I am such a noob!

OK, so I have a bit of time and want to play with my new little PVC loom.

I feel like such a newbie!  Of course, it's fun.  I am learning through making mistakes and all that.  So many blogs have such wonderful tales of success, though.  Or at least interesting mistakes.  I am still in the stage of making all the beginner mistakes.  That is a necessary stage, of course.  Should I even be writing about it?  Or shall I wait until I look more knowledgeable and competent than I currently am?  Since I am writing about it, I guess that's the answer.

OK, then.

I am doing a Kivrim-style tablet weaving pattern, since I've not yet done a pattern that has some (but not all) of the cards either getting flipped or turned in different directions from the rest of the pack.  I found a draft on the 'net somewhere, and off I go.

Cutting the warp comes first, I guess.  The last few bands have been done with continuous warping.  This is a threaded-in pattern, so needs specific lengths cut and threaded.

That is done.  I put two clamps on edges of a table and wound around them, one round per thread.  However, the different colors are slightly different lengths.  Apparently, I was using a different amount of force as I wound each color around the C-clamps.  I blame the cats who were helping.

Then I threaded the tablets, carefully looking to see which way to do it.  S, Z, etc.  Then I realized I did it backwards and re-threaded the tablets.  Sigh.  I know that every pattern writer has his/her own notation method, card orientation, and so on.  So this is a good reminder to be patient during this part of the process.

Cats are not nearly as helpful as they imagine.  I do not need any felines to sit on the cards, nor on the copy of the threading pattern, nor on the warp.  The warp threads do not need to be treated as exciting new cat toys.  I do not need to roll a chair out of the way to move a cat, then realize that some of the warp threads have wrapped around the chair wheels.  I am an idiot.

Now on to the loom part.  I am having trouble with tension.  I am using all my kumihimo weights on the back end of the warp, but everything seems to slide around too much anyway.  It's hard to keep the threads under consistent tension -- some threads seem looser than others.  Also, the photo of the band on the loom in the original web link looks lovely, but it's not clear what I should be doing to start the band, when it is not long enough to wrap around the front PVC piece to clip to itself.

All of these seem like issues that any new-ish weaver has to solve, so I will do that even though my solutions will evolve as I learn more.  I put a loop of yarn on the front end of the loom, have knotted the ends of the braid, and have hooked that to the loom with an S-hook.  I am wrapping part of the warp around the back end of loom before dropping the warp over the end of the table and weighing it down.  That is helping, but it is possible I simply need more weight.  I have also clamped the loom to the table to reduce the shifting around.

I have followed the advice to use pieces of wood (bamboo skewers since that was the first thing I grabbed) to make sure the pattern is threaded in properly.  Several turns forward -- yep!

Since this is a newbie-ish band, I am using the thread that is already on my shuttle for weft.  Green goes with black and pink, right?

If this ends up being too annoying, I will set up my C-clamps and use those to hold the cards and the two ends of the warp.  But I would like to try using this style of loom, with weights on the ends of the warp instead of the warp being tied to something.

Since I appear to have the tablets set up properly, the next step will be to weave with the real weft.  Ooohhhh......  I don't know if I'll get to it today, but hopefully I'll do it soon.

Maybe someday I'll get around to adding photos.  But apparently that won't be today.

Fun with PVC

Today I made myself a little PVC tablet-weaving loom, using Alice Schlein's instructions for the PVC hybrid loom on her Weaverly blog.

It went together quite easily!  The hardest part was hauling the 10' length of PVC pipe throughout the store.  The store clerk snickered every time I dropped it or banged it into something.  The teenager accompanying me was mortified.  Too bad -- if you worry too much about being embarrassed, you risk missing out on a lot of potentially fun things.

I followed the blog's advice and got a PVC pipe cutter, too.  That took a few minutes to figure out.  But soon enough, I was marking out measurements and cutting PVC.  After the pieces were cut, the assembly was extremely rapid.  I don't plan to glue anything -- I want this to come apart for easy transport.

The next few days look pretty busy, but I will try to warp up a few tablets to take my new little loom for a test drive.  Usually, I use a couple of C-clamps and weave between them, or I tie one end to a doorknob and the other end gets attached to my waist.  It will be interesting to try this little loom.

Depending on how well this works, I might make Sharon Kersten's PVC Inkle Loom from the March 2009 issue of Handwoven.  Inexpensive, easily-transported looms are a fun concept.

It cost about $10-12 plus the cost of the PVC cutter (another $12 or so).  I have 30" of PVC left along with some L and T connectors from the bags of each that I bought.

I am a terrible photographer, but I will try to add photos sooner or later.

The Obligatory Intro Post

I have a knitting blog.  But I do more than knitting.  So this blog will be for my adventures in narrow wares -- kumihimo and other braiding, inkle and tape loom weaving, tablet weaving, backstrap weaving, knotting, luceting, fingerlooping, or anything else that seems to fit this category and doesn't really fit the knit/spin/dye category.

I have no idea if this blog will be active, sporadic, or immediately moribund.

Why now?  Because I think I'm about to enter another phase of creating narrow wares, and maybe this time I'll document it in real life instead of only in the past tense.  (I will still inflict bad photos of past-tense items if I want to, of course.)

If I had to describe my general skill, I'd label myself as a near novice.  I'm much more competent and experienced with knitting, crochet, spinning, and dyeing.  I am not really a weaver at all except for narrow wares, and I've only dabbled a bit in the various arts used to create them.

So we'll see what happens.