Belts

I seem to always need and/or want more belts and trims for different outfits.  In 2021, I decided I was fed up with my inkle loom from Pinebox Traders that I had gotten over a decade before and complained every time I warped it, but still threw on some crochet cotton so that I could make a new belt for Fall Crown Tourney at the end of August.  And, much to nobody's surprise, I don't have a good picture of me wearing it >.>

 

In my infinite wisdom, I saw a bolt of iron on interfacing and thought, hey, that is wonderfully sheer!  I wish I could find linen that was this transparent with a tighter weave than cheesecloth.  Hey, what if I iron off the plastic?

 

This led to me trying to blot it off with an iron and newspaper, having the yellow ink from said newspaper stain the cotton, having to meticulously peel off the now shredded paper from said iron stamp.  And then getting another brilliant idea to use a lint shaver to peel off all the plastic.

It took me a good couple of days to at least de-plasti-lint the middle half of the two 3-yard strips of interfacing.  But hey, it still looks fabulous!  I think it might have only been another couple of days to weave the belt.

 

Fast forward to the second apartment and the summer of 2022 when I finally "ordered a new loom for my birthday (of 2021)" from Eggil.  Somebody immediately helped me warp it.

 

 

I learned that I warped it very, very wrong. Somehow the tension on the warp was completely off, with the edge warps being a lot more tense than the center warps.  I don't know where I gave myself the idea that I could szhuszh it once I was done weaving, but that was, not how that works.  In the end, I still had a functional strap that I threw onto my Hedby bag.  It's functional.  It's a strap.

 

A month later, in July, I warped the second project.  I first decided to try string heddles on the box loom, which didn't particularly work well.  Then I got a rigid hedle for it and haven't liked that any better.  The cool thing was that I went to Tim and Gabrielle's for a fighter practice and got to re-warp the whole thing across their kitchen island.  It was a fantastic time.

This is still on the loom in the dunce's corner.

This year at FFF, I started another cardweaving belt that I hate, bought a third loom, and have been duteously weaving on that.  I did some really "interesting" justifications to flatten the rainbow spiral down into just two colors so that I could just practice turning the cards, solving problems (over facetime with Mahin) and just get something functional.

I have managed to mess up, resolve, change my mind, and forge ahead so many times.  But I've made progress!  And I think I only have about a foot left to weave (out of the 69" warp).

Pretty early on, I got the bright idea to attach fishing swivels to the warps, which still sucked because I'd have to chase the twist out of the teal cards and not the white cards through the whole loom.  So I left the white cards (balanced twist) on a continuous warp, untied the ten teal cards, and have them awkwardly hitched around a peg, where I chase out the twist every time I have to pull more warp around.

Meh, it works, and it is getting done, which is a lot more than I can say for at least half of my weaving projects >.>