My red wool wasn't quite dry yesterday afternoon so I left it on the line overnight. And it rained. It's also still cloudy and will possibly rain again. So definitely no kirtle making going on here today. Instead, I have decided to look up some new inkle patterns.
But before I get to that, some history. I bought my inkle loom on ebay about 5 years ago and it basically sat on top of a cupboard that whole time as I didn't know how to warp it. I learnt how to tablet weave very early on, and thought inkle weaving was basically the same (which it sort of is) and that I could just teach myself how to do it. Now I probably could have done that, but it would've been so much more effort than someone just showing me. So I waited, and waited, and waited for someone, ANYONE, to teach an inkle weaving class that I could go to and learn. It's actually one of the main reasons we ended up going to Rowany Festival this year. That and all the other classes I wanted to do. So my unreserved thanks go to Lady Tatianitska Iaroslavna who not only taught me how to warp up my probably-not-an-inkle-loom loom, but also showed me an awesome new way to start and finish without an ugly big knot. It's so clever and I am going to use it for my tablet weaving as well. These are the relevant pages from her class notes. I hope she doesn't mind me posting them here. In essence, you weave both ends of the thread at the same time when you start, and when you finish you use clever little thread loops to do the same thing. Sneaky huh!
