Please Weave A Message

This is the brilliant title of a book by Linda Hendrickson on weaving letters using tablets. If I could judge this book by it's cover, I'd say it's beautiful. Later this month I will be taking a workshop with Linda on ply split braiding.  Right now I am experimenting with weaving letters on the inkle loom.

I want to show you the first in a series of guitar straps I wove with song lyrics. You saw part of it in the last post.

This way of weaving letters is done on the horizontal bar background and requires that you pick one thread and at the same time drop it's pair. (The backside of the strap has the letters woven in reverse.)
The problem with this method, is that some of the floats are 5 rows long, which I don't think is ideal.   Also, I found it hard to get the spacing between words that I wanted and even harder to get a proper spacing between lines of the song. I put a spacer squiggle between the lines, but it looks like it is supposed to be a letter. I will have to try another shape.
When I got to the end of the song lyrics, I put what I call a "doodle" pattern on the rest of the strap. Just a little geometric kind of thing. Leaving it plain in the horizontal bar pattern just didn't seem right. Too boring.

Daryl Lancaster wrote a monograph on inkle weaving which includes this type of lettering. I ordered it last week. She explains in detail how to weave it and includes a draft of all the letters.

Meanwhile, a friend of mine just posted a photo on Facebook of a piece she wove using the Latvian pickup technique. Sorry about the fuzziness of the photo. It didn't transfer well.

I think this looks great and now I want to give it a try. I found this PDF on the Weaver's Hand website. It also gives clear instructions and drafts for all of the letters.

Another wonderful discovery this week was a beautiful inkle loom shaped like a crescent moon. You can follow this link to maker Michael Williams' website and have a look. I want one!