Weaving appeals to me on many levels. Firstly, it's a relaxing thing to do when it's going well. Unweaving when I've made a mistake - not so much fun. Secondly it appeals to me on an engineering level - taking yarn and locking it together into fabric. How cool is that? Then there are all the wonderful patterns and the interplay of colour and texture which combine in countless variations. There is much to keep the mind occupied when planning a new weave.
When weaving there are threads that run top to bottom (the warp) and threads that run from side to side (the weft - like "left" in left to right). Often the weave is designed so that the warp and weft share equal billing (take up the same amount of space). That type of structure is called a "balanced weave." Krokbragd, on the other hand, is a "three shaft twill, weft faced" structure. The "weft faced" part of that means the left to right threads completely cover the vertical threads. The three shaft bit means that normally you'd weave this on a shafted loom, not a rigid heddle loom. The twill bit, I'm not too sure what that really means, but it's got something to do with getting those diagonal lines you see in posh coat fabric. Put that lot together and you create a fabric that is thick and luscious to the touch and it is my new weaving passion.
The name is Norwegian and apparently means "crooked path." I don't speak Norwegian, so I'm going to have to trust that's true. Not knowing anything much about weaving on a shaft loom, I also had to trust the scant resources I found when trying to translate Krokbragd patterns for rigid heddle use.
My first port of call was Jane Patrick's book "The Weaver's Idea Book." It is an excellent general resource and there are several patterns in there for the aspiring Krokbragd weaver to attempt. Unfortunately, Jane's approach is to use pick up sticks and/or string heddles. That sounded like way too much faffing around, but without setting up the sticks the diagrams made little sense, so I hit up the internet in search of an alternative.
Fortified by a cuppa and a digestive biscuit, I discovered that Krokbragd is threaded on a four-thread repeat, over three shafts. The pattern repeats 1-2-3-2-1-2-3-2-1...
Bibble!
Thankfully a little more searching led me to a blog which began to clear up some of my confusion. Yarn in my Pocket blogs 93 and 100.
Alison provided a really neat explanation of how Krokbragd works. Even better, she provided a threading diagram to warp a rigid heddle for Krokbragd. Result! Here is my version showing how to thread the warp through the front and back heddles. In the diagram, the back heddle is the one at the top.
Note - in Krokbragd the warp is completely covered by the weft so it can be of any colour and would, I expect, normally be one colour. For clarity, so you can see which thread goes where, three colours are used.
Alison gives the "treadling" pattern as 1&2..2&3..3&1.. Without shafts, I was still unsure what that meant. Then I found Amelia at Ask the Bellwether. Amelia provides an excellent mapping of heddle position to shaft tie up. The table shows the relevant section.
At last I could start to weave. Following Alison's threading and treadling or lifting patterns and with Amelia's translation of shaft to heddle I had enough information to begin weaving. First I had to set up the warp. Oh man! It felt like I was warping for a week. Of course being something new, it did take a while to get everything in the right place and I'm now getting faster, but that first time was a three cup of tea warp.
At first I had no real idea of what I was doing, just randomly adding colours, because I still didn't understand enough about the process to translate the pick up stick patterns to what I'd warped up, but I managed a bit of "flame point" some zig zags and what I think could be described as "interpretative" versions of arrows, rockets and beach huts.
It was slow going. Each "row" of weaving requires three passes of the shuttle and heavy beating to squash the fibres down into a single line, but eventually I had fabric. Thick luscious fabric. I didn't really understand how the patterns worked and my pull in at the sides would have made a Victorian corset maker proud, but I was thrilled.
I hope you've found the links useful. If you know of any other good resources, why not share your discovery in a comment.
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