The BEAST

Let me tell you the Story of THE BEAST.

No, not that beast. But the beast I had been fighting for over a year.
Where do I begin?
For several years now, I have been in love with baltic weaving. It is the most fun type of weaving. In 2019 I took the opportunity and experimented with a Knight’s belt and made a white belt with a nordic pattern made with grey wool/bamboo mix.
Since then, I have made several knighting belts and other trims for people and myself. A dear friend of mine, who was a massive support for my husband and me, was occasionally joking about how everyone else but him had those belts and “guilt-tripped” me into making one.
Well, I was planning on making one for a while, but I wanted it to be exceptional. In 2020, I finally came up with a DESIGN, the best one I thought!

Design

The design was created on the fly when I more or less thought of how to stretch an octopus. And then make it look Norse. Thus I used a lot of corners, fancy twirls, and additional designs to add pretty diamonds.

Heddle loom

As you can see above, the first setup was on the heddle loom. You see, I just received it, and I could not resist trying it out. In addition, the design came out pretty broad, and I decided it was a proper solution.
No. It was not.
Heddle was too broad, so the design was too complex to perform on the heddle loom by hand. I left my neck somewhere between set up and the first 10 inches.
Eventually, I gave up and decided to go traditional.

Inkle loom

All the baltic weaving I perform on an inkle loom. I have a decent size baby I use all the time. However, even this loom was too narrow. The threads were always falling off during the reset, and the problem was picking up the good threads when needed. Usually, the patterns for baltic weaving are based on math. Well, mine was artistic. And at this point, I hated it. I had elements consisting of 2 threads instead of 3. Even reworking the design did not help.

Giving up and discovering double-faced weaving

At this point, I was endlessly disappointed in myself and hated this project.
One day I was running through my notes and found a little scratch called “double-faces” weaving. It is perfect for making monotonous “pixel” pictures using card weaving.
I ran into my workshop, fixed my box loom, and set up this beast again.

At the finish line, the last breakdown happened (and this time, it is not emotional). I managed to pull so hard that I broke the rod that was holding threads.

AAAND. Drum roll. Finally.