Top Ten Weaving Tips

Syne peeking out from the front of a loom towards the back while threading a red warp.

Bonnie Tarses just asked me what my top ten weaving tips are. I’d never thought about it before. Off the top of my head, and in no particular order I came up with:

  1. Experiment
  2. Keep records of the things you try; both the successes and the failures
  3. Take any workshop class that sounds vaguely interesting
  4. Consider warping as another hobby you enjoy
  5. Learn many different warping methods; all have their uses
  6. Figure out whether you’re happier ignoring mistakes or fixing them. And then do that.
  7. Set the loom up so it’s ergonomic for you; your body is the most precious weaving tool you own
  8. Be brave; modify your loom so it works better for you
  9. Use the good yarn, even when you’re just learning to weave. Time is precious and learning how to weave with crappy yarn only teaches you techniques for weaving with crappy yarn.
  10. If you weave something you hate; put it in a drawer until you forget about it. When you discover it later, you can appreciate it for what it is, having forgotten what you hoped it would be.

Looking at this list, it’s more about how to learn, rather than prescriptive “do this / not that” advice. And I like that. There are many ways to weave. I have my opinions about what works; others have theirs. What’s important to any given weaver is to discover what works for them, and I think the guidelines above will help you discover that for yourself.

And now I’m curious. If you’re a weaver, what are your top ten tips for weaving?

Intro Video for S.A.W Graphic Novel Class

As part of the Sequential Arts Workshop (S.A.W) online Graphic Novel class, we’ve been asked to make short videos introducing us and our projects. I thought you might find it amusing. 

It also explains the storyline behind Vampire Ex-Boyfriend and what I hope to accomplish with the project. (So, you know, SPOILERS)

It’s 3:34 minutes long.

Bee Kind

This comic was created during the Graphic Novel Workout class I’m taking on Saturdays. The exercise was to create a comic with bug characters in which every panel used a different type of speech bubble. For fun, you can go through and see how many different types you can identify.

I was rather surprised that I came up with something that is a somewhat coherent narrative, given that I think we only had 5-10 minutes to draw this. I’m a beekeeper, though, so there was lots of fodder rolling around in my subconscious about bees.

To make things even more interesting, I decided to push myself out of my artistic comfort zone and try a more primitive style. I bumped up the size of my pen line to *gasp* 17 pixels, and played around with how much expressiveness I could get out of simple shapes and variations in line thickness. (I tried to give up my beloved G-pen and use a more conventional marker stroke, but I missed being able to vary line thickness.)

I’m pretty pleased with how the art came out. My one quibble is that it looks rather flat. I think screentones would be too busy, given the simple lines. I thought about color fills, but wasn’t  sure. I may give that a try later on. 

One last insider note: this is what I worked on during the election, to keep distracted and sane. The title “Bee Kind” is both a plea to the world and a pun on man-kind. Also, since the life of bees is a bit harsh, there’s some irony there, too.

Hope you and the ones you love are health, safe, have moments of happiness and joy… and may we all know peace.

Syne

P.S. Second insider note. I deliberately used lower-case for the bees, to emphasize their smallness and make the all-caps of HONEY stand out more.