John Mullarkey is an excellent tablet weaver, wonderful teacher and really good friend. We have teased each other for years about which type of band weaving is better, inkle woven or tablet woven. Although we often teach at the same conferences, it is rare that we are both teaching band weaving, usually I’m teaching something that relates to garment construction.
At the Conference of Northern California Handweavers in Asilomar this year, we were both asked to teach, John of course is teaching Egyptian Tablet Weaving, and I am teaching a class in Advanced Inkle Weaving techniques. John and I swore if we were ever teaching band weaving in the same place at the same time, we would have it out once and for all and stage a Battle of the Bands.
I of course love the versatility and quick set up of the inkle loom and John of course swears by his “manly bands”. Well, we opened the conference last night, after the informal fashion show, with a “Battle of the Bands” which turned out to be hilarious fun.
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John set up his tablet loom with 10 tablets or four holed cards, which gave him 40 ends. I set up my little Inklette by Ashford with 25 ends. Since he can warp four ends at a time, it seemed like a fair fight. We came in fully warped within seconds of each other.
Then the conference director timed us, we had five minutes to weave. Again, we produced bands within centimeters of each other, so though my band was slightly longer, we called that a draw. John did get points for weaving style when he stood up and wove with the loom on the floor behind him, sort of like playing the piano with your toes. I had to bow out of that part of the competition since I was wearing a skirt!
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And then the audience judged our results, I got a point for most dainty, and he got a point for being able to change patterns mid stream. Though I certainly had my cheerleaders (Thank you Central Coast!), John of course got more raucous cheers since he is a cute guy in a largely female audience. That’s my story and I’m sticking too it.
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All in all it was really a draw, but there was a lot of smack talk and threats zinging across the stage. At one point apparently I burst into a rousing chorus of “Anything you can do I can do better”. We all had a fun time promoting the portability and simplicity of band weaving. (Really John, I did win, but I graciously allowed us to call it a draw)…
Stay tuned…