Trying something new

Well, it has been ages since I posted last!  It has been a very hectic year, and I've done very little crafting.

With a somewhat extended fall, I've been busting my butt getting things in the yard and garden cleaned up, readied and put away for the winter.  Today, however, we had rain all day.  Which is great, because it isn't snow!  It also meant I had time today to try a new craft.

I have had a Martha Stewart loom weaving kit for quite some time.  I got it to do loom knitting, but never really got the hang of it, and didn't enjoy it enough to keep trying.  So it's just been sitting there.

Recently, I had something pop up in my Pinterest feed that caught my attention.  It was peg weaving, but on the diagonal.  From the photos and diagrams, I could see that it started from the in middle of a square peg loom and worked outwards, and I was pretty sure I had figured it out, but none showed how the project was finished.

I went looking for a video and found this.

I'm glad I found it, because it turned out I hadn't understood the diagrams or photos for starting it, either!

I really like the concept.  You work with a continuous strand of yarn, and the top and bottom are woven at the same time, in each pass.

So I dug out my loom weaving kit and put together a small square peg loom.

The pegs form a square of about 4 1/2 inches.  A good size to learn on, and to make something coaster sized.  I had a longer Tunisian crochet hook that I used, rather than the super long hook in the kit.  

I had some smaller balls or medium weight yarn I could spare for learning and got started.  My first square, using a plain white yarn, was done very quickly.  Compared to the crochet I usually do, it used almost no yarn at all.

The tutorial video said that the weaving would be smaller after being removed from the loom, and I expected the yarn to relax and form a tight weave.

I was wrong. 

I tried again with a slightly thicker yarn, which happened to be a reflective yarn.

Here are my first two squares.

I wasn't very happy with the thicker yarn, either.  Especially the loose and floppy edges,.  I also didn't see how the method of securing the end of the yarn as in the video would hold for long.

I tried a third one, using both yarns.  With such a small loom, I also found it easier to work the yarn near the top of the pegs, rather than pushing it down to the bases.

At the finish, I tried securing the end (using a large plastic yarn needle from the kit) by weaving it along the edges, inside the pegs, until I ran out of the tail end.

Better, but I still wasn't happy with it. 

I made a fourth one.  This time I used two different colours of the thicker reflective yarn.

Here is how it looks, finished, before removing from the loom.

Doubling up the thicker yarn was much nicer.  I also finished by cutting a tail end long enough to wrap around the pegs five times, then went around the edges doing a back stitch, right against the inside of the pegs.  

Having pegs that could be removed helped.  The back stitching made it pretty tight around the pegs, making harder to slide the loops over the flared tops of the pegs.

Here are the four squares I made, numbered in the order I made them.

The top two are single strands of yarn, the bottom two are doubled.  

The last one, the blue and grey with the back stitching, holds its shape really well.  From the front, you can't really see the back stitching, as it disappears into the weave, but it forms a sort of ridge on the back, so it doesn't really sit flat.

The white and grey's edging is even with the weave; no ridge at all.  Weaving the ends through while 

on the loom basically resulted in a running stitch.  In the end, I think that worked out nicer than the back stitch.  

These work up so quickly, it would be easy to churn out a dozen or so in no time.  It's also very satisfying to work on.  I wonder if I have a heavy variegated yarn in my stash?  It would be interesting to see if any patterns emerge, from having the top and bottom being woven at the same time.

Definitely something I want to keep experimenting with - on days like today, when I can't be working outside!