Judith Proctor's Journal

 A post mainly for your interest.
feng_shui_house mentioned it during the discussion on clothing and climate change (which is still ongoing and has some really interesting comments).

One of the simplest weaving techniques of all is Native American Fingerweaving.  It hasn't caught on much as a hobby as it's very slow and has limited pattern options, but it would be really easy to teach children as a first weaving technique.

 vjezkova on LJ introduced me the the Czech method of decorating eggs.

It's done with melted wax crayons.  I used a scent burner with a tea light to provide heat and once I'd got some empty tealights, I used them to put wax in and just put them on top of the scent burner to reduce the mess (and retain wax for next time).  You apply the wax with a pencil with a blob-headed pin stuck in it.  Takes a bit of practice.  The wax must be warm, not just melted and it's best if you touch it to the egg, pause for a moment and then do the draw move.  (I'll link to a video further down, but the voice over is in Czech)

Here is my second attempt (the first attempt was done with Oswin and consisted mainly of blue dots all over the egg)





Video - the beeswax is optional (I asked Vera) 

This entry isn't displaying well on Dreamwidth - there should be several photos behind the cut. If you can't see them all, then read the entry on Livejournal where it seems to be fine. (If the cut tag doesn't work on LJ, click on the link just above. The problem on DW seems to be propagating to some views on LJ, but the entry is here in full)

Step 1

Decide how wide you'd like your band to be.  This will determine how many playing cards you need.( Read more... )( Read More )There is some guesswork involved in this, as yarn thicknesses are going to vary.

However, I shall set a crude rule of thumb and say that four warp threads are probably going to be around a centimetre.

This pattern will work for any width, but I wouldn't go below 8 cards, and if you go above 24, you're really getting a bit wide for a bookmark.

The width does not affect speed of weaving (well, not much), but it does affect the set up time as you have to prepare more cards and more warp threads.

I'm going to go with 16 cards for my own example, but I'd recommend 12 for beginners.They need to be square, so use one of the cards as a cutting guide and start chopping.



Now, round the corners. Doesn't need to be perfect.



Get out your hole punch and punch a hole in each corner of every card.  Try and make the results as symmetrical as possible.  You've got more cards than you actually need, so you can afford to waste a few cutting trial holes.



This is what the cards should look like after you've punched your holes.

No, (evil grin), I'm not going to tell you what you're going to do with the cards.  That will be in the next post.