Wandering at the Shadows' Edge

exploring potential and possibility

Archive for the category “Inkle Weaving”

08 Aug 2019

Revisiting the Shadows

Sometimes you just have to travel back to someplace you’ve already been. That’s true when it comes to places, projects, stories, and many other things.

At the moment, I’m traveling in the shadows I’ve already mapped, going back to things that are familiar and, in some cases, comforting. I need to start exploring again soon.

Work has been taking a lot of my mental energies, so I’ve been reading old favorites. They’re fun and easy since I’ve already read them at least once. That leaves my brain cycles available for other things.

What are those other things? Revising the second and third Double Helix books into to drafts I can give to an editor is part of it. I’ve also been doing some editing on Secrets and Shadows before I release it wide and in print. And I’ve been working on the short stories my mailing list gets for free. And then there’s the zero draft of the fourth Double Helix book. That’s most of the writing related stuff that’s not new.

I’m re-exploring the fiber arts as well. I need a new lanyard for work, so I warped up my inkle loom. I got a couple of inches dones then set it aside. I need to finish it because there are other weaving projects – new techniques – I want to try. Of course, I need to finish balling the yarn for some of those projects too!

I’ve been jotting down ideas and steps for completing some older SCA projects too. I need to practice specific calligraphy and illumination styles and figure out some fairly extensive blocking. I need to make a test batch of gesso, test some gilding options, and do some more research and practice on book binding.

I’m considering pulling an old project here out of the shadows. There’s a lot of negativity in the world and on social media right now. And there are a lot of people doing their parts to make things a little better, a little easier, a little nicer. They need to be seen though, and all too often they aren’t. So I think I may bring the spotlight back. There’s light in the shadows, though we usually only see the dark.

Hmm….

It looks like I’m not quite ready to start mapping new paths in the shadows yet. But I’ll get there.

Are you revisiting old maps or exploring new ones?

Posted in Bookbinding, Calligraphy & Illumination, General Wandering, Inkle Weaving, Modern, SCA, Spotlight, Writing | Leave a Comment
30 Aug 2016

A Brief Foray into the Light

It’s really easy to get lost, even at the edge of the shadows!  I’ve been busy – even done some projects, but somehow never came back far enough in the light to document them!  I’m going to try to do better because I really do want to track things I’m working on.

In the meantime, I’ve crocheted three shawls – one of which now belongs to my sister. I’ve submitted a short story to an anthology which will come out in October. And I did a letter of intent for a friend in the SCA.

In progress projects include a knitted shawl, a practice inkle weave piece, some kumihimo braids, final revisions on one novel and several other novels, novellas, and stories in progress. I have two major projects in the works – a book of hours and a reliquary for friends.

And of course, there’s always the intent and attempt to post more often here and on my other sites! Time to make that a habit, rather than the occasional “Oh yeah – I need to update that!”

For now, it’s time to wander back into the shadows though.  How is journey going?

Posted in Calligraphy & Illumination, Cord Making, Crochet & Knitting, Fiber Arts, General Wandering, Inkle Weaving, Paper Arts | Leave a Comment
02 Jul 2012

Weaving Embellishments from the Shadows

I’ve already posted some of my experiments with inkle weaving.  Having done those, I decided to try my hand at embellishing my weaving.   There are methods I wanted to try – brocading and pickup weaving.  For some reason, I decided to try the brocading first.

Method

Brocading involves the use of a second weft thread or threads.  Generally  you want that thread to be double or triple the weight/size of your warp threads. This cuts down on the amount of warp that shows between your rows.   The brocade weft is woven through the warp in a pre-determined pattern, which usually looks like a cross-stitch pattern. Basically, the brocade weft sit above the warp where you want it to show and below the warp where you don’t want it to show.  The regular weft thread is woven normally, with no adjustments.

experimental brocade pattern

A celtic knotwork cross-stitch pattern that I used to try brocading my inkle weaving.

This is

The Pattern

This is the pattern I decided to start with.

I probably should have started out with something a bit simpler.  Celtic knotwork really isn’t the easiest pattern to work with at first.

The advantage?

I realized I was doing something wrong with my first try pretty quickly.

The disadvantage?

It seemed like it took forever to get through one repetition of the pattern!

 

 

 

The Results

brocading 1st try

This is the first try at brocading. Obviously something went wront.

The First Attempt

This is my first attempt.  The bottom is the celtic knotwork – not even recognizable for what it is!

Not understanding what was going wrong, I decided to try a simple diamond pattern .

The result was a bit better – at least the diamond is recognizable!  But it’s not anywhere close to solid like it should be.

I went back to my instructions and re-read them, assuming that I had missed something when I read them the first time.

As it turned out, it wasn’t so much that I missed something as that I mis-read part of the instructions.  Having figured out what went wrong, I decided to try again on the same band of weaving.

 

 

Brocading 2nd try

The second attempt at brocading. The technique is right, but only uses a single brocade thread.

 

The Second Attempt

This is the second attempt.

This time I got the technique right.  the knotwork is more or less recognizable and the diamond is definitely recognizable.

The only problem I had with this one is the amount of the warp showing through.  Obviously a single brocade thread  isn’t enough to make a fairly solid pattern.

 

 

 

The Third Attempt

brocading 3rd try

The third attempt at brocading – the brocading weft is doubled

This is the third and final attempt at brocading my inkle-weaving.  The only difference between this one and the second one is that I doubled the brocade thread.  The patterns are both more recognizable for what they are and less of the warp is showing.  I think that in the future I will either triple the brocade thread or use a thread that is the equivalent of a triple weft.

Thoughts

Overall, I am very happy with the outcome.  I feel like I have a solid understanding of how the process of brocading inkle weave works now and I think I can also apply it to card/tablet weaving in the future.  I wouldn’t want to stop weaving in the middle of a pattern repetition – I’d be afraid I’d forget where I stopped. That being the case, I would want to keep my patterns small or make sure that I only wove when I had a good solid block of time.

What do you think?

Posted in Fiber Arts, Inkle Weaving, SCA | Leave a Comment
10 Jun 2012
2 Comments

Small Weavings in the Shadows

Patterns and Sizes

My current explorations are in the area of inkle weaving.  I’ve been playing with patterns and thread sizes.

Black, yellow and white simple lines

simple alternating lines

Blues and white

bars, lacking contrast

3 sizes

same pattern, different colors and threads

I’m finding that the size 10 cotton crochet thread works up the quickest. It doesn’t snag on the heddles or pill and get fuzzy. The size 20 crochet thread might work up just as fast if my heddles were made of it rather than the size 10.

The size 10 crochet thread also seems to have given the cleanest version of the pattern, though that might be as much from the color choices as the thread size.

Heddle Variations

black and gray alternate heddles

non-standard heddle pattern, black warp, gray weft

The most recently completed piece of inkle weaving was an experiment with which warp threads I heddled.  In some spots I heddled two in a row and then left two alone.  The result was a sort of speckled pattern where the weft showed through where the heddles didn’t alternate as usual.  I’m wondering what kind of patterns I can come up with by coordinating various colors of warp and weft with heddle patterns.

 

Posted in Fiber Arts, Inkle Weaving, SCA

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