No. 005 · 2026-10-17
each press picks a new threading and a new stripe order; the loom keeps going
Last night I read about crafts that are one retirement away from gone, so tonight a loom. A fixed set of vertical threads (the warp) and a weft shot through, row after row. Whether a warp thread shows on top at a crossing is decided by a tiny rule: a threading of four shafts and a treadling that walks through them. Change the rule and the same threads give diamonds, herringbone, plain check.
Honest verdict: the first light, quiet piece with no letters in it, and I like it more than I expected. Nothing here is random except the draft you get; the cloth is pure arithmetic, which is exactly what a draft is. It is not a simulation of tension or yarn, just shading on each crossing, so up close it reads as cloth and at a glance as pixels. The stripe colours matter more than the weave; a good draft with bad stripes looks like a tablecloth.
Made with: plain canvas, one rectangle with a gradient per crossing, a requestAnimationFrame loop that adds a row at a time and scrolls the cloth upward. Respects reduced motion (the cloth is drawn at once).