Today's card weaving

As you see, I chronicle my learning curve, complete with bloopers, this being a full transparency blog.

Art is about learning, and I think it's fair to show it in progress, not just hide the struggles and hair tearing, and just show the best. Exhibits are for showing your best, but studio posts are about the hard bits.

The last card weaving was a struggle. As you saw from the wobbly product. The current one has mysteries in it, but is a big improvement.

Yesterday involved hours of getting the cards wrongly threaded, dealing with several rats nests of  consequences, and being so worried that I might be losing my ability to do this at all, that at least I hadn't set fire to a cathedral was a thought that crossed my mind. I can say that, now that we know it's fixable. The cathedral, that is. My card weaving still a maybe.

Anyway I started all over this morning from scratch, rethreaded,  and it went very much better. As you see.

I tried a numbering idea, thanks to Mittens, after a turn, thimble on numeral one, then pass, beat. Until the four numerals were covered with thimbles,  then move the thimbles over,  ready to the other turn column, and go from there.  Again a four forward, four back pattern till I get the hang of it.

I probably still made a few slips on turning, because the design changes twice! But I still think it's pretty creditable. It's my own design, and turns out to have two sides, great surprise.

At this point, the bookmark is my learning mechanism, enough warp to contend with for now.  Plenty of scope for improvement.

The tiny tapestries are moving on nicely, two floors down from the card weaving maelstrom. So there's that. And I have a grest design ideas for my next four selvedge tapestry, so I have to get on with that improved jig.

Aside from that, Mrs Lincoln, nothing going on in the studio.

Tablet weaving done for now

So I had a great learning experience, producing this wobbly item.

All the snags I ran into related to warp tension. Except for the ones relating to remembering which way I'm turning cards. The latter has to do with my slowness as a beginner. By the time I pass the shuttle, beat down, and remember the little loop at the end of the pass, I forget whether I turn forward or back.

Hence the thimbles and card marked with directions. I was trying to do four forward, four back, turns, that is.  I have to come up with a better solution, since I started forgetting which thimble I last moved! Transferring rather than solving the issue. I noticed the problem abated a bit as I progressed. It's like learning to read knitting, seeing what part of the pattern you're at.

I also realized that I have to keep telling myself which is forward, which is back. That's probably just me, since I have the same issue with clocks forward and back, and scheduling. If you move the meeting back, do you mean earlier or later?

I learned useful skills in the course of getting things wrong, such as how to unweave a few passes, how to untie the warp ends to relieve twisting that builds up and stops the action.

Tapestry is much simpler in some ways.

All in all, a lot of learning, also some fun.

Now the cards are back in the box, tools ready for the next try.

State of the Studio speech

Current tapestry moving along. Still working on the jig for the four selvedge loom,  friend with drill with large bits standing by, card weaving at action stations

Here's the threading under way. Eight cards, four threaded S, four threaded Z.

Sort of loom set up.

Ready to go. Simple pattern, and I marked the AB, that's the top, edge so I can tell when I'm  back to the start position.

So far so good, aside from a few hitches, such as miscounting the warps and needing to cut and add more.

I got great tips, though, such as using c clamps to wind the warp around, positioned to give the length I wanted.

And I fiddled around for ages before I hit on the set-up you see once the actual weaving gets under way.

I improvised a shuttle from a chunk of wood I found among my tools. And made a lazy Kate from a stout little cardboard box, knew there was a reason I kept it. At some point I'll add in dowels to slide the thread supply on, but it worked okay anyway, fed out the white thread nicely without letting it take off and roll downstairs.

Thread is cotton warp thread, and crochet cotton. For once my warps will show.

Quite a good morning morning's work, all in all. Learned a few things, improvised a few things, so we'll see if it works or is just another adventure to chalk up to experience.

Yet another adventure in view

Just got a Rebecca Mezoff email, I'm on her mailing list, about card weaving... I tried this a while back, made my own cards, studied how to mark them, had a good time setting up.

Then my back objected to being used as a tensioning device. And I had a thing with my shoulder, different cause.

So my tablet weaving went on hold. But now I think I can take another try.

I found my box of cards, and realized  I had managed a couple of wobbly samples, seen here, not using a pattern, just playing around to get the feel of using the cards.

The scissor fob used 12 cards and fine crochet thread, very brave. I just now pulled out eight cards for my upcoming try.  When I get some yarn.

I think I can try a pattern next, and maybe build a sort of inkle loom from pvc pipe..just to save my back.

Some people tension the warp between  their big toe and their waist.  Some people are more adept than this weaver. This weaver needs a loom.

Adventures in Card Weaving

This series of adventures includes mishaps, such as finding that yarn won't work for this beginner, resulting in snarls, from the yarn and the weaver, and various other tangles and ending in taking all the painstakingly threaded cards, unthreading them and finding a better thread.  

Which turns out to be crochet thread.  Glossing kindly over the beginner bonehead events, such as tying myself firmly onto the warp, one end on the doorknob, the other on a string hitched through my belt loops, perfectly positioned to start, then remembering my shuttle is in the other room...

Or finding as I slide the cards up and down tentatively, that the one with the dancing chefs has thrown off a thread and is trying to operate on three.  No idea how to fix this before I'm too old to care, so I decided to jettison the chefs, cut out the three remaining strings, and gently set them aside along with the shuttle now within reach.

It took most of an evening to thread a mere 13 cards, all I have at the moment, and half the morning to accomplish a couple of inches of weaving, but I can now say I know how to do this. 

You will notice my sample, lumpy little effort of which I'm very proud, is plain.  No pattern. I figured learning the skills was enough without patterns which involve threading in a certain way, turning cards in correct order, well, that comes next.

And I notice that the cards seem to have taken on a life of their own.  When I was trying the yarn, Mother Jones card totally went on strike, got herself hopelessly tangled in the warp threads, set up a picket line, in fact.  The Chartres labyrinth was a model citizen, in contrast.  So you might want to watch out what you use on your cards if you make your own.  The Alberta beeve was just fine, no excitement, just peacefully turning as pushed.  Good old Buttercup.

There is a special hot place booked for people who give "Card Weaving for Beginners" on youtube and insist that 19 cards and a turning pattern are ideal for someone who doesn't even know how to hold a card yet.  Nooooooo.  And another reservation for the lady who, when she was showing how the cards look, so you can make your own, held them too far away to see, and just waved her hand vaguely instead of showing how they are marked a b c and d when you make them.  

All in all one of the best videos was in some language, possibly Polish or Lithuanian where the setup was very visible, the worker moved slowly and kindly, and though I couldn't understand nor read a word, still learned quite a bit.  Her own work was exquisite.

She used wooden, obviously well used, tablets (card weaving and tablet weaving are the same thing, they used to use wood or other substances for what we now can use cards for).  

I'm also very happy I found this website:  http://www.stringpage.com because she gives the only real explanation I could find about the Z and the S threading, also known as up and down, or maybe it's down and up.  She acknowledges that this is one place that caused a flurry of emails asking her to explain it better!  so she did.  She's a saint.

So I am tired but triumphant, having accomplished my goal of learning the principles of card weaving, and maybe when I finish this piece, I'll have a bookmark to show for it.