Bookmarks: One for me, one for you...

I finished warping for the bookmark exchange project and wove my first beetle pattern of bookmarks. Take a peek...one for me...One for you and one for my friends. I always seem to select this beetle to weave first - it is one of my favorites. As you can see, I am doing three bookmarks at once; each is about 2 by 4.5 inches. Its the same beetle pattern in all three - they only vary by the color of the inside of the beetle. I will be expanding the pattern so it will be a bit longer and trying different color combinations and beetle patterns. Each set will be different.

The first one is always so trying with taquete since I am trying to get used to a new set up and still perfecting my pattern. Seems like each time I try something new. On the next beetle I will be focusing on getting better edges. To keep the fringe in place I am locking in the edges with one color of thread. It's the color that shows up inside of the beetle. Seems even my small shuttles were too big for the spaces between the bookmarks so I am simply using the spools as you would buy them at the store. I have done this before but not had such erratic edges. But it's only the first one. More to come!


This is my eight harness Purrington loom - all ready to weave. You can see my box of weft thread...there is another box too! This loom has the easiest levers to use - they move up and down effortlessly. Yes, those are six shuttles you see...this is a six shuttle project...a labor of love.

I forget who but someone asked about my experiment on winding on the warp. As you may recall, the last project I did with sewing thread warp I wound on two threads at a time onto the warping board in order to get 804 warp ends done in my lifetime. I consistently kept my finger between the two threads. I also kept the cones on the floor so they wound off the cone in a vertical direction. The warp was a tangled mess once on the loom and took days to fix. My 'knot guy' thought the tangles were caused by the position of the cones which allowed the threads to warp around themselves as they got wound on.

Since I had three bookmark warps to play with, I did three different things:
1. cone horizontal, two threads wound at a time
2. cone vertical, one thread wound at a time
3. cone horizontal, one thread wound at a time

The end result: using the two thread approach had the most tangles and once there was a tangle among two or three threads, it continued through out the warp. Hence there were far more tangles toward the end than at the beginning of the warping process. I am going to do a bit of research before I give up on the two thread approach. I must be doing something wrong with that finger....