First inklings

We flew to Maryland today, and arrived uneventfully. Before we left, of course, there was the usual hectic packing, with heroic felines volunteering to help at every turn:

I had a little bit of time before we left for the airport, so I started setting up the inkle loom. Of course, the ever-helpful felines had to assist with that as well – sadly, I did not get a photo of Tigress chewing on/shredding the cone of white 10/2 cotton (mostly because I was too busy rescuing it from her!), but this will give you some idea of the abundance of feline assistance:

I didn’t get much done besides tying some heddles before leaving for the airport, but while at the gate for our connecting flight, I managed to get the Ashford Inklette half warped. And, as it transpired, we had a seat in an exit row, meaning I had enough space to continue working on the plane.

Here’s a photo of the fully warped loom:

I warped up with a mix of red beaded yarn and red, white, and green 10/2 cotton. After doing a little debugging, I wove the first few inches:

The beads turned out to be moderately challenging – an inkle warp is quite dense (inkle bands are a warp-faced fabric), so the beads were catching on adjacent threads, and caught on the heddles whenever I advanced the warp. They slowed things down somewhat, but otherwise worked out just fine.

After about six inches, I got bored with straight-up inkle weaving and decided to try my hand at pickup:

So far I’m only doing pickup with the unheddled threads, but tomorrow morning I plan to try doing more complex patterning. While I do plan to focus on the book in my bits and pieces of free time, the inkle loom will be great for times when I don’t have the mental focus for writing, or just want to enjoy working with my hands.