It’s all in the cards-card weaving-1

Years ago, I tried card weaving. I bought a book, and some tablet weaving cards and wove a few bands.

I wasn’t in love with it,

so I gave the book and cards away.

Last year, my best friend, who is also a weaver,

offered me a little pile of

tablet weaving cards

that she wasn’t using anymore.

I thought…. hmmmm…. why not?

I brought them home

and hung them on a ring

on one of the carts in the studio.

They’ve been calling out to me, but I have been resisting them.

Then, last week, when I was noodling through Ruth MacGregor’s website, I saw that she had written a booklet about continuous warping of tablet cards.

I thought…. hmmmm…. perhaps this is the key that will make me fall in love with tablet weaving. I hit the paypal button and began peering anxiously into my mailbox.

The booklet arrived yesterday, and today, I gave myself a little holiday by taking it for a test drive.

I clamped some clamps to the workbench, and got out some cones and bobbins of yarn. The first pic is a long shot of the warping process.

I had a few

‘eh’????

moments,

when I wanted

MORE information,

but decided to

trust that

everything

would turn out okay…..

and if it didn’t

then -

so what?

It’s all just string

and it can be untangled

and used again.

I was going to put

the tablet weaving onto

my inkle loom,

but decided that I use

my Cricket loom instead.

Getting it onto the Cricket required a whole bunch of effort from me and my daughter-in-law, as well as one small dog and one large cat both offering their advice.

She had taken her broken ankle to bed, so she lay there, (foot elevated),  holding onto the end of the warp strands and  laughed. Meanwhile I juggled the Cricket in mid air, over the head of  the sceptical dog and  fascinated cat, flailing with brown paper strips, trying to maintain the tension on the warp while winding on the warp.

Whew! that was distinctly challenging!

Well…… I have done something slightly off kilter,  (given the loom juggling, I am not all that surprised) so, this first band is wonky.

I am used to warping the tablet cards in the way shown in this pdf: Non continuous warping

so the continuous method feels uncomfortable to me.

Weaving narrow bands is fascinating.

There is  a long history of humanity weaving narrow bands and using them to construct other fabrics, other objects.

It’s worthwhile to explore the different ways of weaving those little bands, and then, to see what potential, what possibilities, they hold.