11 March: It'll be all right when it's pressed

That's what my mother used to say when her dress-making looked a bit rough and ready.  And it works for inkles too.

The light-bulb moment the other day was to make a bag to carry my collection of backstrap stuff in - the bag itself being made of inkles. The inkle strips sewn together looked very lumpy and uneven, but a few minutes with the steam iron resulted in a thick and even fabric.

A quick walk to the shops for a zip and a bit of ribbon  (to cover the raw edges inside), and hours of sewing, and here's the finished item with some of the kit to go in it -

 

And here it is with all that stuff inside. It's 22' long and 10.5" deep. I used inkles I had already made, 4 altogether, which were cut into 11 strips.  The zigzag inkle is just about long enough to go all the way round and make handles, and the zip pull is made with part of the band made the other day on my double hole rigid heddle (the other bit has been made into a bowsling for my recurve bow).

12 February: Twining

Happy birthdays to DD today and DDiL yesterday!

Meanwhile, the weaving theme continues. I was browsing through 'Byways in Hand-weaving' by Mary Meigs Atwater again, trying to make some sense of her instructions for weaving narrow bands; but it's all written with the assumption that you are a proper weaver, and have a loom with shafts and treadles (whatever they are), so it's mostly just incomprehensible to me. But the illustrations are excellent.

Anyway, there's a section on 'Twined Weaving', and this is done with a free-hanging warp. This intrigued me, so a sample was started. The actual weaving is very easy, but keeping the piece an even width is tricky; and after a short while it became difficult to hold. While wondering how to fasten it differently, I spotted my peg loom.

A second sample was started on the peg loom - again it's very easy to twine 2 strands round the pegs, but the effect is much coarser. And what a lot of yarn goes into anything on a peg loom!

Here are the results -

 

  

The smaller piece is done on a linen warp with rug yarn and a bit of handspun, the larger peg loom piece has rug yarn for warp, and again rug yarn and a bit of handspun for weft.

7 February: Semi-rigid heddle

An e-mail brought some details of a forthcoming Guild workshop that I hope to attend, weaving narrow bands on a backstrap loom with rigid heddle.

I made a backstrap loom from some sticks, bits of string and rubber bands a while ago, but got in a tangle trying to put an organised striped warp onto it, and put it aside in favour of my inkle loom, which is so easy to warp.

The information for the workshop suggests that you can bring your own rigid heddle, or borrow one for the day from the tutor. No specification for the heddle, how many slot and holes, nor the size of those slots and holes, though a band with 5 pattern threads was mentioned.

Now I have rigid heddles for my Kromski Harp loom, but they are 32" long - a bit unwieldy for use with a backstrap set-up. I began to wonder if I could improvise something with card, and went looking for stout card. There was some with my old patchwork stuff, to make templates, but with it were some pieces of plastic template material. One of those lightbulb moments!

I traced slots and holes from one of my large rigid heddles onto a piece of plastic, and a couple of hours with a craft knife and a cutting board, and I had a small heddle; 8" by 5", with 15 slots and 14 holes.

I warped it with some handspun in the same way I do tablets for weaving - involves long threads trailing all over the floor - and knotted the ends of the threads together as for tablet weaving. Here it is, not actually in action, but in a lull in the action -

(Photographed with flash.) The slots and holes are really too widely spaced, and the plastic is too bendy, but as an experiment it seems a success. Now I need a better way to deal with the length of warp behind the heddle, and perhaps somewhere better to hitch it than the door-handle. Oh, and a more rigid heddle.

1 November: Apple Ginger

After drying out clothing and equipment from yesterday's Roving Mark and Novelty Clout shoot (aiming arrows at pumpkins about 150 yards away across a deer park), I spent the morning slaving over a hot stove trying to reduce the huge quantity of apples from our 2 little trees.

There was a recipe in a 1940s booklet of my mother's which looked interesting, so 3 lbs of apples have become 5 lbs of Apple Ginger.

Having plenty of ground ginger and none of the root ginger listed in the recipe, I substituted, guessing the amount. Well, even if there's too much for other people, I like ginger.

30 September: Finished jersey

The first version of this jersey was begun in June, but after knitting the top-down circular yoke all the way to the armholes, I decided I didn't like it, unravelled it and started again.

The yarn was spun from a mixed batt of fibres, labelled "90% wool 10% other natural fibres", and the wool was pretty mixed. By the time I had knitted halfway down the body, it looked as if there wouldn't be enough yarn to complete long sleeves, so the stripes were added, in sort-of matching shades of handspun BFL. After completing the cuffs, bottom ribbing, and the neckband, there were about 40 gms of the main yarn left.

I'm very pleased with it - it's lightweight (522 gms) and warm, and a completely unique pullover.

30 April: A cunning plan

There are now lots of inkles piled up in my playroom workroom.

So it seemed a good idea to make something from them. Like a bag. After fiddling about with ways of constructing a bag without having to hem too many ends, I worked out a sort of spiral, which forms a lop-sided tube; still needed to join the long sides together, and several ways of finishing the ends were considered before I chose to hem the narrow end at the bottom, and finish the top end by passing the cut threads through the weaving and braiding them on the front.

I had to cut the narrow inkle and stitch it to make the loops, though.


The bag is about 8" wide and 7" high with the top folded over. And at last I found a use for a boxwood acorn cut off a roller blind over 30 years ago - I knew it would come in handy one day!

The idea is that the sash will be simply knotted round me, and the bag is big enough for the essentials, while the clip can take keys if needed. The sash could also be knotted shorter, to make it a shoulder-bag or an across-the-body bag. Will the theory work out in practice?