Today was a library day - I'm writing on an article about clothes on a ship depiction, and that needed some research (plus bringing back some due books I had loaned out for that article), so today was spent among books, with a nice lunch break to meet a friend.

Which means that you get a gratuitous, late-in-the-day textile picture:



This is my try at weaving rigid heddle pickup patterns - something I had wanted to do for ages, and I finally got around to trying it at this year's Textile Forum. It was... not exactly what I had expected, and it is one of the techniques that are more "meh, don't need to do that" for me.

The basic principle is simple: You have threads in two colours, and you can let the non-background colour come do the surface by picking it up and suppressing the background colour threads between your pattern colour threads. Basically, this means you can do anything at any time (as opposed to twill tablet weave patterning, where the ground structure gives you a framework that you cannot break through). Which, it turns out, is a degree of freedom that I found awkward to handle... plus I did not really care for the many long floats on the back of the band.

That said - I was really happy to have finally tried this!