Lately, I've been teaching my 12yo son to weave, on a Schacht Flip Rigid Heddle loom. He decided on a plaid scarf from solid green and multi-color blues superwash Merino. That has been interesting, because now I need to explain to him how to do things, in my best teacher-not-mother voice, and then notice and advise as the weaving progresses.
(click for bigger)Of course, I gave him the "smile" advice, and he took it (good kid!) His tight selvedges soon calmed down. We also had to work out how hard to beat for the scarf -- turned out this liked two gentle taps with the reed, rather than one hard one. But then his selvedges started popping out loops like boucle. Not sure what advice to give, I took the shuttle in hand to see if I could come up with some advice.
What I noticed was, before I laid down my "smile", I pulled the weft through just until I saw the far warp thread (the first one I went around coming back across) deflect, and that the deflection disappeared when the smile was in place.
It reminded me of how you push in on the surface of a cake gently to see if it rebounds or stays down, one of the tests for done-ness. So, with that story to cement the lesson, DS was weaving away again, with darn good selvedges if I do say so myself.
He is thrilled with the finished scarf, and plans to gift it to his Montana step-sister ("she's crazy for plaid, Mom!") I couldn't be more pleased :-)
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I've been reading tons of material on selvedges, since what I know about selvedges is pretty thin. Lately I've been playing with end-feed bobbins to see if it makes my own weaving a bit easier ... I think it will, as Peg recently pointed out, you don't want to be touching the selvedges, for speedy weaving. What a revelation! If that would speed things up to a speed like the one I saw in this youTube video, I'd be thrilled. Of course, I'm already quite happy to say I weave at least as fast as I knit, if not slightly faster considering my favorite weaving yarns are finer than my favorite knitting yarns.
And I also keep an ear to the ground for articles on spinning to weave. WeaveCast had an interview with Judith MacKenzie McCuin on the topic, and the recent Spin-Off (Winter 2008) had a couple of pieces about it. Which reminds me, I must show DD the woven skirt from weaveZine ... she'll be interested in doing some weaving too, then.
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Selvedge tips for a new weaver? let me know if you have some on your own blog, or post them here ... thanks!
