My most recent project -- a very quick and fun little band that ended up being something totally different from what I thought I was going to weave.
Forgive the terrible photography -- I'll add something better eventually.
Anyway, the above band came from Steinmaus' website, one of the threaded-in patterns. I used the pattern of the innermost 4 tablets, which are of a small XO pattern. I added one border tablet on each side for 6 tablets, a small band.
I did 4-8 turns with bamboo skewers to start the band, as usual. The way I had lined up the tablets must have been different from what the pattern called for, because I got the cute little pattern above. I liked it a lot, much better than the XO I was trying for, so I stayed with it for the whole band. Fun!
Steinmaus' charts use left and right arrows to indicate threading direction. The left-pointing arrow means to thread from back to front when the cards are facing left, which is Z for the thread direction and S for the card direction, depending on what terminology makes you happy. The right-pointing arrow means to thread from front to back when the cards are facing left, which is S for thread direction and Z for card direction. The diagrams also show ABCD from top to bottom instead of bottom to top.
I lined up the cards facing left, with AD at the top. I did 4 turns forward followed by 4 turns backward. Obviously one needs a different starting position to get the XO of the original pattern. Oh, well, who cares? I prefer the band I got.
I show both sides in the photo above. The front/top side has red blips between the motifs, while the back side has little red chains between the motifs. For both, the weft shows through in the middle of the red motif where the turning direction changes. I really like the way that looks. The motifs themselves look like little flowers, or perhaps snowflakes or stars or bugs or space invaders. Because the turning direction changes in the middle of the motif, the red motifs float slightly above the gray background.
It seems obvious that one can generate all kinds of different patterns by varying the forward and back turning sequence as well as the turning points. That's one reason why tablet weaving fascinates me so much. There are so many lovely variations on such simple threading patterns, whether threaded-in or from all-cards-the-same. It's wonderfully mind-boggling. Such a simple concept, tablet weaving. And yet, such complexity arises from it. I'm still so close to the beginning of the journey. A huge world awaits, stretching endlessly no matter how far I travel along this road.
After doing the more complex bands this past month, the 4F4B turning sequence for this one was a snap. This was a very fast weaving project, even with all the helpers who wove a few motifs here and there. The cat, as usual, was a terrible weaving assistant. He sat underneath the band on the PVC loom, his body wedged between the pieces of PVC, his ears up in the warp, and his claws helpfully reaching out for the weft and shuttle. I will add a photo if I can get one.
As with the other bands I've done recently, this used 5/2 perle cotton weaving yarn for the warp and green crochet cotton for the weft. I ended up with about 5' of band. I have not yet decided how to finish the ends.
What next? Maybe some simple diamonds with a continuous warp. Maybe it's time to play with Egyptian diagonals (and to figure out how/if Egyptian diagonals differ from other diagonal-type patterns such as Finnish diagonals and everything else). Maybe I'll do another threaded-in pattern, or even this one over again but with a different turning pattern. So many choices!
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