...and the little one said...

Finished my purse strap the other day and I have deemed it a success.

Before:





See the funny ridges? That's what you get when you make i-cord with the purl side out and felt it.





And with my new strap:





Yarn: Remnants of Jamieson and Smith and Rowan Harris Tweed. In a fit of cleverness I didn't weigh any of my bits of yarn before I used them, so I don't know how much exactly, but I would say 3-7 grams of each, depending on how prominent the color is.


Pattern: My own, tweaked from one of the ones in Inkle Weaving by Helene Bress.

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Notes: I was hoping to have a strap about 1 1/2 inches wide, mine is 1 inch. My colors don't quite match my bag as well as I would like, but close enough for government work, the new strap definitely adds a level of pizazz that was missing before. The colors also don't have enough contrast. I should have mixed them up differently and put dark next to light, instead of light next to light etc.
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There was also the strange phenomena of the stretch in the yarn. This yarn is so perfect for Fair Isle sweaters and such because if you have some puckering or your sweater comes out a little small you can get it wet and stretch it all into shape. You can get inches out of a Fair Isle sweater just by blocking it when wet. Anyway, typically when weaving on the inkle loom the warp sort of gets 'taken up' and you have to slide the tensioner arm in from time to time; the end result is actually shorter than the original warp. I never once had to give the warp some slack in this project. While there isn't any discernible difference between the beggining and the end of the piece this is still very strange and I wonder if it would have more effect on a longer project.
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However, this was only a two evening enterprise and I learned/remembered a lot. This 'sticky' yarn is not ideal for inkle weaving, and a wider band probably would have been too much effort for the end result. I also have a much better idea of how colors will work together in the future and I'm oh so much closer to being able to produce an end result that is both predictable and what I want. Overall I feel very successful and I'm not ashamed to use this bag with this strap as my everyday purse, and thats all that counts, really.
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And in other news, a trip to the hardware store today warranted this: