Who saved who? A Boy and His Inkle Loom

Since the day of my birth I have yearned insatiably for knowledge and mastery of all yarn crafts. By 5th grade, my mom had taught me to crochet. By 7th grade I had taught myself to knit. This was 2006. Youtube had been around for all of about 3 seconds. There was one singular video on “how to knit.” The video quality was approximately half a mega pixel at around 4 frames per second. That did not stop me from watching it 200 times in a row until I had learned a backwards loop cast on and was successfully knitting nothing but twisted stitches. By 8th grade, I was actively campaigning for my parents to buy me a spinning wheel. (They did not acquiesce).

Naturally, I have always dreamed of learning to weave. One of my earliest exposures to fiber art was making pot holders on those little plastic square looms. For years, however, weaving, and more importantly, loom-ownership, just seemed like something to maladaptively day dream about in a self-soothing manner rather than something to really consider as an actual possibility. The grand floor looms I dream of cost a lot of money and take up a ton of space, and I’ve reached my quota for non-negotiable large items to fill up my tiny one bedroom Chicago apartment: fully equipped jewelers workbench, upright piano, spinning wheel, big-ass TV.

Enter the Inkle Loom.

It’s the 2020s, there are a trillion videos on youtube, and one of my favorite past times is searching for videos of people talking about and showing their niche craft projects. I come across the account of Elewys of Finchingefeld. Elewys is never not LARPing as a medieval wench as she posts video after video of her sitting in front what looks like a couple of wooden boards with a bunch of wooden dowels wrapped in yarn sticking out of them, the whole contraption is small enough to sit on her lap if she wanted to. She explains that she is doing tablet weaving on an inkle loom, and, despite how primitive it all looks, she weaves intricately patterned, colorful, and ornate bands and belts, which she says, “date back to the 12th century.” Instantly, I’m hooked, I watch every video, I need a wenches costume, I need a weaving pattern that was reconstructed from the remains of of an iron age bog mummy, and most importantly, I NEED AN INKLE LOOM.

I start obsessively considering whether or not to buy an inkle loom until I come across a large booth filled with fiber tools at the 2024 Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival and think, “If they have an inkle loom here today, I might buy it.” I ask the worker at the booth if they have any inkle looms and he says, “I’m pretty sure we’ve only got one left, people have been buying them all morning,” he takes me to the singular inkle loom, I’m still thinking about if I should get it or not, until an older customer approaches and asks, “Did I hear you say you’ve got an inkle loom for sale?” I said, “Not anymore bitch, this is mine!” And left with my bounty.

Once I got home and assembled my precious and beautiful treasure (An Ashford Inkle Loom), I started researching how to actually weave on it. While my goal in weaving (and in life) is to be like Elewys, I realized that the ornate tablet weaving she was doing required a lot of prep, set up, and the ability to read a pattern, and I felt instantly overwhelmed. In my research I realized that people use inkle looms to do all sorts of weaving, including good old fashioned over-under plain weaving. So after watching the excellent educational video: Inkle Weaving Basics by inkle loom superstar Annie MacHale I was on my way to inkle weaving paradise.

Warping the loom was low-key SCARY, but fun. I began by weaving these bookmarks, which I enjoyed making so much, and I was so proud to give them away to friends, despite having several visible janky flaws.

From there, I made tote bag straps, belts, and shoe laces.

FINALLY, I felt ready to tackle tablet weaving, and rather than start with something easy, I began with a pattern where the cards were turning in different directions, which was also NOT twist-neutral. Maybe if you’re lucky, I’ll explain what that means some day. I made plenty of mistakes, but it turned out beautifully and made a great tote bag strap. (obviously I sewed the tote bag too, duh)

What’s on my inkle loom right now? Wow I thought you’d never ask. I’m working on my second ever tablet weaving project. It looks just as fancy as the first one, but it’s actually much easier, it’s so simple I don’t ever need to look at a pattern so it’s great to work on in front of the TV. It’s very much giving renaissance jester-core (as befits this hobby) and I don’t have any plans for what to do with it.

Overall, I have been thrilled with my purchase of an inkle loom. Do I need to be hand weaving my shoe laces? No… Actually yeah, I do, and f*ck anyone who says otherwise! *barks like a pitbull* I often say and hear other freaks like myself say, “the last thing I need is another hobby.” But ok why’s that? Who does it hurt? Getting another hobby is very attractive and very innocent. Really scary to imagine not being able to weave my own shoelaces, how did I do it for the first 31 years of my life? Please let me know if there’s anything else I can do to convince you to get an inkle loom and start weaving and I’ll do it. Ok bye.