A gorgeous pair of home made woven laces, now the thought of that would tempt me to try a new form of weaving. Pretty much focused on rigid heddle weaving for a very long time it was going to take something special to start me on a new learning curve. Enter the Lojan 3-1 Inkle loom Complete
I'll let you into a secret, I don't really like learning new things. It makes my brain ache and my eyes throb and there's the constant little nagging voice in my head 'you don't have time for this, for these mistakes, for this wasted yarn, go back to what you know'
But laces, they seem like one of those small projects that give a huge amount of satisfaction. You wear them, just knowing you've made them yourself and they look amazing!!
The Inkle loom itself was completely new to me as is Lojan as a supplier. I have to say that their process for me as a seller was easy and smooth and delivery was quick despite all the customs shenanigans we have to go through now. Ordering will take a week which makes the process easy and waiting not too onerous.
It's a beautiful piece of equipment, solidly built and I chose to oil it with Danish Oil. I'll be putting a video together with how to assemble it asap
The yarn for my laces was cotton that I'd had in my stash for a while and as I was experimenting I just chose two threads that looked a similar gauge. I wanted to keep things incredibly simple and so I warped up just using two colours with 15 warp threads in this order
2 dark green, 2 grey, 1 dark green, I grey, 3 dark green, 1 grey, 1 dark green, 2 grey, 2 dark green
It hardly took any time and meant that I could get straight on with the weaving.
With coming from a rigid heddle weaving background, I started off with the 40 degree angle to try and keep a nice edge - turns out that in fact with Inkle loom weaving you need a nice tight edge and so the weft is pulled tightly.
Another tip and this seems so silly that I didn't do it in the first place. Measure the length of the laces you want first! I warped up the whole length of the loom and then had to find a pair of boots that the laces fit but I was so excited to start weaving I didn't really pay any attention to mundane facts like length of lace. Lesson learnt
Anyway, I absolutely love this loom and am keen to get onto my next project, which, to be honest will probably be another set of laces. They just make me happy.
For more information on this loom or to order, click here
