Pickup sampler

I am trying to teach myself pickup weaving on the inkle loom. My technique is not kosher but it works for me and my old eyes. As one of my computer profs used to say about programming: There is more than one way to skin a cat.

I've been relying primarily on Anne Dixon's The Weaver's Inkle Pattern Directory for instructions. Watching a couple of YouTube videos did not help much, so I came up with a technique of my own, using a US1 double-pointed knitting needle to pick up threads. Also, I pick them up in the just-beaten row, as otherwise I wind up making a LOT of mistakes.

Unweaving pickup is NOT an easy task, as you need to pickup as you unweave as well, and pickup however you picked up wrong in the first place, if that makes any sense. After cursing, the phrase most often muttered by me was "HOW did I do this?!?" But once I developed my picking technique, the mistakes grew fewer.

Initially, I tried to just wing it. But after struggling to the point of tears, I realized I learned to knit by slavishly following patterns; I can learn pickup the same way. Once I started working from inkle patterns, things went much smoother.

You can pick up heddled threads and/or unheddled threads. Doing both together is challenging, but that is how you get the most interesting results. Pickup is a lot slower than plain weave, but not that bad (she said optimistically).