Friday Roundup #52-19

Here we are, the last Friday of 2019 and my last 2019 post. The year has just flown by, or at least feels like it has. I trust you have all had a lovely festive holiday whether with family or friends. Or in your own if that was the case. We have spent a great week in Saundersfoot with the family. Here is our view from the terrace of the house we rented for the week.

We have been fairly lucky with the weather and Christmas Day was perfect affording great photo opportunities.

But on to crafting. As you know, I needed a replacement hat. I have the yarn and I made a start, but didn’t focus on it often. Had it been colder I would have been more incentivised to complete it.

Here is what my sister made with the blue Malabrigo yarn. She whizzed through this despite the cussing over some k4tog’s.

My Stoorstalka Sigga 8 arrived Christmas Day. Of course, I started it later on after Christmas lunch. It has caused me a couple of headaches though. Bear in mind I am going into this without any training course, so it was bound to go wrong. But to start at the beginning, it came in a simple bag and included a lovely card of the Northern Lights with a hand written message. Here is the kit.

The heddle, the plastic square, arrives ready warped. The shoelace is for tying to a door handle or a sturdy frame. The green yarn on the shuttle is the weft. The black rectangle is a strap you wrap around your waist and the red clip to secure the warp to the belt.

This works by using your body to apply tension to the warp. The heddle is free moving but only up and down to lift or lower the requisite warp threads to make the pattern. The shuttle is used to beat the weft in place.

I felt it right to share my initial attempts because it might be useful to others to see what you should not do.

I did this a couple of times. After watching a YouTube clip and then searching out an image of what the finished band should look like, I kind of understood where I needed to end up. So I started a trial and error weaving to try and get there.

Even this could do with it being a touch tighter. What I soon realised is that I have to forget weaving as if it was a plain weave that needs an open structure. To achieve this requires pressing hard with the shuttle to compress the weft and drawing the warp in from the sides using the weft. Essentially, it is a warp-faced weave where you don’t see the weft.

Now that I have the pattern coming through, I am keeping to this width for now and will finish it. I am much happier and feel confident to be able to continue on with some other yarn to make some more bands and maybe some different patterns. I shall take some more pictures when completed.

But to sum up and because the pack doesn’t mention this in the sparse instructions; if you are doing this for the first time, don’t be afraid to pull in quite tight on the weft. On this Sigga 8 loom the resulting band is about 1/2in wide. The heddle is 5in wide and the warp when gathered and unwoven is about 2in wide. So you can see it is meant to draw in a lot.

I am still to work out starting at this final width. That will be for next time. You can use sock yarn for these bands, so it could be perfect for those of you that are sock-makers and may have leftovers. You don’t have to weave a pattern as in mine. You can do a plain background weave which would work fine for variegated yarns.

And so lastly, I shall wish you all an early Happy New Year and I shall be back next Friday.

Ciao for now.