. I discussed it with my boyfriend, who loves working with wood, and who had offered to make a loom. (I like to remind him I need more of those nice warp sticks for my table loom, first, which nobody sells. He makes a few every now and again.). I phoned Frank Herring's and asked about the total height of the loom, (90 c.m. at highest point) and the max. warp length (5 m). It all seemed just right, so I rang and placed my order on Monday morning, and my loom arrived on Thursday and it is beautiful Photos another day, soon.

On Monday afternoon, an e-mail arrived in my inbox with the subject "band loom needs a home" from a sender I'd never heard of. I stared at it, surprised. I opened the message. A friend of a friend has a most unusual Swedish band loom to give away to a good home. It is like an inkle loom, but with warp rollers, two shafts and... a drawloom attachment behind the shafts. Oh wow. I'm going to pick it up tomorrow.

In my post about the Weavemaster loom I said I had 3 looms. I'd forgotton the little inkle loom which was resting on top of a bookcase. Now, we add to the list another inkle loom and a Hennings band loom with drawloom attachment, made by Brunne Snickeri of Kramfors, Sweden. And I still have to re-organise the yarns and put my new cones of linen away. Am I in control of this weaving workshop, or is everything in it self-replicating in an out of control fashion? Except the weaving... ah, yes, weaving, that must be the best way to organise my yarns. So, the next warp is prepared ready for my floor loom, and on we go!