Weaving Day

About once a month a friend of mine has a weaving circle at her house.  People can come by and bring a portable weaving project or any other craft project to work on.  Yesterday I had a class in which I made a tape measure that goes along with a book that we were pretty sure they had and I was going to look through that today.  That, and do more of the smocking on the apron from another class I took yesterday.  We found the book and I helped my friend choose some colors for her next tablet weaving project.  She has some new tablet weaving books and is trying something different but it is a style I have done in the past and really enjoy.  We started talking about how the threads actually come together and the twists and turns that we put them through to become a piece of woven trim.  She has a loom that is set up to teach people on and I asked to use it.  I wanted to see what I had been trying to picture during our conversation.  I ended up weaving well over a foot on her practice loom.  There is also just over a page of notes that I want to get typed up so I can wrap my mind around it more. 

It has probably been close to, if not more than 30 years since I first taught myself to tablet weave.  I don't do it very often and have gone years when the kids were little that I didn't really even touch my loom other than to move it along with me from house to house across the country.  So I know how to do it, I am not always good at it but I can usually see, in my minds eye, at least some aspect of how it all goes together.  At least I though I could.  Today I analyzed the weaving I did and tried to picture it in more detail.  Kind of like one can know how chess pieces move across a board.  One can know that and know if they are putting a piece in jeopardy.  And then there is the next step of learning chess where one can predict a number of moves ahead on the board and that is the player that is more apt to achieve mastery of the game.  I don't expect to ever achieve the level of mastery in weaving that would be like the level of a master chess player.  I don't practice enough.  But part of me really wants to be able to put into words the math behind how the threads come together.  Parts of it seem so simple, but there is some part that I feel like I can see but can't quite put words to and that is the part I want to figure out. 

Different threads go through each of the 

4 holes in the tablet (also called a card).

Looking beyond my thumb in the picture are

letters that were woven previously by students.

A number of tablets are threaded (warped).

The cards are turned to produce a pattern. 

This band has 26 cards each with 2 blue

and 2 yellow threads of the cotton yarn.

The direction the tablets are turned, the way the cards are threaded

and the color, size and type of yarn

 can all make a difference as to how the pattern will turn out. 

The tablets can be turned individually or in groups.

A weft thread (yarn) is passed between the warps threads to hold it all together.

The brief explanations with the pictures is very basic to all that is happening.  I'm not sure why the nitty-gritty part of tablet weaving is currently what is energizing me more than creating an actual usable product right now but it is.  This intrigue is my happy for today.  Maybe tomorrow or Tuesday I will get the notes typed into a file with the pictures...

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