Weaving again

Sometimes life gets in the way and not much happens.
I've not been weaving much since the beginning of April.
Just did not have the energy. But I'm on a detox since a week and feeling better already.
However, I have been busy lately for this. Very exited to have joined the team.

I'm very fortunate to having a Louet Magic Dobby on loan from my tutor, to find out if it would be a loom that I would like.
Warping the loom was so easy. Mind you it is only a narrow warp of about 20cm, but I've never so easily warped a loom by myself. I've used just one colour in the warp, threading straight 1 through 24 and as weft using a contrasting colour. All cotton about 8/2.
And now I'm playing with the peg bars weaving different samples just to get to know the loom.
Here are my first samples:

Museum visit

Today, I made another visit to the Hermitage Amsterdam where the current exhibition is Matisse to Malevich. I had been in January when the Museum's first exhibition At the Russian Court was there with lots of dresses on show, that had been very special to see. This exhibition is totally different, I was blown away seeing all the beautiful paintings "in the flesh". Most paintings are from around the 1900-1915 period. I was fortunate to see the Dance as it is going back to Russia after the 9th. Here you can see a film showing how this painting has been transported from Russia to Amsterdam  (scroll down to the bottom of this Dutch page). I think the painting is about 3m high and 5m wide or near enough. Another big painting was Kandinsky's composition VI, the colours, wonderful. Very stimulating to see art like this.

Next week I will make another museum visit, this time about fashion, here.
But first we will have our grandson here for a few days. Really looking forward to this, though not much time for weaving than. I'm still planning my next warp, but hoping to make progress soon.

Inkle weaving

I've finished my first inkle weave band and I now have a strong coloured band of almost 2 meters.

 

So different from weaving cloth in so much that you really need to take care of the sides. I found that the band is not the same width overall, it will take practise to get it right but I did enjoy the weaving.

Therefore I will look into investing in an inkle loom in the near future as it is something I can do in between other weaving. Another thing I observed is that the yarn used needs to be strong as you need to pull quite hard after each new weft inlay. If you don't do this the pattern comes out different (looking longer). See middle photo above.

Here the band is still on the loom, almost finished. I was amazed how far I could weave to the end, ending up with very little warp waste.