wool – Page 2 – Backstrap Loom Weaving

Backstrap Weaving – Process and Product and all that Lies Between

In my last post, I showed you what happens when I become way too immersed in the process and forget about the product. I ended up with a new strap for my camera in the lovely reversible three-color pebble weave on which the hummingbirds were upside down on one end! Friends told me that this was done on purpose so that I could see them the right way up when I looked down. I have some very nice friends :-).

I am trying to think of a time when the reverse was true and product may have overtaken my thoughts about process. I guess there was this example where I needed a wool band fast-fast for a work shop I was teaching in which way more people signed up than expected. I forgot all about my backstrap loom and jumped onto my friend Pam’s floor loom. Pam offered to set up the loom. After all, she would do it far more quickly than I would have been able to given my limited experience. Then I took over to weave.

**The message on my top was appropriate for the task. I needed to put my head down and weave!**

In my latest project, I find myself slipping back into process mode. I guess my focus is on designing and structure for this one as I am using a structure that I don’t often use….Finnweave. The product? I’ll make one up along the way.

I didn’t learn this one from any of my indigenous weaving teachers. That and the fact that I seldom use this structure, had me pulling out my notes to remember how it all works. Learning it from a teacher in Mexico, for example, where it is still practiced, would have involved days, if not weeks of study. Prior to that, there would have been days spent looking for teachers, more days spent waiting for them to discuss with family and/or friends the price they should charge, time spent preparing yarn if there wasn’t any on hand, and possibly even more time spent scratching about for loom parts which were perhaps long since out of use and maybe even re-purposed. One of my teachers in the highlands was using one of her warping beams as a fence rail.

And then there would be the days or weeks of interaction with my teacher as I watched and tried to imitate her movements at the loom. I can only describe some of my earlier learning experiences as a real struggle when no verbal explanations were being given or patterns provided on paper. Of course, there is more than one way to impart knowledge and skills and I learned to adapt. All that combines to implant some pretty firm memories which make it much easier to just pick-up a technique that I haven’t used in a long time and slip easily back into it. Obviously it’s not the same as learning something from a book.

It annoys me having to study a structure all over again! Why won’t it sink in and stay there?! In the process I improve my notes so that it will be easier and quicker the next time. And yes, it does get faster each time. My notes include tips that I have come up with myself for remembering, for example, the home position of the two shuttles, which color comes next, and the changes I make to the basic loom set-up depending on whether I am weaving a narrow or wide piece. These are things about which I need to be reminded when I first get back into it.

**A very narrow sampling warp in 20/2 cotton that I used in the past to test the proportions of basic shapes.**

This time I am using 20/2 wool for the first time in Finnweave. I needed to sample again for a width gauge and to see if the proportions of my motifs in this material matched those of the figures on my old charts.

I have to figure out all over again just how hard to beat. You can see how different the two figures look when I change beat. After wet-finishing the sample, I could see that the firmer beat had produced the better cloth.

Those figures are adapted from a crochet pattern by Svetlana Rogatykh (she does amazing work in crochet!). This is a smaller version that I drew of the much larger one I showed earlier. The larger one is much closer to Svetlana’s creation for crochet.

I had decided that I wanted to weave a foliage pattern and set about creating leaf patterns….my usual thing…basic oval-like shapes with veins. They were all too large and also difficult to position at different angles. I wanted something more delicate that would climb and twist its way up the warp and not something static and repetitive. This structure allows horizontal and vertical lines. Diagonals are harshly stepped. I was about to give up until I decided to look at Svetlana’s work again. She offers a free foliage pattern and that gave me the spark that I needed to get this going. Her leaves are also in horizontal and vertical lines and in all kinds of hard blocky shapes that alone would not be recognizable as leaves at all. However, place them all on a stem and make them all just a little bit different, and suddenly you have a lovely pattern of flowing foliage, somewhat delicate despite the hard stepped diagonals and block-like shapes…..at least to my eye.

So, I had to create another sampling warp.

I would have loved to have designed some hummingbirds but that just wasn’t going to work. I went for tiny butterflies instead…simple enough, just two triangles. I was thinking that if I swapped those butterflies for fish, this could also make a nice aquatic scene.

This second sample gave me another opportunity to test the proportions of my woven figures against my charted ones and confirm the width information that the first sample had provided. I added my large leaves to compare….nope, they really are too big.

Then it was onward to the real project. The samples finished off my supply of black 20/2 wool but there is still a lot of green…perfect.

**This 20/2 cotton Finnweave piece works nicely as a “neck wrap”. Maybe this wool one will too.**

Almost ready to go. I still had to remove the original cross sticks and insert a coil rod. As I am not using a reed to help maintain sett in this balanced weave, I find that the coil rod is particularly helpful for maintaining the established width beyond the shed rod.

I took a lot of time at the start settling the threads and trying to make sure that the spacing between the warp threads is as consistent as possible across the eight inches of warp. I find it handy to be able to divide the warp in half and then in quarters with my lashing cable ties. I count out the threads to make sure that I place the ties in the right places. I can then focus on one section at a time making sure that each half measures four inches and each smaller section two. I check that the threads are as evenly spaced as possible within those sections.

Maintaining that sett without a reed is much easier for me to do in this double-weave structure as opposed to plain weave. Something about the exchange of colors between the two layers of the double weave seems to help. As soon as I stop weaving patterns and the layers separate, I risk losing control of the sett.

**Coil rod in place and weaving underway.**

Of the course, the last ten or so edge warp-ends are the ones that most want to snuggle together and hide the weft. I don’t usually weave patterns all the way to the very edge and so those warp threads are left free to misbehave. I was watching a weaver in Mexico weaving plain balanced weave on her backstrap loom in a video and noticed that after every four weft shots or so, she would take a pointed stick from where it had been parked in her hair and strum the warp threads in the last inch at the selvedges. She would strum outward. I figure that she must be coaxing those problem threads apart. I must remember to do that too.

I feel like I have been neglecting my loom’s role in this whole process. I seem to be taking my beloved backstrap loom for granted and I think that I will devote my next post to more about the loom and how it works in my hands. I guess I just see it more and more as a part of my body when I am weaving in the same way that I used to feel that skis were just an extension of my feet!

**I love the way the warp extends from my body.**

Until next time.

Backstrap Weaving – The Simple and the Complex

Every now and then when I am sitting at my loom, I am reminded of the years that I spent teaching English here in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. The institute had received a visit from a teaching consultant from the U.S State Department who introduced us to the concept of what she called “barefoot teaching”. She had developed this after having spoken with many teachers, especially those living in countries of the developing world like Bolivia, who had convinced themselves that they simply could not teach effectively without flashcards, computers, interactive boards and all other kinds of audio-visual aids. The barefoot teaching idea basically involved setting yourself the challenge of leaving all the tools at home and going into class with nothing more than a lesson plan and a piece of chalk (as well as a lot of enthusiasm and creativity)…in other words “barefoot”.

Then I get to thinking about Maxima, my favorite weaving teacher in the Bolivian highlands, and what simple tools one really needs to get started in backstrap weaving…basically your back, some thread/yarn and a toe! (and instruction or guidance, be that in person, or virtually via books, blogs, video or a multitude of other ways to connect online). Real barefoot weaving! Maxima doesn’t even use a backstrap.

Maxima has made a picking cross and is selecting the warps from each side of the cross for her design. Her warp is attached to her toe and for a while so was mine. Then I also attached my warp to her toe when mine had had enough! Finally we moved to the post to tie my warp up and later Maxima did the same.

There’s not a single stick in use.

Ten-year-old Peruvian weaver Juan Miguel, above, has a stake driven into the ground to which his warp is attached – his only real piece of equipment. If it were a shorter warp, he could use his toe. (Maxima deals with longer warps by wrapping the warp once around her toe to securely grip and tension it. A string passed through the end loops of Juan Miguel’s warp goes around his waist and acts as his “loom bar” and “backstrap”. He is using a string loop for one shed and string heddles for the other. He isn’t even using a beater or sword. His hands do the trick. After passing the weft, he opens the other shed and pulls the upper layer of threads up while pulling the other down in order to squeeze the last weft shot into place.

A warp can be wound in a figure-eight around a finger and a toe. The thumb and a finger of the free hand are used to gather up the cross when the warp is complete while the weaver uses the other hand to tuck one end of the warp into the waist-band of her skirt. The other end stays on the big toe. A length of yarn is inserted to hold the cross leaving two hands free to make string heddles.

**My weaving friends in the Bolivian highlands were excited about the opportunity to try out cotton that had been donated by Cotton Clouds.**

Don’t get me wrong, I won’t be tossing out my loom bars. I like using them even for the tiniest of warps but it is nice to think back to how I got started. We used pencil-width sticks about five inches long for loom bars, slightly longer ones for cross sticks and we had a beater. My teacher tied a cord around my waist and lodged the stick under it. Cord was passed through the other end of the warp which was attached to a bush so we could weave tiny pebble weave bands.

**Twenty-six years ago, I sat on that pillow between my mother-and-daughter teachers to take my very first “watch and do as I do” lessons in weaving on a backstrap loom.** **They were lessons not only about the pebble weave structure, but also about how to use your body to operate the loom. Most importantly of all, they were lessons in how to learn by simply watching.**

Last year was the twenty-fifth anniversary of that very first experience and I wove a piece as a representation not only of my vision of a post-pandemic world, but also as a recognition of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the happy scene above. The very first pattern that these ladies showed me was a hummingbird (although it took me several years to recognize it as one!). Hummingbirds, therefore, also became a part of the piece that I wove. In it, we are together again. The bush has grown into a tree with strong and extensive roots and although our warps have widened, the simplicity of the tools remains the same.

**Panel 4 from the Within These Walls series.**

Even something as simple as long thumb nails can be very useful. I appreciate them most when I am making string heddles. Sometimes I am unaware of the part they play in other stages of the process and only realize when I have had to cut them. Then I really miss them.

I love the simplicity in this picture….one’s entire weaving kit rolled up and neatly stored away.

And I wish that I could be organized enough to create a simple, clear weaving space like this…

My teacher Felicia’s weaving space…sticks, a bone tool, a bit of plastic-wrapped wire, and a sheep skin on which to sit. Simple tools don’t necessarily need to be made from natural materials. Hat and cat are optional. She was weaving for a museum’s gift shop and needed to adhere to precise pre-agreed measurements…hence the measuring tape.

I have an out-of-sight-out-of-mind way of operating and so my weaving space is strewn with things that serve to remind me of ideas for future projects as well as samples and works in progress. Yes, I now have a lovely weaving journal in which to jot down those ideas but it’s not the same as being constantly reminded of them when I have to step over and around them every day..

The thing that really motivated me to write this post was the completion of the simple fabric with which I will, hopefully, construct a bag….a simple blue bag to go with the highly decorated and comparatively complex reversible three-color strap. I even opted out of adding a motif to the cloth here and there using supplementary weft. One of the joys of supplementary weft is that you can treat your base cloth as a blank canvas and just add pattern wherever you please. The cloth can be covered with pattern from edge to edge or just show a few scattered motifs here and there. I used both options in this scarf…

**60/2 silk fabric for a scarf on the loom with the simple tools that were used to create it.**

One of the other many joys of using supplementary weft is that if you decide that you don’t like the motif you have woven, you can simply cut it out. Your base cloth will remain intact. I started adding a motif to the cloth for my bag, decided it was too much, and removed it. I actually unwove to remove it rather than cut it out.

Having got the urge to decorate the cloth out of my system, I sailed along enjoying the simplicity of the “dance” of just rhythmically operating the two basic sheds on the loom and passing my shuttle. Well, “sailed along” might not quite be the right way to describe it. It was a sticky wool warp and required a slower pace, stopping to advance the warp more frequently and performing strumming and other operations a lot more gently than I normally would….but I so enjoyed weaving it!

And here’s the contrast between the simple and the complex in the finished cloth and strap….

**The cloth is in industrially-spun wool and the strap is in my own spindle-spun wool.**

I am showing the string heddles because they are almost perfectly clean despite the stickiness of the wool warp. There is the faintest film of blue fluff on their tips which makes it look like the tips have been dyed.

I will leave you now with this lovely hummingbird piece that showed up in my Facebook feed from the Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino. I visited that museum many a time when I was living in Chile but haven’t been there since its major renovation some years ago. They were even selling my woven bookmarks in their gift shop at one point…wow, that was so long ago!

Backstrap Weaving – The Sounds of our Craft

It’s been a while since I last heard the scritchy sound of hairy warp threads releasing their grip on each other as I open sheds on my backstrap loom. I am hearing it now because I have taken on the challenge of weaving with mill-spun wool singles that I bought from a farm while traveling in California. I don’t really know what I had in mind when I bought that yarn. I had just wanted to buy something as a souvenir of that part of my travels from the lovely people who had allowed my friends to gather and weave in their barn.

Because traveling to far off places to buy yarn like this is off the table at the moment, this is another case of my exploring my dwindling stash and enjoying the new challenges that this presents. My idea is to use this yarn to weave the body of a bag that will go with the strap I just finished. I used a three-color reversible Andean Pebble Weave structure for this strap and the wool yarn that I had been spinning and plying on a drop spindle during pandemic Zoom gatherings.

**Despite the dark colors, I think it’s a happy garden scene of flowers and hummingbirds**.

I did start off with the idea of creating an orderly, cohesive pattern layout but the temptation to play with the three colors and pop those hummingbirds wherever I wanted took over and I had a lot of fun doing just that.

One thing that I had wanted to do was use one color for the pebble spot that represents the hummingbird’s eye and another color for all the other pebble spots that sit within the figure’s body…but you know, I forgot to do that every single time! Well, almost every single time. I was determined to remember to do two things before I eventually finished the band…take a picture of myself at the loom working on it and get those colored eye spots in!

I once met a bird photographer that told me that it is really important to capture the little spot of white light in a bird’s eye in order not to have it appear lifeless. I have looked for it in every bird photo I have seen since. In the same way, I think the different colored eye spot on these last two hummers makes an enormous difference.

I didn’t hear any woolly scritchy sounds while working with this hand spun of mine. I had been concerned about how well it would stand up to this rather dense structure but realized after a while that I had completely forgotten all my concerns and was able to enjoy how friendly it was and how lovely it felt.

I remember the first time I wove with my hand spun. It was with some rather nasty dry and dusty llama fiber that I had bought from the animals’ owner up in the highlands. At the time, the scritchy tearing sounds were freaking me out and the yarn I had spun was anything but soft and lovely to handle. I had put a tremendous amount of twist into it so that it would stand up to warp-faced weaving. I don’t do that any more.

And now, there is a new experience…weaving with these mill-spun singles. This is a first for me. Yes, there’s some “scritchiness” but I am actually finding it pleasant…almost like the warp is whispering to me. That llama fiber had seemed to be screaming at me in that first-ever experience. I made adjustments to the way I was spinning it, it became friendlier, and I was able to enjoy weaving with it more. 🙂

This is my sample for the bag fabric that will follow. I wound a warp of 27″ length and 160 ends. The idea was to weave and allow it to settle into a consistent width so that I could then make calculations for the bag fabric. I most typically start off too narrow with new-to-me yarn and have to let the piece gradually widen and settle. Once I am happy with that, I put it aside and work on the real project. This time, however, I was enjoying working with this wool so much, I decided that this piece really needed to be something and I figured that my cell phone, which currently sits in a case, could do with a pouch. So, I unwove a good 3″ of fabric so that I could start over at the correct width. The fact that I was able to unweave the warp-faced cloth woven with wool singles yarn without losing my mind, tells me that this yarn and I are going to have a happy weaving relationship.

And I decided to use some of my plied hand spun as supplementary weft to weave in a pattern. This is some of the thicker “Zoom” hand spun that I first created and used to weave a wrist cuff before deciding to try and go finer. It is making a very nice supplementary weft. I am using the outlining technique of supplementary-weft patterning in which the weft does not travel from selvedge to selvedge. I can make my hand spun yarn go further that way. It is precious to me and I don’t want it to be just hidden away between the layers of warp as it travels to the selvedge. I can’t tell you how much fun I am having with this!

**Wrist cuff with the initial run of hand spun.**

A couple of observations: There had been a tendency for me to think that the action of the heddles against the wool would be the cause of most of the abrasion and subsequent pilling or shredding. Lately I have found that with good loom-operation technique, this isn’t so. There is actually a point of layer exchange that sits between the heddle and the shed rod where most of the abrasion is occurring for me. This exchange happens when the threads that lie on top of the shed rod are lifted and brought down through the heddles to the weaving line. (I keep my shed rod stationary and don’t slide it forward to the heddles as some backstrap weavers do which explains why the point of layer exchange on my particular warp is in that position.) That abrasion point is the one I need to watch and I notice that a little bit of fluff accumulates there. I am particularly gentle there and tend to spread the threads with my hands and lift them through that point in sections. It is also important to advance the warp as often as possible so that the abrasion point is constantly changing position.

**I love the multiple tones in the warp and its rustic look. I had considered a hummingbird pattern but decided that this one better suits these natural earthy colors.**

But despite all that gentle handling, the warp does continue to whisper to me in its scritchy voice, possibly just as a reminder not to get cocky and careless when I open the sheds. This talk of sound playing a part in our weaving, reminded me of some thoughts I had posted way back in 2013 that I thought I would revisit and share with you.

Back then, something a weaver had posted on the Weavolution website had resonated with me. An Australian gentleman, Hakim, was learning to make cut pile knotted rugs with an Iranian teacher in Australia. He said that when he is at home working on his practice piece, he can tell that the tension of the warp threads is correct if they make the same sound when he handles them as they do when he is working on his learning piece with his teacher in class.

What a piece of priceless knowledge!

(At left you can see an example of a set of tools that Hakim was able to get for me from his teacher for the day when I try this technique. It’s on that long, long to-do list).

Hakim’s comment made me think about the different sounds that are connected with weaving on simple looms and how much I enjoy them.

I am not one for placing things in my ears and listening to music while busy with something else. I can’t stand that. I like to be in touch with the sounds around me. They form a very important part of my memories of places and experiences.

In my skiing days, I would wonder at people who skied with headphones on. I would never give up the pleasure of hearing the wind and the swish of the skis on the snow, or the sudden change of sound as snow turned to ice giving me time to react and adjust position. Back then, no one wore helmets. I am told that the helmets being worn now don’t affect the skiers ability to enjoy those sounds.

I learned to fly a glider when I was 19. There is nothing like the sound of an engine-less craft rushing through the air. There was so much with which to be occupied while learning (especially for someone like me who was so utterly un-coordinated at the time!) but I could always simply rely on my ears for certain information. For example, if the sound of the rushing air suddenly disappeared it was a sure sign that I had the nose up too high and that told me that I had better do something quickly before the glider stalled!

When we first went into pandemic lockdown here in Bolivia, I remember finding the sudden absence of sound really disturbing and almost frightening. Then I realized that what was missing were familiar sounds of human activity and that they had been replaced by much more pleasant ones…bird song and the sound of leaves being blown across the cobbles…sounds that normally were drowned out by the hum of city living.

As for sounds while weaving, I love using multiple big swords. I so enjoy the musical tok tok sound they make as they knock together in the sheds. And I love the chuckling chatter of all the sticks on the loose as they fall together when I release tension and roll up the warp at the end of the day. Below, you can see the sticks I used in a wall-hanging piece….many different kinds of wood making interesting sounds. It can become quite a collection.

Then there’s the plink plink sound as the tip of a delicate Guatemalan pick-up stick slides from one taut warp to the next as the weaver counts out threads for supplementary-weft inlay.

The dancing dangling bobbins used in weft twining go clackity clack as they twist and jiggle.

And they enable my teacher to create such beautiful work as this:

**Examples of *kteh* work by my Montagnard weaving teachers.**

I loved the opportunity to drag the llama bone tool across the strong highly-twisted wool threads that my teachers in Peru had prepared below…scritch, scritch, as I strummed to help separate the warps. Only warp threads with certain characteristics will tolerate this.

Listen to my teacher doing it…

If you stroll around a village of weavers in a certain part of the central highlands of Bolivia, you will know in which houses a weaver is at work by the LOUD THWACK!! THWACK!! of the llama bone hitting the sword as the wefts are slammed into place. That sound is one that is not really pleasant, at least not to my ears, when I am seated right next to my teacher. Here is one of my teachers in Candelaria at work at her loom:

When I stayed in the stilt-house home of my weaving teacher in Ecuador, I was often awoken at dawn by the muffled thump, thump and accompanying vibrations as Trini drew down her heavy beater while working at her vertical loom. This was combined with various house shaking and creaking sounds as the loom was connected to floor and ceiling beams…a part of the house itself. You can see that big sword/beater lying across Trini’s leg below and get an idea of the muscle that goes into operating this particular set-up.

The sound of threads in a warp-faced weaving rubbing past each other as a shed is opened can range from a soothing smooth swish to a seemingly painful tearing protest depending on the yarn being used and how it has been prepared.

When weaving with new backstrap weavers, we even learn to be amused by the constant clatter of swords jumping out of their sheds and hitting the floor. Each sword has its own musical tone…nowhere near as much fun on a rug! A cement floor like the one in this picture greatly enhances the melody.

Joan following a pattern chart at the Mannings.

By the way, I am in charge of picking up the fallen swords….gives me something to do. It is funny that as time goes by we have people weaving in silence. What happened to our musical accompaniment? Well, new weavers, without even realizing it, get a feel for the right amount of tension and the sweet spot in the warp where the sword will sit happily upright and not leap to the floor. Or…they just get rather good at catching the sword on its way down!

Maybe one of the nicest sounds for me is the fwip fwip fwip fwip in rapid succession as I pull my heddle string quickly but carefully (or else it will tangle miserably!) off its heddle stick. This means that the piece is finished.

And with that soft, happy sound in your head, I will leave you.

Until next time.

Backstrap Weaving – What if?

When I last posted, I had just wound this warp using my “Zoom” hand spun, that is, the wool that I had been spinning and plying on a drop spindle during the various pandemic Zoom sessions that I have been attending. It took a while for some participants to get used to my sitting there with my arm raised as I attempted to get maximum drop distance for my spindle. I was often asked if I was signaling my desire to ask a question. I hope I wasn’t too annoying!

I dyed the blue and tobacco colors so that I could have three colors that would work well together on both faces of this three-color warp. Basically, I wanted to work with a dark, a medium and a light color and the challenge was finding a medium color that contrasts well with both the light and dark.

I am not sure why I always seem to find myself working with wool at some point in the hot, steamy summer months we have here. It kind of made sense when I was traveling a lot as these summer months used to be the longest period of uninterrupted time I would get to spend at home. I would work on as many different projects as possible before having to think about workshop prep, packing and traveling again. But now I have all the time in the world as I play it safe at home and can be more selective about which project I tackle, and when. I suppose stash limitations may have something to do with my choices now.

In my last post I told you that I had bought Joan Ruane’s video class on Spinning Cotton on a Takli from Taproot Video. I am using Joan’s spelling of the word takli. I am only 30 minutes in on her 2-hour 20-minute class and have already learned so much. I get to spend a little time with Joan via Zoom as she is part of the Taproot Video team and I was once her roommate at the Mannings. However, I had never seen her in teaching mode and I can tell you that it is no surprise that she is fabulous.

The blue and brown above are my early attempts with the takli from a few years ago. The white is the remainder of what I bought from a spinner in Guatemala back in 2008. It’s what I used to weave the little sheer-cloth sample that you can see in the photo.

I got some lessons in spinning cotton with Trini and her mother, Luz in coastal Ecuador in 2007.

Now I just need to figure out a way to use the takli comfortably while participating in the Zoom gatherings. I had a few wool plying mishaps when I got too engrossed in what was happening on the Zoom screen. I expect I will be presenting a furrowed brow of concentration to everyone as I try to put what Joan is teaching me into practice. I have a wooden mortar that I could clamp between my knees to use as the platform for the takli. Joan says that using something wooden has the advantage of being virtually noiseless although she does say that it is better if the bowl does not have high sides. I’ll see what I can figure out.

What to do with the cotton? Well, I guess that I would like to use singles in another sheer cloth piece using one of my bamboo reeds. This is what I wove using the hand-spun singles that I brought back from Guatemala. This is part of a scarf that I wove.

But of course I am getting way ahead of myself! I know that I need to put in lots of miles of practice before I can produce something with which I am satisfied.

As for my current hand-spun wool project, I have always said that warp-faced weaving really flatters my hand spun. It’s a very forgiving structure for those thick and thin bits in my yarn. When the threads are all pressed up close together they look wonderfully even. I am pleased to say that my yarn is holding up beautifully. I don’t have to think anymore about the possibility of it being abraded to the point of breaking and am focusing on the colors and patterns instead now.

Which is where the “what-if” comes into it. I have given up any thought of creating an orderly and cohesive design on this strap because I simply can’t resist the urge to explore the what-ifs. What if the hummingbird is outlined in white with a tan filler, for example….what if I reverse that…what if the body and wings are two different colors…what if I change the pebble spot color…how many variations can I create? And so on!

I have a nice assemblage of tools by my side…swords, pick-up sticks and a tool I use to press the weft extra-firmly into place. I have to add my long thumbnails to that group. They really are my favorite tools! I am blessed with having nails that grow as hard as rock. I usually have to cut them back now and then to a socially acceptable length.

**You’ll also see some leafy what-ifs here.**

This is destined to become a bag strap. I have some lovely wool singles that I bought from a co-op farm while in California. The owners used to allow my group of backstrap weaving friends to gather in their barn. It will be nice to weave something with fiber from their sheep that they had sent out to be spun. I guess I will dye it dark blue and use it for the body of the bag. I am thinking plain dark blue with perhaps a three-color edging to which I will add this fancy strap. And what if I add some lines of color in weft twining to the body of the bag? I love those what-ifs!

**Fond memories of weaving in the barn.**

Maybe I’ll have some of my hand-spun cotton efforts to show next time. And before I forget, you may remember my mentioning, Allen Berry as the maker of beautiful swords for backstrap weavers (allenrberry on Instagram) when my weaving friends gifted me two of his gorgeous pieces a few years ago. Here’s one…

**An Allen Berry sword with some of my wrist cuffs.**

He doesn’t have a website and so you will need to go to Instagram to see his work. You can contact him via a direct message there. I am not sure if he still making the swords but the reason I am telling you this is because he has added, along with his many other wooden spinning and weaving tools, ADORABLE dishes for supported spindles. Here’s just one example. Go check him out on Instagram (allenrberry).

And while you are there, you might like to follow me. I am on Instagram as lavernewaddington. I post quite a few things there between my blog posts. See you next time.

Backstrap Weaving – An Interesting Beginning

First of all, I will say that I am not superstitious. I jokingly wrote on this blog some time ago that getting bitten by a dog on a recent outing was a sign that perhaps I was getting too cocky in the range and frequency of my outings. And then I opened my big mouth in a Facebook post on December 29 with this: “I feel less locked-in now and more able to manage this situation we all find ourselves in.”

The universe responded: “Lol, that’s what you think.”

I strolled a block and a half to the bakery on Dec 31 and….bam! Five days later, Covid. Yes, sometimes you just get unlucky. I am well now, feeling back to normal and grateful that I had managed to get an AZ booster before this happened. First task now…find better masks. The chief medical officer in Australia is now coming straight out and saying that in the face of the more contagious Omicron, cloth masks (I am guessing he is talking about those home-made ones that we were all using) should not be used. I had been lining my two-layer cloth job with two disposable masks…still no good.

So, yes, the beginning of 2022 was “interesting”.

I had what I am calling Covid-head for a while which I would describe as feeling like particularly bad jet-lag. I dared not touch my weaving after losing the plot and destroying one of my PowerPoint presentations. This is what I had been working on before I got ill….

**3-color reversible Andean Pebble Weave**

This is 8/2 tencel and my attempt to get once more accustomed to the steps that I use to produce this 3-color reversible structure. My plan was to use the structure with my hand spun and I didn’t want to risk stressing my yarn with a whole lot of fussing about and unweaving while I got back into the swing of this technique. I wouldn’t call the way I do this efficient and I am waiting for that magical “aha” moment to come which will allow me to eliminate a step or two… or three. For now, I just plod along with it because I love the results.

**Wrist cuff in 3-color reversible Andean Pebble Weave**

During the pandemic I have been pulling out every bit of wool I can find in my closet and spinning it on my drop spindle during the various Zoom gatherings I have been attending. It has been slow going because I have only allowed myself to spin during these few gatherings. Goodness knows what I will do now that I have cleared out my closet and there is no more wool left to spin. Actually, there is a bunch of cotton to spin in there as well as alpaca…..

Part-way through the spinning project, I paused to try some of my yarn in two small wrist-cuff projects. I wanted to see if it would be able to stand up to the extra handling that it would experience in the 3-color method. They were just very short warps but I did feel confident after that test that my yarn would perform well even in much longer warps. I decided then that I would try to spin finer hoping that I could also produce finer yarn that would stand up well. That remains to be seen.

**Applying an eye-pattern tubular band to a second 3-color pebble weave cuff** **in my hand spun.**

I’ve been enjoying the tencel project. It’s just a mish-mash of various shapes and color combinations. And, yes, there are hummingbirds.

It has allowed me to play with swapping the outline and background colors and change the pebble spot colors at will. After sampling, I decided that a red outline with a green filler looks good against a yellow background while the same thing does not look good against a green background. The funny thing is that I had to walk away from this every now and then because the colors would suddenly start to get on my nerves! This never happens when I work with only two colors. So, I would go away and do something else and then return, look at the piece, and fall in love with it all over again.

Yesterday I knew for sure that I was fully recovered from Covid because instead of giving in to the post-lunch urge to nap, I was able to easily push it aside and go wind a warp.

These are the four colors I chose from my little stash of hand spun wool. Three will be part of the 3-color pebble and the one in the foreground will be the narrow border. I wanted to come up with a project that would allow both faces of the piece to be seen after going to all the trouble of using this reversible 3-color technique. I decided that a strap for a bag would be perfect….not very wide, but long enough to be able to play with patterns, and both sides would be seen. So, I am working completely backwards by first weaving a strap and then planning a bag to go with it. It’s not like I need a bag…I just like weaving and if I need an excuse and the piece simply MUST be something, then a bag strap it will be.

I know what you are thinking…that’s one ridiculously wide strap…but this will narrow considerably once I start weaving. My hand spun is finer than the 8/2 tencel and this warp has the same number of ends as that tencel sample. One of my concerns is that the blue is a tad thicker and hairier than the other two colors and may swallow them up. There’s only one way to find out, though.

I just really like this shot. It almost looks like ikat. This was right after I had made the heddles. I was testing my heddle-making by clearing the sheds. The three colors played together briefly as I raised one color layer above the others. It made for a pretty picture.

And so, I start 2022 with a weaving project that I find challenging and interesting, a collection of Covid anti-bodies (which of course won’t last forever), and the need to find something else to do during those Zoom gatherings. I find it impossible to just sit there. Maybe I will get back into learning about cotton spinning. I was playing around with cotton spinning a few years ago and even wove with some of the results, which you can see below, when I was studying the sheer cotton cloth with supplementary-weft inlay that is woven in some areas in Guatemala and Mexico. It’s the stuff of a beginner spinner but I was pretty pleased with it at the time

So, I just bought Joan Ruane’s video class on Cotton Spinning on the Takli from Taproot Video because I really need some guidance.

While on the subject of Taproot Video offerings, I should also let you know that Rodrick Owen’s beautiful book on braids that was published in 1995 and which is now out of print, has just become available for purchase as a PDF.

You can see that I am in some very fine company on the Taproot Video website! I hope that in this new year you might consider buying one of my books at Taproot Video if perhaps you have been thinking about it. We niche-craft authors need all the help we can get. Tell a friend, please! See you next time.