13-12-2015

This small bag is woven on a Wee Walnut Weaver gifted to me by my fabulous friend Diana WeavingSpirit. (Thank you, my lovely!)

The bag is for the Possibles Bag Weave-a-Long in the Spiritual Weaving Group.

Apparently, the Wee Walnut Weaver is not in production any longer and it is difficult to find one. The provided instructions are brief, so I’ve had to do a bit of experimenting and improvising. This is my third attempt at warping.

Here are some of my initial thoughts:

Be sure to warp with the dowels in place (as the instructions say) because that helps keep the front/back warps separated from the side warps. (Otherwise, they tend to get crossed.)

I wrapped the warp twice around the first corner peg. Hindsight: this probably wasn’t necessary

I put on more side warps than the instructions recommend. (I put 4 warps on one side and 5 on the other side.) Hindsight: this was probably too many. Next time try 2 on one side and 3 on the other

(Next time, I will use a different colour yarn for the side warps than for the front warps, so that I will not confuse them and get them crossed with the front/back warps.)

For the side warps, rather than using just enough yarn to complete them, use 2 or 3 times the estimated length. And do not cut the warp when done. The reason for that is in the next paragraph.

When starting to weave the bottom, I did not weave back and forth, as directed. (I tried this the first time and it didn’t work well.). Instead, I continued using the warp yarn that I used to warp the sides (thus the reason for using a longer length). Using the warp yarn that was still on the needle, I started weaving over-under the warps IN A CIRCLE (WELL, REALLY AN OVAL). So… over-under the side warps on one side, over-under the back warps, over-under the side warps on the other side, over-under the front warps. Continue this circle until the bottom is tightly woven.

Once the bottom is tightly woven, the weft will naturally start to move up the front, back, and sides of the loom.

14-12-2015

I had trouble getting it off the loom and had to cut it off! To salvege the bag, I will have to ziz-zag stitch around the top. I honestly don’t yet know the magic formula to for this loom!