Until this past week my adventure in krokbragd was in full swing. There are times you have to walk away from a structure and come back to it to have a better understanding of it. I follow the krokbragd hashtag on Instagram and have been Angie Parker‘s biggest fan for a number of years so I seem to always be thinking about how to do different things with 3 picks of color.

I have done the traditional krokbragd rug many times over but this year something clicked – it probably had something to do with sitting in a house with your loom alone for days on end. My daughter was looking for a wall hanging to cover a small disaster on a living room wall so I put a longer warp on my loom and decided to play. This “playing” turned into a whole new way of thinking as far as loom set up is concerned. It began with moving two Ikea rolling carts to either side of my seat. When using 3 shuttles at a time you need a place to put them down at times. This worked for a little while but with the frequent changes of color I decided I needed more than the dozen or so bobbins I had. I ordered another 30 along with a spool rack. It’s a thing of beauty.

A couple of explanations for my weaving friends. This was a 6 yard warp of 8/2 polycotton 24 inches wide sett at 5 epi. I am using Harrisville Highland yarn for the most part but also have some cones of Collingwood rug yarn that is in the mix which gives me 21 ppi. Yes, this is a slow weave. I’m using my Macomber but honestly it is much easier to do rugs of any kind with a overhead beater. Your loom takes a beating when you make rugs. I have a barn frame loom that is much more adept at this type of weaving as well as a large, handmade Swedish type loom I am currently restoring. Next time.

I did a couple of rudimentary drawings but I never really plan on paper anything I do with krokbragd – I can waste A LOT of time with paper and pencils (I don’t use software of any kind but that’s another story). The drawings I did were a start but the number of picks I needed to get the effect I wanted was different than the plan.

The selvedges on this particular piece look like a wreck – I will have to sew in all of the ends where there are color changes – and there are a lot of color changes. I tried weaving them in but the build up of yarn on the edges was unacceptable to me. I am a master of boring, mundane tasks so this will not be a problem for me and I will be much happier in the end.

The use of 3 shuttles was initially a problem for me when I began weaving krobragd. I now keep them in front of me on the cloth. As I throw them I keep them in order – 1, 2 and 3. Once I understood how the colors worked with the treadles it became a simple task to change color and design right at the loom and keep everything in order.

The texture and hand of the finished cloth is something I just love. I am a wool person and this structure feeds into everything I love about weaving. It’s interesting and creative only limited by what yarn you have on hand.