double weave – Page 4 – Backstrap Loom Weaving

Backstrap Weaving – Chasing Away the Blues

I have been working with blues (and once or twice with the blues) these last two weeks as my latest ikat experiment develops. I still call these “experiments” as I aim to iron out kinks, try new things and learn something new from each attempt. I suppose the main focus of this one was to create the colors that I had in mind at the start of the project. If you have been reading along over this last year and following the progress of my ikat experiments, you will be used to my saying…”the color didn’t turn out at all as I had expected, but it grew on me.” This time, I decided that I would mix the dye powders I have and try to create certain tones of blue and have them match as closely as possible the colors that I have in mind, rather than just making do with what I get. Yes, Facebook reminded me that it’s has been a whole year since I started working on this latest round of ikat experiments. They began with my using short multi-colored base warps and black dye.

I showed you the start of my latest experiment in my last post where I had just begun applying the ikat tape. It’s a long narrow piece using what remains of my supply of 60/2 silk…a sash that will hang on the wall alongside other ikat pieces that I have created in this 60/2 silk. On the warping frame, it is folded to halve its length so that I can wrap the tape around two layers of threads at once.

Maybe a Christmas tree or a pine tree springs to mind…but, in my mind, these lines represent veins on a leaf.

I was able to mix three colors from my selection of dyes and get this faded-jeans blue as the first color layer. I was pleased with that. I wanted to get something that perhaps resembles the first dip in a vat of indigo.

The warp then went back onto the frame so that I could tie more patterns. That would allow me to reserve some of this color and then dye a second color over the top. Basically, all I wanted was a darker blue as the second color, preferably something that would look like multiple dips in an indigo vat. That took two attempts. On the first attempt, the color looked good and dark in the pot. I know to expect the color to lighten a lot as the thread dries, but it lightened way more than expected and I knew that there would not be enough contrast between the two shades of blue.

On the second attempt, I got smarter and threw in some loose strands of silk that I had used as a test for the first faded-jeans color. I was able to remove them when I thought that the color was just about right and then rinse and quickly iron them dry to see the true color.

The warp then went back on the frame so that I could cut off the plastic wrappings. This time I didn’t leave any wrappings on. In my other experiments I left a row of wraps on the warp at the far end of the loom believing that they would help reduce the amount that the threads shifted as I wove. Time will tell if removing all the wrappings this time has been a mistake!

With all the wrappings removed, it was time for the grand opening. The warp could then go on my backstrap loom and be extended to its full length. I locate the pieces of thread that hold the cross and install the string heddles so that I can weave.

There are two kinds of shift that I have noticed from having done these ikat experiments as well as from having examined ikat work online, in exhibits and in my friends’ collections. When individual threads shift in varying degrees, you get that pleasant blurred effect that we all love. However, there’s another kind of shift that seems to be caused by the two layers of threads being misaligned. The result of that is an effect that I call “railroad tracks”. I am not fond of those railroad tracks!

In the picture below of an example of ikat work from Uzbekistan that my weaving friend Ute brought to show me , you can see the horizontal bars that I am calling railroad tracks. It’s something I would like to avoid. At the time of writing, I can tell you that the very first piece of pattern that I have reached in my current experiment, now that I have started weaving, is displaying railroad tracks….darn. I will be un-weaving and assessing and seeing what can be done about that. It may be the price for having removed all the wraps! If that is the case, I can say that this experiment truly had a purpose in showing me what not to do!

I am pleased with the tones of blue that I created. From now on, I will always toss a tiny bunch of loose silk into the dye bath with the ikat warp so that I can iron it dry, see the true color, and then adjust the dye mix accordingly. One other thing I did, which was maybe not a good idea, was leave the metal rod in place in the warp in the dye bath. I fold the warp around a metal rod when it is extended on the ikat frame. I removed it and replaced it with string in the first dye bath. As a result, all the threads at that end of the warp finished in a tangled mess. I left the rod in place in the second dye bath which kept everything in good order. However, either the metal stained the warp, or it reacted with the dye as there is a bit of a line across the center of the warp which may or may not come out in the wet-finish. More lessons learned!

At left, you can see a rough drawing I made of what I expect the finished piece to look like, complete with the line across the center. That line may refuse to budge in the wash and I so I may as well get used to it being there!

You may have noticed that the title of this post is “Chasing Away the Blues”. I have actually been actively welcoming blues in my latest project rather than chasing them away. What I am referring to in the title is the fact that I was involved in a very nice blues-chasing activity this morning. I received a very warm invitation to attend the Zoom meeting of a group of band weavers who call themselves the Banditos. What a way to lift my spirits! I am so grateful to Keith and the other Banditos for thinking of inviting me. This group is part of the Weavers Guild of Minnesota. Being able to join in gave me a chance to experience just a little piece what I have been missing from not being able to travel to meet and weave with weaving friends while chatting about all things weaverly. I have traveled to Australia in July and August every year for the last four years to do that. Last year I even got to go to New Zealand and spend time with weaving friends. These Zoom gatherings certainly help to chase away the blues that I sometimes feel as we all face such uncertain futures.

Now it’s time for Show-and-Tell….(another thing that chases away the blues for me is seeing what online weaving friends are creating using my publications)…..

The idea in this photo is to show you the band that Allyne Holz wove to go with the bag that she crocheted. The pattern that she chose for her Andean Pebble Weave band is from my Complementary-warp Pattern Book. However, I know that you won’t be able to take your eyes off the bag! Leaf-lover, that I am, I have barely been able to get past the bag and its awesome draw-string closure either!

Diane Wardlow has chosen to weave a double weave band to add to the upper edge of her bag to cleverly increase its depth. She wove the fabric for the bag using a really interesting sakiori/rag weaving technique.

Meg Kourmadas is also working her way through double weave using my book and has used the alpaca figure as part of her very first learning band.

Monique de Viscos is using a pretty variegated thread to weave patterns from my More Andean Pebble Weave Patterns book. It is interesting to see the effect of not using a third border color. I really need to include variegated thread in my bands from time to time. Monique’s band is very inspiring.

Orangie wove a striking sampler of eight-thread patterns from my Andean Pebble Weave on Inkle Looms book.

I love the colors that Judy Andersen has combined for one of the 8-thread Andean Pebble Weave patterns in which S hooks are joined to form a sort of ram’s head motif.

And here’s Terry Martin’s first double weave learning band. I think she may have squeezed every one of the 11/12 learning patterns onto her band. I love the boldness and simplicity of lettering in this structure and how effective the very simplest stick letters can be.. There are also examples of more sophisticated alphabets in the book to inspire you.

Unfortunately, I was too late in asking permission from my online weaving friend, Josefin, to show her beautiful backstrap loom warps that she sets up attached to a tree in her garden in Sweden. She spins her own yarn and hand dyes it in lovely soft colors that look so natural. Hopefully I can include those very inspiring pictures next week.

I wonder if any of you are taking part in Ravelry’s annual Tour de Fleece event. I joined a team and have been spinning while waiting for my ikat warp to dry. I bought what were called Felters’ Packs when I was at the guild in Melbourne on one of my trips to Australia a few years ago. Here are the contents of one pack. I loved the colors and bought three packs. I think the quantity of yarn I get from this will be enough to weave a nice band perhaps in three-color pebble weave…something I haven’t done for a long time.

I hope you are all finding ways to stay positive and chase away the blues. Please stay safe and keep well.

Backstrap Weaving – Looking Forward, Looking Back

These days I get a little taken aback when an email arrives asking me if I am able to attend an event in July 2021 or consider contributing a piece of writing with an October 2020 deadline. Who are these people who are able to think so far in the future? I am glad that someone can, because I most certainly can’t. I am sure that it is those who are determined to keep looking forward who will come out of this whole thing hitting the ground running. I need to make that effort. It seems everything I do these days takes my mind back to the past. I am finding it hard to think beyond the next date when the current lock down situation is assessed. That will be May 17. I am sure that many of you feel the same way.

Meanwhile, the days march onward, the seasons change and the glorious toborochi tress here in Santa Cruz break into full bloom.

I have been working on my next ikat experiment. I think this is number eight and might be the last in 60/2 silk as my supply of un-dyed 60/2 is running low. I didn’t want to start a new experiment unless it involved a new challenge and something new to be learned. So, I decided to try a motif with finer lines than I have been using until now and with lines that lie at different angles. I have to say that I have been dithering and dithering over this. First of all because I think I needed a break after having finished my latest book on Warp-faced Double Weave on Inkle Looms. I goofed off for about 5 days, I think. But, mixed in with the need for a break was the uneasy feeling that I had bitten off more than I could chew for my next planned ikat project and that disaster was looming. Some of this had to do with the fact that I might be wasting the last of my un-dyed 60/2 silk and couldn’t have a do-over if things didn’t work out. I wasn’t entering into it with a great deal of enthusiasm.

This is the leaf-like motif that I came up with. It was easy enough to sketch on paper but would I be able to tie those lines? I wanted to place two identical motifs side by side with some other kind of motif between them, possibly also in ikat, but maybe in supplementary weft. You can see the sketch for my last ikat project in the background. For that one, all the steps in the diagonal lines were equal in width and length which made them relatively easy to measure and tie onto the warp.

I am so used to winding these silk warps now. That process is hazard-free. I wound 1640 ends in 100-end sections. I never completely trust my warping stakes not to lean and so I wind small sections low on the stakes and then remove them and place them on beams that are waiting on the floor. What I love about warping for backstrap weaving this way is that it feels like a full body work out…..standing, swaying, stretching, bending. I do it in silence and find it very relaxing.

Then came the task of dividing the warp into the sections that would be wrapped in ikat tape. This is the part where I can listen to music and even sing. I chose Even in the Quietest Moments by Supertramp because the most wonderful thing about this lock down has been the absence of sound. That music sent my mind back to 1998, the year I arrived in Bolivia from Chile. Roger Hodgson, the lead singer of Supertramp, had brought a band and played an evening outdoor concert at the football stadium a few weeks after my arrival. The ticket was $9! It was a gorgeous balmy tropical evening. After five years of living in howling winds in Punta Arenas in Chile, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. It is a sweet memory.

I divided the warp into 10-end sections and chained a thread around them. In my experience with ikat so far, I have found slim bundles harder to wrap than thick ones. My plan was to fold the warp in half, halving its width, and wrap around two layers at once. That meant that I would be wrapping around bundles of 20-ends which would be much easier to handle.

Once the warp was divided into sections, I was ready to remove it from the frame so that I could fold it in half. It would then be placed back on the frame. The next step was to align the bundles from the top layer with the bottom layer and create new bundles. With that all taken care of, it was time to start wrapping. However, suddenly, there was a multitude of other things that needed doing. Yes, I was dithering again! (procrastinating, is probably the more appropriate word for it.) This was the point of no return. I could modify my motif to something easier or dive in and risk making a mess.

Then came what I am going to call the game-changer.

I usually use plastic zip-ties to hold the warp under tension on my wooden frame. They are okay except that sometimes I would pull one too tightly and it would be a nuisance trying to loosen it off without bending the plastic too much and destroying it. This time, I happened to remember the turn buckles that I had bought last year and decided to try them out as a new way to hold the warp under tension. Oh my gosh, they are awesome! I cranked up the tension and was able to make fine adjustments so easily. In the picture, I have yet to get the set-up squared off. I also added a third turn buckle to the center. I managed to get an amount of tension that I haven’t been able to in the past and suddenly this project seemed all the more doable.

With this amount of tension, I can actually draw very fine and precise lines onto the warp with my charcoal pencil. I have been using charcoal all along to mark my patterns, but every time I would touch the tip of the pencil to the warp, the threads would fan out and slightly sag and the best I could achieve was a smudge. That worked well enough as a guide because I could also rely on a ruler to show me where the next step in the stepped diagonal needed to be. I can’t trust my eyes to judge the spacing accurately. That’s never been a talent of mine.

I can look at dozens of photos online of ikat warps stretched on their frames but until I actually get to touch one, I can never know just how tightly the have been stretched. I had always marveled at videos showing ikat artisans drawing entire fine and detailed patterns onto warps using pencils of different colors. There was a limit to the amount I could tighten the plastic zip-ties when I used them on their own. I can go beyond that limit now with the turn buckles.

The artisans that I have seen working with ikat don’t use turn buckles. Sometimes the warp is secured to a frame with nothing more than torn strips of cloth. I don’t have their skill or expertise! The first time I saw turn buckles in use in weaving was on the Navajo reservation back in 1995. The weavers were using them on their metal looms to tension the warp instead of using rope.

I once read about a gentleman who was studying knotted pile weaving with a Master from Afghanistan. He said that he knew that his warp had enough tension on it, when he was at home weaving and away from his teacher, by the sound the threads would make when he plucked them. Imagine trying to gain that kind of knowledge from an image on the computer screen!

And what about the actual wrapping? Well, I just wrap. If there is some special way of doing it, I haven’t yet found it. I did see a video where the bundles were somehow twirled very quickly with the aid of what I am guessing was a kind of electric drill. The artisan simply stood there holding a piece of black rubber wrapping material and the spinning warp wrapped itself! These were very long warps that were destined for floor looms. Even if I had a way of doing that, I wouldn’t. I’ll go as far as turn buckles, but not electric drills!

This is all I do…

I start at the center and wrap to one end, turn back, go past the center to the other end, return to the center and tie. I like tying off in the center rather than at the end. I find that I am less likely to accidentally snip the warp threads when I later come to cut off the ties if I am cutting at the center of the wrap.

This is where I am at…The warp looks narrower here because it is folded in half. But it also looks narrower because there was an unfortunate incident in which I accidentally cut about 50 ends at one edge! That’s all I want to say about that! It could have been worse. I hadn’t started wrapping the pattern yet and it hasn’t meant having to modify the motif. Once I am done getting this sort of leaf motif done, I’ll decided on the motif I want to use between the two.

So….I have to tell you how grateful and excited I am about the response that I have had to my latest book Warp-faced Double Weave on Inkle Looms. This is the first time I have released a book on a new technique where both PDF and spiral-bound book have been available at the same time. Being part of Taproot Video allows this to be so. Patternfish only dealt with digital products. It was exciting and just a touch stressful to find that the books sold out very quickly. I think they were only out-of-stock for 24 hours, though. The printing service was again very quick to get production underway and we were back in business quickly.

I have had a lot of really nice feedback. People are very sweet to write and tell me that they bought the PDF or have received the book and are pleased with what they see.

Of course, the most exciting feedback of all comes in the form of woven work. And that has started to trickle in…

This is Joan Near’s learning band. I have provided several patterns in the book that fit on the 11/12-thread learning band. Joan has taken the little alpaca figure and used it to practice color changes.

Barbara Hoffman’s learning band shows examples of both angular and curve-like patterns. The interlocking diamonds were contributed by an Australian student of mine, Patrick Castle. The leaf is a smaller version of the “signature” leaf pattern that I like to use. The large version is also charted in the book. You can see it on the left of the cover image above.

I have also seen some first attempts at designing…a little animal figure has been woven by one lady and I’ll show you that in my next post. A nice way to ease yourself into designing is to take one of the charted patterns in the book and perhaps tweak it a little to give it your own personal touch. As I say in the book, I find this structure one of the easiest ones for designing and I hope that the shapes and figures that I have provided in the book can be used as stepping stones to the creation of your own unique patterns.

And while there has been a lot of focus on my latest book, those who bought some of my other publications some time ago have been fishing them out to use while following advice to stay at home.

Susan, who has woven with me before on my visits to the States, shared her hatband project with me with a picture that was taken on a gorgeous Californian spring day. She uses a backstrap loom to weave her Andean Pebble Weave bands.

Carlos Vargas in France had been away from the loom for a while and is also taking advantage of time at home to get back into it. He uses a backstrap loom. If you own my Complementary-warp Pattern Book you will know that Carlos contributed a beautiful bee pattern of his own design to that book. In this piece he is weaving a bee pattern that was contributed by Julia Toft in the same book.

Stacy Holder is using her inkle loom and working with some of my original books on Andean Pebble Weave from 8-10 years ago. Those first books did not include specific instructions for setting up on an inkle loom but Stacy has been able to adapt my instructions and get to work on the several models of inkle loom that she likes to use. I love her band with its S-hook pattern in which she has used variegated thread as the background color. The other face is just as stunning with a colorful S-hook shape on a black background. My 2019 publication Andean Pebble Weave on Inkle Looms is aimed at the standard inkle loom and includes video clips.

Wendy Garrity lives in Western Australia where movement away from one’s home is not as restricted as in many other places. She has come up with a clever way to be able to use a backstrap loom anywhere. She is working on a Andean Pebble Weave pattern while on a camping trip.

Erika in Michigan isn’t enjoying that much freedom of movement yet, but is still able to enjoy the outdoors with a view of her garden while she sets up her backstrap loom for a new project.

I have become fully absorbed in my ikat now that I feel more confident about my ability to tie my latest pattern. However, I do have a couple of unfinished projects lying about. The flower band below needs finishing. This pattern was designed and contributed to the double weave book by Gerbelien Cocx-Wilschut.

I have also been planning a new double-wave strap for my camera bag for the next time I go traveling…There! I have caught myself thinking about the future!

Another little experiment that is awaiting completion is my dabble in double width. It seemed to be a natural thing to do after having worked so long on double weave on my little Inklette. I was curious to see how much width I could crank out this small loom. I have started with only a very narrow warp just to get the moves down and to see if it really is something worth bothering with. It was fun. Now I would like to try for maximum width. I don’t believe I can get double the loom’s capacity…perhaps one-and-a-half times that or a little bit more.

In the pictures below, you can see the warp on the loom. Then I have taken the band off the loom and am unfolding it. Finally, you see it opened to its full width and lying flat. Of course, I can always go to my backstrap loom for wider bands but I thought that this would be a interesting experiment while I was still in “double” mode.

And, finally, a grey-hair update…THE LAST! I said farewell to my Grey Hair group on Facebook with this collage (yes, grey-hair groups are a thing and the one I joined was fun and helpful):

Some group members asked me to stay and give advice to others but, to be honest, the only advice I have is to be be patient and put on your thick skin! I would like to acknowledge those who truly went grey gracefully by never dyeing their hair in the first place. They have no need to make all this fuss about it!

I think I only have one more cut to be rid of the last of the dark tips. I figured that would take place this month….ain’t gonna happen, but that’s fine. I quite like those dark tips!

Here’s a throwback to 2009 during the time of the N1H1 virus.

I was teaching English at that time at the Centro Boliviano Americano and teachers had to wear masks at all times while in the classroom. Every twenty minutes or so we had to squirt disinfectant gel onto all the students’ hands. The gels were colored and our hands would be stained either bright orange or blue by the end of the day! We got shut down three times because teachers were caught not wearing masks. No one objected to my home-made one.

When the first case of corona virus was confirmed here in Bolivia on March 10, I posted this photo on Facebook as a memory. I removed it a couple of hours later as I thought that it might be irresponsible to show people that wearing inferior home-made cloth masks was acceptable. Well, as we all know now, it turns out that it is in fact acceptable to wear one. I’ll be downloading a pattern so that I can hand-sew a couple for myself this weekend. It had better be an easy pattern!

Stay safe all of you, please.

Backstrap Weaving – My New Book: Warp-faced Double Weave on Inkle Looms

Some very kind people took some time and put some extra effort into helping me bring my new book to you in just a matter of days after I sent off the files. The place that prints my spiral-bound books worked extraordinarily quickly but I don’t think that was a personal favor! I just hope that doesn’t mean that they are experiencing a serious slump in business. It was the folks at Taproot Video who were kind enough to re-arrange priorities for me so that my finished work could be brought to you as quickly as possible. Thank you Marilyn and Rainer at Taproot Video!

So, here it is...Warp-faced Double Weave on Inkle Looms…an advanced-level technique that is aimed at band-weavers who love to do pick-up. Yes, you do have to love it! because it is one of the slower techniques that I have encountered here in the highlands and lowlands of South America. The book is aimed at those who use the standard inkle loom. By that, I mean the kind of inkle loom that uses individual string heddles and where the weaver raises and lowers one layer of threads in order to create the two basic sheds. I used my Ashford Inklette for the tutorials in the book and I just use the loom’s two basic sheds.

Okay, it might be a slow technique that requires some extra work to set up and some extra care and attention while weaving (hence the advanced-level rating), but it is by far the easiest technique for designing. Some of the 45 patterns in the book were contributed by my students and weaving friends and many of them were created right there in the workshop as they were learning the technique. You could take a blank chart from the book and fill in cells in a completely random fashion, doodle away filling cells with your mind on something else, and still be able to weave the “pattern” you have created. It will be structurally sound!

This double-weave technique does not use warp-floats. The surface of the band is not pebbled or spotted or speckled in appearance or texture. It is perfectly smooth in texture. Both faces carry the same motif with colors reversed. Bolivian weavers often flip the colors so that both possible faces can be seen at once.

A Bolivian belt in warp-faced double weave.

One of my students went home after Day One of a workshop and showed her beginner band to her 13-year old daughter. Thirteen-year old Emma then sat down with the charting paper and created a rabbit pattern and it was shared with all of us the next day. She has kindly contributed it to the book. I showed you Marilyn’s little llama in my last post which is made up of very few warp threads and weft picks. She used to keep llamas. Often the figures my students create have a personal meaning to them. Jen keeps rabbits and created one of her own. Ruth drew the perfect figure for our narrow 12-thread learning band… an elegant long-legged, long-necked flamingo. But it’s not all about animals. All kinds of curved, angular, solid and delicately outlined figures can be created. Karen conjured up a grinning pumpkin during one gathering we had close to Halloween.

Some patterns were inspired by traditional patterns that I have seen in Mapuche and Bedouin textiles. While researching, I enjoyed learning more about the double-weave animal pack-bands that are woven by Qashqai nomads. Pictures of their bands are included as well as information on informative and inspiring magazine articles and websites.

And then there’s flora….my leaf pattern and Gerbelien’s Flower Love pattern, for example…

Forty-five pattern charts will keep you busy while your mind turns over ideas for designing one of your own. A section in the book is devoted to designing. Another shows you how easy it is to chart a figure from an image of a woven textile. There are charting challenges with an Answer Key in the Appendix.

One of the hardest things when I was putting this book together was how to come up with a limited set of patterns. I tried to provide examples of angular shapes, curve-like shapes, lines branching off at varying angles, thin lines, heavy lines, vertical and horizontal bars, curls and swirls so that you would have examples of the various elements that could be used to create your own patterns. The charts are there for you to enjoy straight from the book to your bands but also there to inspire you to create your own patterns.

The step-by-step pictures and detailed instructions and descriptions are supplemented by video clips. Both the PDF and printed formats allow you access to the clips.

As you can see in this picture, the tools you need to use are simple. I use two “tongue-depressor” craft sticks which do just fine as you learn. If you plan on doing a lot of double weave, you might think about investing in some heavier smoother swords which are more comfortable in the hands.

There is a series of instructional clips that supplement various sections in the book as you set up the loom , start weaving, learn about color changes and how to pick up threads to form patterns.

Two additional clips were filmed in silence so that you can watch the process in an uninterrupted flow.

One of my favorite sections is the one on how to finish a band. I was pleased about being able to teach one of my favorite braids as well as weft twining which you will find useful and decorative not only for double weave, but for all your bands. There is also instruction on a special way to finish double-weave bands which makes them easier to attach to buckles and clips for creating straps.

I hope that you enjoy my latest addition to my collection of technique and pattern books. Maybe I will follow it up with a pattern book but, in a way, I would be happy if that proves to be unnecessary because you are all busy creating your own beautiful patterns! That would mark the achievement of one of my goals in writing this book.

Happy weaving! Here is the link once more so that you don’t have to scroll back up and look for it :-). Warp-faced Double Weave on Inkle Looms.

As always, thank you for your support and thanks to everyone who has bought the book since I posted about it on Facebook. (and also to those who discovered the book on Taproot Video before I could even announce it!)

Backstrap Weaving – The View from my Window

My makeshift photo/video studio at my living room window.

For those who visit my blog to see weaving, there is some in this post, but there’s also a bit of rambling. Forgive me. These are strange times! If you just want to see weaving, and there’s some great eye candy to be enjoyed, you should scroll on for a little bit.

Since I set up my little “video studio” to shoot the clips for my book on double weave, I have become much more aware of the view I have from my windows. I usually have blinds on these windows and they are always drawn in an attempt to keep out the heat and dust. Now, with everything wide open I see that a good quarantine activity might be washing windows! While hunched over the camera, I feel a little like James Stewart in the Hitchcock movie “Rear Window”. I see little slices of life through the various windows in the condo. Then again, I wonder who in turn might be observing me and wondering “What is the gringa up to now?”

Filming has been interesting. I have to straddle the tripod, sort of semi-squat, lean to one side to see, and reach around and weave all while trying to keep my head near the camera and in good range of the microphone. My leg muscles start to scream! So, when you buy my book and watch the videos, you will see that one of the clips has an ant merrily making its way in and out of shot. I did many, many takes for many reasons but I decided that the ant could stay. It amused me. I can say that no ants were disturbed or harmed in the making of my movies! 😉

I now know that one of the neighbors on the second floor in the next building has a Tonkinese cat. Mine now lives with a friend. I had to re-home her because I was traveling so much. She turned 17 on April 1st! I usually visit her twice a week but visits are off for now. Now my friend sweetly sends me videos of her. I see the neighbor’s cat sitting on the window ledge. Like many of us, I suppose it’s wishing it could go out and wander around. I see other neighbors sweeping, cleaning, shaking their table cloths out the window and putting me to shame. I have been wholly devoted to the book these last weeks…heck, months! Everything could do with a good cleaning.

In my last post I remarked on the absence of familiar sounds during the current lock-down. Now there is a new sound of which I had not previously been aware…the rustling of fallen leaves. I live in the tropics. There is no apparent change from summer to fall. We have a sort of winter with slightly milder temperatures but that is all. We have a wet season. All remains lush and green. Today we sit at 93 degrees. However, now I am aware that there are some trees that actually lose their leaves in what is our fall season. The cleaners aren’t coming in every day to sweep up the leaves and they blow about and rustle along the cobbles.

Certain smells are absent too…the “interesting” aromas from the big street market down the road that the wind sometimes blows over is happily missing. The market has been shut down. And that most typical Santa Cruz fragrance…the churrasco! (barbecue) which seemed to be in the air at almost any time, even at 11pm when I would go out sometimes to enjoy the cool air, is no longer around. However, a new aroma is in the air. I noticed talk in one of the Santa Cruz Facebook groups of the disinfecting effect of burning eucalyptus leaves. Someone here burns them every afternoon. I can close my eyes and imagine I am back in Australia on cool autumn evening when people in the neighborhood would rake eucalyptus leaves into piles and burn them.

Because this is what I actually see from my bedroom window, I often play a little mind game when I am seated at my loom. I sit on a firm foam cushion on the floor with my loom attached to the base of my bed. From there I can’t see out my window.

While sitting there, I imagine that I could be anywhere in the world. It wouldn’t matter where I was, because at that moment I have chosen to sit on the floor and be completely focused on my weaving. The foothills of the Himalayas could be outside my window. The Mediterranean Sea could be out there sparkling in the sun. Or it could be the Straits of Magellan stretching away to Tierra del Fuego in the magical low, soft light that is so peculiar to that far end of the world… or any number of fantastic scenes that I have been lucky enough to experience in the places I have chosen to live and travel. I once woke up to this magical scene of snow on a train trip from San Jose to Seattle. I was lucky to be in the last carriage to get this view. It’s a bit harder imagining this to be outside my bedroom window because it is so darn hot!

Depending on the time of year, the evening golden moment has the light of the setting sun bouncing off one of the building’s terracotta walls and filling my room with a warm glow as I weave. In winter when the sun is in a certain position, soft late afternoon rays skim the surface of the fabric on my loom.

I have been missing my backstrap loom and my little spot on my bedroom floor! Yes, I have been weaving, but on an inkle loom because the title of my new book is Warp-faced Double Weave on Inkle Looms. The book is finished! But there is still work to be done. One file has gone to the printer for the making of the spiral-bound books. The other has gone to Taproot Video so that it can be uploaded to the website. All that takes time and I will let you all know as soon as the book is ready for purchase. As usual, it will be offered as a PDF as well as a book.

I am now ready to return to what might be an over-ambitious plan for my next ikat experiment. I have to put the cochineal aside for another day as I was never able to get hold of the alum. I still have synthetic dyes that I can use with my silk but that part of the process is still a long way off. I now have to figure out how to go about tying the pattern that I have sketched into a silk warp.

I have been weaving a lot of double-weave samples lately. Here’s one of the double-weave patterns from the new book which was created by Marilyn Romatka in one of my workshops. It’s amazing how this figure which is undeniably a llama, and a very elegant one at that, has been designed with so few threads. It is stunning in its simplicity and I am so happy that Marilyn allowed me to include it in the book…

I am left with a large box full of the woven samples for the book. I often just wove one figure, photographed it for the book and moved on. This means I have a lot of small pieces that could be used as key fobs and bracelets. The llama band will be a key fob.

Here’s another example of a very simple pattern. Both bands were woven using the same thread for warp. The one on the right uses a finer material for weft and I wove it with a much heavier beat. There is also quite a difference in feel and visible texture between the two. The one on the left has been washed and pressed while the one on the right is fresh off the loom. Both will become bracelets. There is a nice section in my book on different ways to finish double-weave bands depending on their intended use.

There is one thing to be said for deadlines…they force you to come to a halt! Although there is no real deadline in self-publishing, I would always have the trips away from home in the spring and the fall… the trips I called my “weaving safaris”… that would bring my weaving and writing projects to a necessary halt. This year has been different…no travel… and I have had to really force myself to stop the book project! How many times can I fiddle and adjust and enhance?! When do the changes I make stop being improvements and actually start to muddy things up? So, yes, it’s done…the files are in other hands and I am beyond the point of no return! Phew!

I will finish by showing you what my weaving friends around the word have been creating. I don’t step out to see the world. The world comes to me 🙂 These projects bring me so much joy!

My friend Emerald in Sydney has had her job put on hold and has not wasted any time getting back into her backstrap weaving. She has woven one of the two weaving figures from my Complementary-warp Pattern Book. The figure was first designed by Maja Bürger in Germany and she allowed me to make some changes so that I could have two versions in the book. This is how Emerald has her backstrap loom set up at home… When I stayed and wove with her in Australia, she was a sit-on-the-floor weaver but has now created a different set-up sitting in a chair.

Nora Dereli is welcoming spring with my Garden set of patterns from the same book linked above. This set includes, birds, blooms and butterflies and there’s another set which has bee patterns. Nora uses the Windhaven Accordion loom.

And, here’s yet another Andean Pebble Weave/ complementary-warp project and a different kind of loom with patterns from the same book, Complementary-warp Pattern Book….Gonit Porat teaches weaving in her studio in Israel. This is the work of one of her students, Michal. The warp is tensioned on the frame of a rigid heddle loom. There are four lovely horse figures in the Animals set which were designed and contributed by my friend Deanna Johnson.

This band is from Linda who is enjoying using 5/2 cotton on her inkle loom. The pattern is from my More Andean Pebble Weave Patterns book.

Maria Leticia Galve in Buenos Aires, Argentina sent me this picture of her work. I am particularly happy to see the patterns on the left which are from my very first book, Andean Pebble Weave, that I published ten years ago! The other beautiful knot-work pattern is in More Andean Pebble Weave Patterns. That book has several knot-work patterns, some of which I adapted from Louise Ström’s tablet-woven designs.Deanna, who designed the horses that you see in Michal’s work, has been test-driving a new band loom and wove this beautiful piece using a pattern from my Complementary-warp Pick-up book. This book has instructions as well as 42 pattern charts.

Facebook keeps reminding me of where I was and what I was doing at this time last year. Here I am at Deanna’s with Yan having so much fun with both of them as I sit at Yan’s foot-tensioned loom. My grey-hair transformation was in full swing and I was getting used to the odd looks people were giving me.

And here we are in April 2020. I have a lot of awesome places, people and experiences to ponder as I gaze out of my bedroom window (and get some Vitamin D at the same time!). News of the book release will be coming soon.

Backstrap Weaving – A Post with No Name

It’s been a while since I last posted. Usually these disappearances are due to the fact that I am away from home, busily traveling and weaving with my friends. Not so this time. I am here in Bolivia and, like so many of you, am in lock-down. Every time I came to my blog thinking about writing a post, I would look back in wonder at my last post where my biggest “dilemma” was the fact that I couldn’t get alum….imagine! How could things have changed so much in that relatively short time?… and that would leave me with nothing to say and I would have to go away and think.

Physical distancing is not a hardship for me. I have always called my home in Bolivia my “Fortress of Solitude”.

So, I decided to take some time to let ideas for my next ikat project percolate even deeper and further. I picked up my inkle loom and started weaving the pattern samples for my next book on DOUBLE WEAVE ON INKLE LOOMS. And once I got started on that, I was on a roll and I have been working away at writing, weaving, photographing and shooting videos.

Shooting videos is usually a bit of a frustrating business. I live in a five-block multi-story condo which is usually bursting with life and sounds.., salsa and cumbia music blasting, children playing and rattling their wheeled toys over the cobbles in the courtyard, car alarms going off, planes flying into the nearby military airport, the honking horns of traffic around the nearby street market, shrieking pet parrots and barking dogs, high energy, high-volume conversations between neighbors (sometimes you would swear that they are arguing, but no, that’s just a normal conversation)! The last time I shot videos for my books was on a Christmas Day and a New Year’s Day a year ago…the only two days with guaranteed quiet as folks slept off the revelry of the previous evenings.

Now, it’s quiet…eerily quiet, every day. It’s so un-Bolivian. I am used to everything being done here at twice the volume that one would experience in other parts of the world. So, apart from interruptions from the parrot shrieking “Bonito!” every now and then, shooting videos in these last days has been a breeze! Even the dogs are quiet. They would erupt into a frenzy when their owners came home but I guess the owners are not going out any more. At midday the sirens sound to announce that curfew has begun but I’ve been able to work around that.

A double-weave key fob with an original pattern designed by one of my students.

Finally, I can see far enough ahead to the end of this writing project. I am hoping that my DOUBLE WEAVE ON INKLE LOOMS book will be available in the next few weeks.

It has dozens of step-by-step photos, detailed instructions and video clips to guide you through this versatile structure.

I liken weaving patterns in this structure to doodling in plain weave. There is a detailed section in the book on designing your own patterns. You could color the cells in any old fashion on the blank pattern charts that are provided without putting any thought into it at all and still be able to weave your “pattern” in warp-faced double weave. It’s that simple. This structure does not use warp-floats. Therefore, you do not have to consider the limitations of float length and alignment when you are designing.

For those who don’t wish to design their own patterns, the book includes at least 45 charts with patterns suitable for bands (I can’t help adding more and more so that number will, most likely, increase!).

The book is aimed at those who use the standard inkle loom. It does need to be a sturdy loom, though. I use the Ashford Inklette and it does the job very well. Some of those teeny tiny tinkle-type looms would probably not stand up to it.

Various finishing techniques are covered too! My bedroom floor is snake pit of woven sample bands!

I hope at a later date to follow up this book with one on wider patterns and some more advanced variations of the method.

Here’s a double-weave band of Joy and Hope for all of us that I wove some time ago in 60/2 silk using the more advanced method for fine threads and for projects that are far too wide for most inkle looms.

Click on this 12-second video if you would like to hear the melody….

In my next posts I will show you pictures of more of the smaller patterns that appear in the new book 🙂

When taking breaks from working at my laptop, I have been re-visiting some of my smaller projects and planning things so I can keep weaving even though I am so involved with writing right now. I made these lanyards for a conference several years ago. The widest one is 1/2”. Bands like these would make great ribbons on which to hang pendants.

The other small items that I love making are wrist cuffs….

I can’t have enough cuffs!

But, the moment that I am well and truly done with the book, I’ll be back tying strips of plastic for another ikat project . I am happy to be spending all this time thinking about it as my silk supply has become even more precious now and I don’t want to waste it on anything hastily put together. Who knows when we will be able to travel again? I had become used to going to the States and bringing back silk and other fancy stuff for my weaving. Mail? Forget it! I sent an envelope of documents by Certified Mail to Australia last October. It still hasn’t arrived!

It’s been heart-warming seeing my online friends finding the time before and during periods of isolation to weave projects using my books. Susan Bratt made another beautiful guitar strap using a pattern from More Andean Pebble Weave Patterns.

Sally Backes is using one of the sweet Windhaven looms to weave a band with a pattern from Complementary-warp Pattern Book.

Linda confesses to being hooked on Andean Pebble Weave and the use of 5/2 perle cotton. I can understand that. The 5/2 size is one of my favorites too. These patterns are from More Andean Pebble Weave Patterns.

Leslie Clark’s band is destined to be a guitar strap. She has combined the S hook pattern from my Andean Pebble Weave on Inkle Looms book is different ways along the edges and central panel of her band.

Marsha Kimball has woven some of the figures from the Rivers and Oceans-themed set into one of her latest bands. This set of patterns appears in my Complementary-warp Pattern Book. along with Christmas, Garden, Animal, Geometric, South American and Spinners and Weavers sets.

Let me leave you all with an image from the shoulder-bag fabric that I wove some time ago….Maja in Germany designed a weaver at her loom in Andean Pebble Weave and allowed me to adapt the pattern in a few ways so that I could chart her version and my adapted one for my pattern book.

I placed two of the ladies weaving together and designed a nice shady tree for them…an idyllic scene…two backstrap weavers sitting peacefully beneath a tree practicing physical distancing. Take care everyone and stay well.