Narrow Bands #1 and #2

Practice isn't the thing you do once you're good.  

It's the thing you do that makes you good.  

~ Malcolm Gladwell

Well, as you probably guessed from yesterday's post, my backstrap loom arrived in the mail and I spent some time over the weekend making two practice narrow bands.  

I used our coffee table to anchor the rear "beam" and started with the blue yarn I had picked up at Joann's.  

The front "beam" is anchored to my body with a strap around my hips.  

As you can see in the picture below, creating nice edges takes a bit of practice:  

I also received, in the mail, three skeins of a 100% mercerized cotton yarn that was specifically recommended for beginners working on a backstrap loom.  I had picked a variegated red color.  

I was still having problems with the edges when I first started...  

But part-way through it "clicked" for me - thanks in no small part to the advice from more experienced weavers on Ravelry - and, as you can see, I did much better!  :)

Next up - I'm going to try to weave my own backstrap - this is recommended as a good first "real" project.  I'll be using the same, red yarn.  Hopefully the changing colors of the yarn will give it some visual interest, as I will be doing plain weave and won't be adding any pattern.  

The main challenge here will be the width - it will be about 4.5 inches wide - my two narrow bands were more like 1-2 inches wide.  We'll see how much more difficult that is...  

Fingers crossed!  ;)