I am finally weaving a band that I warped up well over a year ago. Hmm, well over two years ago, but all of my weaving stuff was in boxes in storage for at least a year of that.
The pattern is from Peregrina1 (that's her user name on Ravelry). She posted a photo of a lovely band and was kind enough to share the pattern. It's a diagonals-type pattern. I didn't have the same colors she used (which are extremely attractive). I picked colors from what I did have, making sure that the contrast color was indeed contrast-y. I think I made a reasonable choice from what I had available.
I'm having fun with it. It felt most comfortable to use my PVC loom, so that's what I'm doing. I did have to track down all the pieces and remember how to put it together. Storage, boxes, etc.
This photo shows a few pattern repeats. You can see the white PVC of the loom and the skewers I used at the start of the band to make sure I've threaded things properly. The perspective is a bit funky -- the band is relatively consistent in width, honest!
What am I learning?
Well, I'm getting lots more practice with unweaving. If I'm distracted or tired, it's easy to rotate some cards forward instead of backward and not notice for an inch or so.
I'm also getting yet more reminders that it's important to watch the shed. It's apparently very easy for me to catch bottoms threads into the top part of the shed without noticing, especially from one of the interior packs of cards. That became very obvious when I was unweaving. I think that's part of why the line of the pattern isn't always perfectly clear -- a thread from the lower shed is on the surface next to the proper top threads, rather than remaining properly on the backside, and thus obscuring things. Or some of that may end up easing out when I block/finish the band -- we'll see. Or some of it might be due to slight differences in thread tension and shed-beating, leading to slight differences in the lengths of the floats. I don't know but I'll try to get it figured out and then do my best to improve.
I used the thread that was already on my shuttle as weft. I like that it's thin -- it looks like #30 crochet cotton, perhaps #20. But it is white or off-white, and it does show along the edge and sides. I probably should have chosen something closer in color to the edge threads. In general, the edges aren't perfect and the width isn't perfectly consistent, but given how long it's been since I've done much, I'm not gonna beat myself up about it.
I love how the pattern is built in sections -- each group of four cards is 8F8B, but each group is staggered by four rows from the adjacent group of four cards. The outer two groups are 2 cards since the pattern is on 24 cards instead of 28, and I wanted it to be symmetric. There are also 2 more cards at each side as edge cards, which are all blue, alternating SZ or ZS, and only turned forwards. I'm using the two-packs method of keeping things straight -- the forward pack and the backwards pack, re-arranged every four turns.
I love how these complex-looking designs arise from such simple rules. These kinds of bands end up being twist-neutral, too, without needing to reverse the weaving or work out extra twist or anything like that. And obviously the forward-back turnings can be different -- 6F6B, or 4F2B2F4B, etc. -- or the groups of cards can be offset by two rows rather than four, etc.
Not every diagonals pattern is like this, or at least I don't think they are, but a lot of the ones I find attractive are. They also tend to be fairly easy to weave since they're made from such simple building blocks.
The cats, surprisingly, aren't as terrible about helping as they were several years ago. They watch, but mostly they're content to chew on the wooden skewers at the beginning of the band or to bat around the warp that's hanging off the back end of the loom. Sometimes they like to sit so they have a close view of the shed when I'm unweaving, making it tricky to determine what is a thread and what is a cat whisker. One cat likes to lie on my neck, along my shoulders, as I weave, but that's not too big a deal.
I have no idea what I will use the band for, if anything.
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