This third hat from last week is mine, MINE! The hatband is inkle-woven from cotton threads. I looked out over the lake and designed it from the view. At first I resisted putting the blue and brown together, but the lake is the color of tea and the sky and sun reflects off it. When I started weaving, I was happy with the choices I made. This hat is pretty rough compared to my other ones because I was getting down to the dregs of my supplies, but I like it the best.

The first two before the final trimming, drying on the screened porch. They are now in the possession of my mother, who helped me gather the cattails and couldn’t decide which one she wanted.

All three were handwoven with cattail leaves and a small amount of bulrush.

I finished the tapestry bag on Sunday afternoon. The closure is a drilled pebble button, and there is a piece of cardboard in the bottom to hold its shape between the lining and the bag.

Don’t…ask…how I did the lining. Dumb luck with much cursing and sticking pins in my fingers. It was a lesson in persistence and pain, and I finally resorted to an iron and Stitch Witchery.

Next time, I will make the lining darker, although it does help me find things in my bag. Also will make the inner pockets bigger. The straps are perfect!

Sewed together the strips for the rainbow pouch. Yes, the photo is crappy - the batteries I bought at the lake were $2 for a four-pack and I’ve got through all four already. I’m on the way to the store to buy some new rechargeables now.

Worked in a little lesson about quantity and quality, there.
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hjyui8 (Guido wrote this line)

On the sewing machine, I sewed the rainbow inkle band in even lengths to secure the ends, cut it into eight pieces, and now I’m hand sewing the pieces together for a little pouch, or maybe two pouches. I’m winging it here.

Trying to put several projects in motion so that I can switch off to a different project as the mood strikes me. After last night’s attempt at reviving the mini-tapestry, I think that I’ll switch to a thicker warp thread for the labyrinth tapestry. It won’t be as hard because I cut out that depression in that loom, so the threads won’t be hard to pick up. So I’m not discouraged.

I took all kinds of possibilities down to the lake so that if I had a whim to do beadwork or tapestry, I could do that. I grabbed an art project bag that I had packed for a trip to the beach many moons ago that I hadn’t inspected since my reorganization of the studio, and found an unfinished small tapestry with shells woven in on a pin loom, and lots of little bits of handspun naturally dyed wool that came with the used Baby Wolf floor loom that I bought from a retired weaver. The first afternoon I had fun pulling it all out, untangling it, and re-stashing it with a plan to finish off the little tapestry.

However, I was very content with inkle weaving so that’s what I did all weekend, between swims and books and food and sunsets and Monopoly and conversation with good company.

Friday afternoon I decided to warp up the inkle loom with leftover cotton yarns from past weaving projects. I threw a bunch of bobbins in the bag and my goal was to use any scraps that were long enough to go around my inkle loom at least once. Now I have empty bobbins and a very colorful inkle band, which I am considering folding and sewing together for a little pouch.

For years my weaving has been very symmetrical and patterned, which is understandable when you consider that I’ve been dealing with an upswing in panic disorder during this time. I was looking for comfort and control. I used to weave tapestry and ikat and I want to move into a less rigid direction again, so I decided to consciously make this inkle band asymmetrical with rainbow colors.

Inkle weaving is usually warp-faced, so the order and number of the warp yarns makes the pattern. You’re pretty limited in what you can do with warp-faced inkle weaving (unless you do pick-up), but sometimes I find limits help me focus. I had a general idea of how this band might look when I was winding on the yarn, but I wouldn’t know exactly until I began weaving. That pleasant surprise is part of the fun of this kind of weaving. The rest of the pleasure is in the rhythm, portability, and relaxation.

Day 16 - warping up

Day 17 - Hey, I like it!

Day 18 - My friend Cat took this photo of me weaving outside.

That’s Squ!rt in the corner, helping me with my weaving.  I only did a few minutes worth of weaving tonight, because I had a big day and need some sleep!  This inkle band will go on the Lake Waccamaw hat.

I wove this bulrush hat while at Lake Waccamaw, incorporating driftwood, little sycamore balls, Spanish moss, and a mockingbird feather. The ducks were hanging on to their feathers, and I’m surprised that with all the fights the mockingbirds didn’t lose more.

The unmercerized cotton band was intended to be green, blue, and purple to represent the shores and waves, but my inkle loom tension bar blew out and I had to use the first band I wove. Not bad, but when I get my new tension bar, I’ll ditch the red and replace it with green.

I also wove a flat bowl with a twill pattern in the center, twined for several rows, and finished it off with a five strand woven edge. It looks rough because I was trying to use up the rest of the soaked bulrush, which was getting really funky, and because I don’t know what the hell I’m doing half the time. I can’t blame it on beer, but it looks pretty drunk…oh all right, here’s a photo.

While I was there, I gathered honeysuckle, Virginia creeper, and green briar vines to bring back. The green briars are fairly wicked, but if you work back from the tip where there are no briars, you can snap off each thorn easily and strip the leaves where more thorns hide. The vine itself is very sturdy and will probably make good spokes but I have not tried weaving with it yet. Jan from the Folk School suggested that it could be used when we took our basketry materials identification walk.

One of the reasons that you have to be careful when gathering Virginia creeper is that poison ivy likes to hide in it. A leader in a local outing club argued with me once that Virginia creeper was poison ivy. He was wrong and wouldn’t back down, but I can see why he was so convinced. Here’s a photo that shows why - the shiny darker three-leafed vine in the center is poison ivy surrounded by the lighter five-leafed Virginia creeper. I left this alone!

I warped up another hatband on the inkle loom and have been weaving on it from time to time. I also ordered five pounds of bulrush (called “natural rush”) from H.H. Perkins. I have no earthly idea how much five pounds will be, but I figure that dry rush will be very lightweight. If it’s not much, I’ll still have time to order more before I go to Lake Waccamaw in early June, when I plan to really dive back into this stuff in a major way.

I loved making them. It was easy and relaxing. A bit stinky, but I’ve never been one to care about that much. After a few days of soaking, the cattails and bulrush smelled sort of like a cross between a barn and a swamp. The instructors were easy-going and fun to listen and talk to. Everyone in the class, which was only five students and two teachers, was laid back. We got a lot of personal attention and a lot of insights into life around Brasstown and Murphy, North Carolina.

First, I made a wide-brimmed garden hat entirely out of cattail leaves. We used hat forms. They were useful in pinning the weaving close together and keeping the size and shape intact while the hat dried. The cattails separated a lot when they dried.

The next hat was a bowler (derby) hat made entirely out of bulrush. This was soft and pliable to work with, and allowed a tighter, more controlled weave.

In the meantime, I was working on a five-strand raffia braid to sew into a raffia hat. As badly as I wanted to make a fedora, my fingers had a different opinion. I needed 8-10 yards of braid for the hat. I had an awkward time with the braiding and on Thursday morning I woke up with numb hands.

So I decided to give up the raffia hat and make another hat, this time out of cattails and bulrush, with a flat top and short brim. I also decided to weave an inkle band, so that I could switch off to a different activity when my body told me that it had had enough. I’ve woven inkle bands for several years, so I was more interested in learning the basketry techniques. However, it was good to get a refresher on the inkle loom since it has been a while, and I enjoyed weaving on the porch of Keith House late Thursday afternoon. Part of the appeal of the inkle loom is its portability. The design was based on the colors I brought and a walk on a path between a road and a meadow with wild mustard and white and purple violets.

My classmates wove the two hats in the front of this photo. My final hat is drying in the back. More photos later.

I was blessed by the Easter Bunny…

Because he really liked our Easter bonnets.