#ghostweaver

Starting a new band!

Apologies for not posting in a while, I've needed some time to adjust to my new routine before I could even dream of setting up my loom again. But luckily, between classes and 3 jobs and everything else, I was able to get some weaving in. I'm so, so glad I've been able to keep up with it. Keeping a hobby keeps you sane, you know? Having something you enjoy doing that isn't doom-scrolling into the ether does wonders for you, even if it's only for a half an hour a day. We get so caught up in the need-to-do's and deadlines that cage us in our lives, but those hobbies are our enrichment! They're there to up morale, to keep us entertained and happy, to let us take a break from the stress that steals so much of our minds already. I promise you, the need-to-do's can wait half an hour, and then when you get back to them, you'll be all the better for it.

Here's some pictures too, to make it easier to see the chaos.

It's one of those things that I think is important to remember; behind every work of art is a not-so-glamorous process that you REALLY just have to trust. Everything seems so perfect when you see it online (at least in a crafting context), but it's important to know that it doesn't have to be. You can have things go wrong and still end up with an amazing product. You can have the weirdest solution to a problem, but if it works it works!

She (or many of her scouts) visited me this past weekend to see my weaving in progress. They were quite the audience! I had no less than 5 different spiders stop by for a peek at my work, though not all wanted to be photographed. These two stuck around for a long while on their respective days, though! The darker one on the mostly-green project was especially active, insisting on being at the front of the loom the whole time! Quite the funny little friend!

Have you ever wanted to add a splash of color to your band or mess around with gradients, but you don't need a cone of excess that will just sit on your shelf for all eternity? (Alternatively, yarn is expensive, and buying cones for full gradients would be so much just to use only a little bit. I wish, but my student loans said no)

Well fun fact, one little 10-yard skein of embroidery floss is enough to get 4 warp threads exactly on an inkle loom*. That doesn't sound like a lot, but many patterns require just a few warp threads of these accent colors, and it gives you so many options if you get your hands on a variety pack and just see what you can come up with.

This is what I started now:

*keep in mind, different ways of warping on an inkle loom lead to different warp lengths, and thus will need more or less yardage to get the 4 strands. Below is the way I warped my loom, and it was perfect for the 4 strands in 10 yards!

I love that inkle weaving makes it so easy to mess around with color. Because it's just warp-faced plain weave, the colors and how they're warped is what makes the pattern, and you have the freedom to do so much with so little. This pattern is mostly stripes, the most basic thing you can do aside from a solid-colored band, but using colored stripes strategically gives you quite the sunset gradient. This many unique colors in any other pattern type may be too busy or overwhelming, but in the right contexts, any combination can be gorgeous!

He's one of the prototypes for a multimedia project I'm working on now, and I am so proud of how he came out. He's entirely woven, sewn, and folded by hand using the bands I've made on my inkle loom (I'm sure anyone who's seen my other posts recognize this pattern!) I do wish I took more progress pictures during the sewing process, but alas, I didn't think of it at the time. It was definitely a process you really had to trust.

Even so, with enough creativity, anything is possible! There are no limits that can't be surpassed, no boundaries that can't be shattered. In art, rules are there to be broken, and in those cracks, you'll find the most interesting creations.