I've finally gotten around to taking out the backstrap loom thingie that I set up a few years (already!) ago. There are plenty of mistakes (starting at the very start when all of us in that session just left the warp slung around the sticks instead of sewing them onto the stick... well), and there's a lot of "trying to remember stuff" wonkyness, but I think I have now understood a few of the things I was going after.
There's a stack of things that fascinate me here. One, it's such a simple setup - basically you need six sticks and a weaving sword, and you're good to go. However, you can still weave beautiful simple fabrics or intricately patterned ones. The basic sequence, even with a pattern weft, is very simple as well, but there's still plenty of possibilities to mess up. It will also teach you about symmetry (one of my selvedges is always much worse than the other, and I'm still working on finding out exactly what I am doing differently), about how much of an influence practice has, and about the difficulties of counting (when picking out the threads for the pattern part). Well, maybe the counting thing is a special "me" issue, but still. I'm also still working on a better understanding on when to let up on the tension, and when to up it a little, but I think that's something that might be for later.
The six sticks, by the way, are three for the ends of the warp (two at each end, a third one for the transfer when stitching the warp to a free one, and later for rolling up the fabric as you progress); one for the natural shed; one to hold the heddles; and one to serve as a stick shuttle. If you do patterns, you might want to add two additional sticks, one to sort out the extras in the natural shed and one to sort out the extras for the heddle shed. (That, by the way, is what was the thing I was puzzling about, and where I managed to miscount several times. In the number range from zero to four.)
Tomorrow, though, and the day after, I will not be weaving - I will be off to learn more about making goldbeater's skin. Consequently, there will be no blogging the next two days!