Forget what I said about stick weaving being faster than tablet weaving. I've been working on this basically all day, and you can see how short it is. I'm sure it's much faster with big sticks and bulky yarn, but I work with what I have (fat needles and size 10 crochet thread). This is the same size of thread I use for tablet weaving, so clearly the difference is in the technique itself. Still, I'm pretty happy that the variegated thread is making those nice stripes instead of looking like crap a la knit and crocheted projects with variegated yarn.
I don't know exactly what I'll end up doing with this. Honestly I was more interested in just weaving, I didn't think of what I would weave. I told myself I would make a headband, but I don't really love that idea. Should I just lengthen it and make a belt? I think this is way too slow for me to want to make a whole belt, but I don't know what to do with a shorter length. The last thing I want is for it to lay around uselessly until I think of what to do with it. But that's probably what will happen.
Yeah, variegated yarn usually looks like crap, unless you get the right length of color run for your project. For larger projects, there are self-stripers with really long runs that work up quite nice & I have had regular cheapo kitchen cotton work up into nice stripes in small things like baby hats. Even though variegated is ugly, it's more interesting to knit with and usually looks good in the skein. I think that's why the ugliness persists.
ReplyDeleteAnd yeah, using thread is going to take forever. I would suggest some kind of worsted weight. Kitchen cotton and acrylic like Red Heart come super cheap.
Have you seen the pocket loom from Craft?
http://cachefly.oreilly.com/make/craft/08/pocketloom.pdf
I looked at the yarn when I went to Hancock's most recently, but I didn't want to spend that much money. I'll remember it for future projects and keep my eye open for cheap yarn. Most stick weaving is done on a much larger scale than this, with dowels and bulky yarn, so my small size of things is definitely part of the slowness.
ReplyDeleteI may have to play around with that pocket loom someday.
And the good news is that I figured out what to do with this weaving, I'll use it for trim on a jacket or something.
i get high quality wool for pretty cheap from knitpicks.com (like $4/skein instead of $6). they also sell "naked" ones to dye which i think is awesome.
ReplyDeleteI did a weaving experiement recently too with no specific idea of what it would be and made it into pretty cool ... sleevelet? (and then i made a matching one) but, i admit i used a variegated. i agree they are ugly too. :( but it kinda works in this case, it really depends on the project and specific yarn and how you use it.