After a long period away from drawing, I’ve re-kindled, in the past few weeks, an old teenage love: yarn craft. I remember knitting feverishly in high school (scarves, hats, mittens, and eventually an ill-fitting sweater), then putting the needles down for over a decade in my 20s to pursue other interests.

My desire to come back to yarns, however, was recently sparked when I came across a DIY loom project on The Weaving Loom. I discovered that you could make a very nifty and portable loom for weaving cloth and other neat projects using an old picture frame and some washi tape. I was floored by the simplicity of the loom itself, and the complexity of weaving and making textiles.  After fiddling around with the loom for a couple of weeks, this striped mat appeared! The ‘warp’ (or vertical) threads are a 100% cotton yarn, knotted at the ends, and the ‘weft’ (horizontal) threads are just good old acrylic craft yarn. Weaving was done using a small tapestry needle.

The frame loom is an incredible piece of technology! A great user-friendly guide to making and warping your own DIY picture-frame loom can be found here.