Yet Another zigzag band (Staraja Ladoga zigzag variations)

This is yet another version of the Staraja Ladoga Fig 6/7 tablet-woven band.  I've done two of them already.  The first one was 12 tablets, all of which were threaded in all 4 holes.  The second was also 12 tablets, but the inner four tablets were threaded in only 2 holes.  This third one is like the second, except that there are only three inner tablets which are threaded in 2 holes, for a total of 11 tablets.  (For the second and third, there are four edge tablets per side that are threaded in all 4 holes.)

I used the basic charting from Aisling's website, adapting the chart and the turnings to match the zigzag pattern from the earlier two bands.  I used the same colors as my earlier bands, too -- red border, white background, purple zigzags.

To get the same zigzags, I ended up doing 7F7B, which seemed a trifle odd.  Most of the 2-hole patterns I've done so far seem to work in groups of two tablets and two turns.  But it worked out well enough.

I'm just about done with these vintage balls of thread.  I might have enough to eke out one more band of some sort.  Or I might throw the last few yards on an inkle loom.  Or they might go into the weft-thread pile.

I think I might be done exploring this pattern.  I don't know which of these versions is my favorite, though of course I'm not required to have a favorite.  They're all cute.  I do not care much about historical accuracy, but at least two people who do care seem to think that the original was a 2-hole pattern.

It bothers me a bit that I'm unable to get the weft spacing as tight as I'd like, to try to achieve something closer to 45 degree angles.  Dunno if it's the thickness of the weft, how snug I pull the weft, the tension I'm using, the material I'm using, or if I'm not able to beat hard enough with my current set-up.  The weft seems pretty firmly wedged into the shed when I end up needing to un-weave a mistake, so I'm really not sure exactly what's going on.  Double-face and similar techniques don't count, of course, since their nature is to be more elongated.

This is probably the last post of 2023 for this blog, though of course one never knows.  It's been a productive year.  I've learned a lot and made a fair number of narrow wares -- inkle, tablets, braiding, etc.  I've also done other things -- knitting, crocheting, spinning, dyeing, basket-weaving, sewing, leather-working, kitchen experiments, teaching, and no doubt other things I'm not remembering at the moment.

I don't have any particular plans for 2024 except to keep making narrow wares as well as all the other fun things I'm doing.  It'll be a few weeks before I have access to my weaving stuff again.

I've received Claudia Wollny's new book on Twill.  Yay!  It took a while to arrive.  The package was damaged somewhere along the line -- ripped up cardboard and rather damp, the address label half torn-off, wrapped in plastic with a sticker saying "damaged due to inclement weather".  Sigh.  But the pages are dry now with only a little bit of rippling, and the dinged-up corners would have happened after I dropped the book a few times.  Hopefully I got everything that was originally included in the package.

It's an interesting book, more of a "how-to" than a pattern book, though it does include a fair number of patterns in addition to the exercises Wollny developed.  I'll have to set up a warp and go through some of the exercises to understand how she thinks about 3/1 twill and its variations, along with how that compares to Peter Collingwood, Sarah Goslee, and others who have written about their theoretical understanding of the technique.

If one is only looking for patterns, one of Wollny's other pattern collections would be better.  But I like the way this book discusses more generally and theoretically how to approach, weave, and design in the twill technique.  I'm glad I bought it.

3/1 Broken Twill tablet-woven band, two-pack method

 It worked!

It looks like I occasionally got a thread caught on a tablet corner so that it didn't end up getting tacked down by the weft.  In other words, there are a few spots where I have floats.  Like I often do when weaving with multiple packs.  Still.  Even though I try to watch out for it.

But I do have to say that using two packs for the basic 3/1 structure is faster than manipulating each card (or pair of cards) individually.

I had less thread-catching with the FFBB cards ahead of the FBBF cards.

The belt is a little poofier than I like.  Hmmm.  I guess I'll need to play around with warp tension and how tight I pull the weft.  On the whole, though, I am pleased.  This would make a good belt.  It's about 62" long, about 7/8" wide.  Maybe I'll get some hardware (a buckle or a couple of D rings, plus or minus plaques) and turn it into an actual belt.

The front side is green (with a one-card brown stripe along the edge) and S-twill, while the back side is brown (with a one-card green stripe along the edge) and Z twill.  Obviously this can be worn either side out.

Next time I am in the mood, I'll play around with tablet-flipping/twisting in order to change the twill direction and/or to change the colors.

My next band will be a two-hole band, yay!  It's Yet Another Version of the Staraja Ladoga zigzag pattern I've already woven twice.  This version uses the chart and pics from Aisling's website .  Her version has 3 pattern tablets instead of 4, making for 11 tablets total (4 edge cards per side).  I charted it up with the Twisted Threads charting software to see how to get those zigzags with spots.  It looks like 7F7B should do it.  We'll see.  That seems a bit unusual for two-hole weaving (which usually does things in sets of two-cards-and-two-turns) but we'll see how it goes.  If it doesn't work out like I'd like, I can change around the turning pattern.  Or I can unweave those few pattern repeats and add another card and make another one using the previous two-hole pattern.

The red/white/purple zigzag band I'm about to do will probably be the last one from these particular vintage cottons.  There's not much left of any of the colors, so they'll go into the leftovers I've been using as warp.  Maybe there's enough to use for another spot band if I use a different vintage cotton for the main color.  We'll see.

I'm also wanting to do more bands from the rug warp, to use as belts or straps.  The Museum of London bands (here and in the Crowfoot article) that I did in that sampler a while back would make good belts, as would various brick-style two-hole patterns.  Things that look good on both sides are my preference for straps and belts where both sides of the band might be visible.

Noobish two-pack twill thoughts

 I'm mulling over Peter Collingwood's directions for weaving 3/1 twill using the two-pack method.  It's in his book The Techniques of Tablet Weaving, starting on about p.216.

For warping, he talks about position I and II as well as Pack A and Pack B.  Later he starts mentioning position III and IV, so apparently positions refer to which colors are in which hole positions.  Then we go on to tablet slant, turning directions, what to change to get various effects, and so on.  We're on our way!

In general, changes are done through tablet twisting rather than changing the turning direction.  I think the tablet-twisting or flipping is done around the vertical axis pretty much exclusively.

I don't know if any of the tablet-weaving programs out there account for tablet-twisting.  But I can do some playing around.  (My memory says that there is a program that does do tablet-twisting but I can't remember which one off the top of my head, sigh.)

And cool -- I found that by flipping every other tablet (when one is at the start of the 4-row turning sequence), one can automatically switch from S twill to Z twill or vice versa.  I suspect it can also be done before the 3rd turn, too.  It's kind of fun to play with the initial tablet orientation and see how it carries over into the weaving.  I could make Vs or Ws if I wanted to.  Or diamonds and Xs if I change in the middle of the weaving. 

Actually.....  Collingwoods says that when you're in the middle of the band, you change the direction of the pack that is in position II or IV.  In other words, twist the pack where the same color is along the AD or BC line, as opposed to the AB or CD line, so that you don't mess up the colors.

I looked at Claudia Wollny's twill charts to play around with changing colors on a horizontal line (zig-zag, of course).  So...  I can turn two more turns and then resume the twill turning sequence.  Or, I can use Collingwood's method of tablet-twisting one pack, doing a turn, then tablet-twisting the next pack.  He also mentions the same method Wollny uses -- turning the packs two more times (i.e. doing either row 1 or row 3 three times) to put all the cards in the opposite color orientation.

I wonder if I can do something like tablet-twist one pack around the vertical axis and the other around the horizontal axis to get it done in one move, or if that will look wrong in some way?  I guess that's something to test.

If I don't see a program that does tablet-twisting, I'll have to experiment with Collingwood's other methods as I weave.  I'm sure more of it will make sense when I do it.

My vague plan is to warp up something and keep it mostly monochrome on each side.  I might switch Z and S.  I might switch half of the cards so that the twill lines meet in the middle, as chevrons.  Or I can play with Collingwood's method of making diagonal color changes (i.e. in a diagonal line across the band, parallel to the direction of the twill) and make a two-toned band.  Or maybe these will all be different bands.

Collingwood's two-pack method looks like it'll be faster than the one-pack method.  It alternates two cards in S orientation with two cards in Z orientation (or vice-versa -- I don't think it matters).  One half of the cards (the odds) is threaded with the the first color in AB and the other color in CD.  The other half of the cards (the evens) is threaded with the first color in AD and the other color in BC.

Then one turns the odd cards in FFBB sequence, with the even cards turned in FBBF sequence.  This leads to a monochrome band with the first color on top and the second on the bottom.

If the first two cards are the same orientation (either // or \\) you get an S-twill, going diagonally up to the left.  If they are in a different orientation (so that the 2nd and 3rd are in the same orientation), you get a Z-twill, going diagonally up to the right.

After that, one flips/twists cards at various spots to get changes in direction and/or color, making motifs and what-not.  That's more advanced than I currently wish to play with, but no doubt I'll get curious enough about it to try doing that later.

I am not fond of tablet-twisting.  Hopefully the results will be worth it and/or will help me to like it better.  It'll be interesting to see under what conditions a two-pack method makes more sense and where a one-pack method will make more sense.

Dunno yet whether this will be a sampler or if it'll be a useful and reasonably aesthetically pleasing band.

I've ordered Claudia Wollny's new book on 3/1 twill.  I'm looking forward to seeing what's in it.  The patterned band I did used her charting and methods -- I wonder if she'll continue with that charting style and motif modularity, or if she'll change it up a bit?  I wonder if all of her methods can be done using the two-pack method or if some are best done with a one-pack method?

No doubt I'll roll my eyes at myself after I gain a bit more experience.  I fully acknowledge my noobiehood.

Broken zigzags, yet another easy tablet-woven band

 I seem to be continuing a theme...

This is a band one sees elsewhere.  I saw a photo, decided "why not?", charted it out, and began.  It's quick, easy, effective, etc.  And I like it better than the spiral one I had done earlier.

I've been distracted by other fiber fun and haven't done as much tablet-weaving recently.  There are so many things I want to do, though, so I'd best put tablet-weaving into the rotation and make time for it.  That may be why I'm doing such simple bands lately -- they're quick to do, so more bang for the buck, as it were.  Maybe I should start having multiple projects set up, so I can work on easy or complex or whatever, and still be able to put them away and reclaim the space or do something more mindless for a while, etc.  That way lies madness, though.

A Halloween Post

 It's been busy, but I did get a little bit of tablet-weaving in.  It was a reward I promised myself that I could do after the busy-ness subsided.

It was a fun band to weave.  It looks like little spirals, and it's reversible, too. I've seen it on pinterest (as a gtt chart) and elsewhere.  I used this Twisted Threads chart, obviously changing around the colors and edges.  I used 20 tablets, 14 pattern tablets and 3 edge tablets (always turning forward) on each side.  The pattern tablets alternate threading of AC dark and BD light with the opposite (AC light and BD dark).

I did speed-warping aka continuous warping for the pattern tablets and it went fairly smoothly.  The trick, as I had suspected, is to make sure the thread sources do not tangle, especially the part between the tablets and the source.  In other words, keep the bobbins or skeins or whatever in a fairly fixed spot so they can't roll around and otherwise be unruly.  I'd tried a few other things that also helped a bit (such as running the thread around the warping path and then dropping a tablet instead of running all the tablets around the warping board along with the thread, changing the orientation of the warping board and thread and me, etc.), but it was still somewhat aggravating to untangle everything.  So that was good to confirm, that I indeed understand the concept of how to do it and mostly need to streamline the process.  Transferring the warp from the warping set-up to my warp-weighted loom set-up without getting everything tangled again took a bit of time but on the whole wasn't too aggravating.  I'll continue to refine the details in hopes of making this quick and easy and hassle-free.

In spite of its apparently complexity, this pattern is dead simple.  Several tablets go 3F3B while others go 3B3F.  After the 3 turns (either the forward or the backward), the entire pack either goes all forward or all back.  If that makes sense.  It's twist-neutral except for the edge tablets, and of course even the edge tablets can be occasionally reversed to keep them neutral.  Anyway, this was a very straightforward thing to weave.

I don't much like my version, though.

I used 8/2 cotton rug warp (I think).  It has a matte rather than a shiny luster.  And, well, it's OK.  Just OK.  My craftsmanship also had issues -- floats on the backside where apparently I didn't catch certain threads in the correct sheds.  The spirals are sometimes elongated to varying degrees, though some of that has to do with how long the cotton was under tension (and stretched out) when I was weaving.  Sometimes the spirals look more like feathers than spirals.  I was beating pretty hard while not pulling the weft too tight but maybe I was inconsistent or something.

Maybe I'll like it better after blocking evens things out.

I'd make it again, simply because it was fun, but I'd use some other material.

I'm still dithering about the next band.  Two-pack 3/1 broken twill?  Something double-face?  A two-thread/two-hole band?  Or something else completely?   Hmmmm....

I have been knitting, spinning, and weaving baskets while I dither.  I'll be doing some leatherwork and dyeing this week, too.  Plus various other things.  But none of those are narrow wares, so they don't get recorded on this blog.

Broken Chevrons, another easy tablet woven band

 I was looking through some of the silly charts I've played with over the years.  Some were drawn out (either by hand or using charting websites) for reasons I can't remember.  I was also looking through tablet weaving projects on Ravelry.

Chevrons.  They caught my eye.  I have charts.  I've seen project pics.  Maybe I need to warp it up and weave it.  Right now.

So I did.

This is a very common chart that one sees in a lot of places -- books, websites, handouts, etc. -- because it is striking in appearance yet quite suitable for beginners.  Also, it's such a useful basic-warp.  One color goes in A and B, the contrast color in C and D.  So many techniques start with something similar.  For the chevrons, one alternates two tablets set / with two tablets set \  (or vice versa).   I did 5 reps (10 tablets), though maybe I should have done 6 (12 reps).  I chose black and white for my colors.  The colors are staggered and offset to make little chevrons. The edge consists of three tablets on each side.  The outer two are black and the inner one is a contrast color, in this case a dark red.

This will probably be a gift, thus the choice of colors.

I used the usual stash of cotton Aunt Lydia #10.  The weft is something similar -- white big-box-store #10 cotton from my vintage stash of leftovers.

The band ended up around 90"/225cm long, around 5/8"/18mm wide.  The warp started out as around 8' (96") so that's not a lot of waste, yay!  It's also not that much take-up, which seems a bit odder.  The measurements were taken when the band was first finished and unblocked, so it might well shrink a bit after relaxing out the stretch and after blocking.

There are places where the chevrons are well-aligned.  Places that almost look like basketweave.  Places that look more like houndstooth.  I am not sure why, and again, will see what happens as the band relaxes.  My width is fairly consistent as is the distance between picks.  I suspect that the precise tension on each thread of each tablet might sometimes be slightly inconsistent, especially when I advance the warp or re-hang the weights, or as I continue weaving and the warp starts to stretch out under the tension.  And as always, maybe it is something subtle I'm doing as I weave.

Anyway, it is fairly striking and I like it, though I'm fairly uncritical and still tend to be thrilled at anything I make.

It is hard to untangle tablets and work out excess twist after the cats have sat on the warp and left their fur on it.  It seems to be shedding season.  Or something.  The fur wraps itself around the threads and then everything gets stuck and tangled.

I have no idea what I'll weave next.  More simple bands?  Two-pack 3/1 twill?  Back to two-hole?  Something else? Hmmm...

Broken stripes easy tablet woven band

 A friend supplied yarn for me in return for me using the yarn to weave them a sturdy strap.

Here it is.  The yarn is DK to worsted-weight cotton.  I used sport-weight cotton as the weft.  The band is roughly 5' long and between 1-1/4" and 1-3/8" wide.  As suspected, the thicker yarn meant that I had a higher take-up and a bit more waste at the end, and thus the band ended up a few inches shorter than usual.

The pattern is based on a chart from Lautanahuat by Maikki Karisto, p.105.  I simplified it, of course.

It was quick and easy to weave and I like how it looks.  I might have to make more bands in this style.

I could have dropped down to 14 tablets instead of 16.  Or expanded the band to have another set of stripes.  Or lots of other options.

I do like the design and color sense of the patterns in this book.

If I weighted each tablet separately, I might have been able to lengthen this by a few inches.  But it would probably have been offset by all the other hassles.  There are always trade-offs, sigh.

3/1 Twill Sampler Band -- done!

 It is finished, yay!  It's about 64" (160cm) long, 7/8" (22mm) wide.  If I'd really worked at it, I might have been able to eke out another inch or so, but that's OK.

I ended up doing 17 motifs total.  I started and ended with a little diamond, and then alternated swirl/S/leaf motifs with motifs that were blockier and more diamond-based.  I probably could have skipped the last diamond motif, but I was having fun, plus I didn't know how much more plain twill weaving I'd be doing to finish the band.

The motifs are all by Claudia Wollny, from Tablets at Work, Lily Grove, and Lily Grove 2.  The first swirl motif (second motif overall) is in the errata so of course I used that version of the chart.  The other charts were fine as printed.

There are some areas that look messier, where some motifs are a bit elongated compared to others.  I'm not totally sure why that happened.

Is it because these are areas where I was more likely to mess up and thus unweave/reweave?  Is it because these areas are after I've advanced the warp, untangled stuff, and re-tensioned everything, and thus there were slight differences in tension from thread to thread?  Did I relax or tense up?  Did the cotton stretch out differently?  Was I closer/farther from the cards and this affected things somehow?  Will it relax out now that the band is no longer under tension?  Is it an illusion, based on the motifs' different widths and lengths?

I am not sure, but it's something I'll pay attention to in the future.  I'm hoping it's one of those things that will straighten itself out through practice and experience.

I'm also not sure how much more square I want to try to make the motifs.  If I beat too hard then the band will be too stiff rather than flexible (yeah, get your mind out of the gutter).  I do loosen up a bit on weft tension since weft tension does interact with how close the picks are to affect the various angles and thus elongation of the motifs.  If that makes sense.  Also, if the weft tension is a little looser, I believe I can achieve closer-together picks and beat the weft down a little tighter.

I do like the natural elongation of the swirly motifs.  It's quite possible that this may well be a feature of the technique, similar to how it is in double-face.  Which makes some sense since 3/1 twill is so closely related to double-face.  Or maybe it's because I mostly use cotton.  Or I like a more flexible band thus don't weave too tightly.

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Here's the list of the motifs I used:

Little diamond separator motif (every odd motif from first to seventeenth): Lily Grove, p.130, V-1

First swirl (second motif): Tablets at Work, p.271 (from the errata)

First diamond (fourth motif): Tablets at Work, p.271, upper right

Second swirl (sixth motif): Lily Grove, p.28, II-7

Second diamond (eighth motif): Lily Grove, p.141, V-27

Third swirl (tenth motif): Lily Grove 2, p.44 II-12

Third diamond (twelfth motif): Tablets at Work, p.275, upper right

Fourth swirl (fourteenth motif): Tablets at Work, p.285, lower right

Fourth diamond (sixteenth motif): Lily Grove 2, p.221, V-4

I love all of these motifs and would be happy to use them again.  Some of the swirl/leaf motifs have repetition lines in case I want to make a much longer leafy tendril, for example.  Which I might!  There are many other motifs I'd like to play with.  It is very nice of Claudia Wollny to have provided such a rich set of charts, and to have made all of them quite modular so they can be plugged in wherever or whenever one wants.

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What did I learn?

I like 3/1 twill.  I can follow Wollny's charts and string together motifs in a pleasing way.  This band was a lot of fun to weave although of course it's slower than some of the other tablet weaving techniques.

The underlying logic of 3/1 twill makes sense, which means that I should try designing a few motifs to refine my understanding.

Un-weaving is tedious but I seem to be able to do it without too much fuss.  I'm comfortable doing what I need to do in order to fix my mistakes.

Lacis cards are perfectly reasonable to weave with.

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I'm not sure what I'll be doing next.  I'd like to try Collingwood's two-pack method for doing plain 3/1 twill to see if that is faster and/or flows well.  Dunno if I'd add motifs or not; I'll have to think about it and maybe do some charting to see what else would need to change in order to have the proper twill background structure.

I have some other ideas about what else I'd like to do in the near future, so I guess I'll see what I'm inspired to do first.

Twilling Along

Twill!  Fun!  I'm glad I decided to switch my warped-up band to a 3/1 twill structure instead of doing the lovely diagonal pattern that was not giving me joy.

As I half expected, after several inches of plain weaving, I decided it was time to add motifs.  Much dithering ensued.  There are so many possibilities!

I'm doing random motifs from Claudia Wollny's charts.  There are plenty to choose from even though I am using only 17 tablets.  I started with a small diamond motif, and each larger motif is separated by that same diamond motif.  There are three sets of plain twill between each motif.  So far, I'm trying to alternate swirly motifs (or leaves) with more blocky motifs.  The plan is to use different swirls and blocks as I go.  I'm having a lot of fun.  Once I get near the end, I'll switch back to plain twill.  I don't expect I'll achieve perfect symmetry but I don't care.

The photo shows the first few motifs.  They're a bit elongated but that's OK.

The motifs are from Tablets at Work, Lily Grove, and Lily Grove 2.  I like how the charts are all modular so I don't have to do a lot of re-charting.  I center the motif which means that I might need to add tablets on each side, but that's pretty minor.

After I finish this, I want to try Collingwood's two-pack method of doing plain twill.  Maybe I'll add a few motifs as I go.  We'll see, because I think he specifies tablet-flipping for changing the colors and making sure the background structure is twilling properly, and tablet-flipping does not usually bring me joy.  I'm mostly seeing how much faster/easier it is to use his method for plain twill vs the one-pack method I'm currently using.

Or maybe I'll do more two-hole patterns, or some double-face, or crank out some quick threaded-in patterns, or whatever else inspires me when I'm ready to make a new band.

This band is bringing me joy, both the plain part and the motifs.

And cats are still terrible weaving assistants.

Time for Twill

 The weaving area is set up again, and it's time to weave!

I did a continuous warp of 17 tablets (plus 3 edge tablets per side for 23 tablets total) with two light and two dark threads.  This is a great set-up for diagonals or double-face or twill.

My initial plan was to do the latest diagonals pattern posted on the Lautanauhat Facebook page.  It's Merisalo 147.  There's a version in Applesies and Fox Noses (21.  Applesies in a grand sieve, p.66-67) that I've been eyeing for a while.  And now these two new versions!

I warped up with dark blue and sage green cotton and got ready to party.

And I didn't like it.

First I tried the version with half-turns.  Then the version without.  They're both lovely patterns.  But the weaving was just not fun.

Sigh.  I didn't even bother with the version in Applesies.

Now what?  I wanted to weave something!

Well, for a while, I've been thinking about something I read on Aisling's website.  She wrote that after she first learned how to do 3/1 broken twill from a class with Ottfried Staudigel, she did bands that were simple and plain, no color patterning at all.  I thought they were very handsome bands and wanted to make a few of my own.

So that's what I'm doing.  I re-arranged the tablet orientations and thread positions and got started.  Fun!  This is clearly the right thing to be doing, since I keep returning to do "just one more" set of turns, over and over again.  In general, for this type of weaving, I do a set of four turns at a time (i.e. one pattern repeat) and then consider if I am still able to focus or if I need to step away for a minute or two.  If I lose focus, then I tend to spend the next little while unweaving.

I'm using Claudia Wollny's charting and weaving instructions since I might want to add motifs at some point.  She has a bunch of motif charts in Tablets at Work and also in the two Lily Grove books.  There's also the Arlon book, but those are all very wide motifs and I have a mere 17 pattern tablets to play with!  The charts are all modular and work with her general charting scheme, very convenient.

I was reading back through Sarah Goslee's website and noticed her description of the two-pack method for doing twill.  I've been doing the one-pack method so far.  Maybe I'll try the two-pack method for a future band.  Though that one would almost certainly be plain since I don't really like flipping or rotating cards around their axis; I usually prefer to switch the turning direction.  This means I also need to read up on Peter Collingwood's discussion of twill.

It's been quite a few lovely inches of weaving, and I really am starting to think about adding motifs.  The finished band will be around 1" wide 5 to 5.5 feet long, good dimensions for a belt.  A few motifs would look quite nice, wouldn't they?  Hmm, maybe do some color-switching, too, so that I have green motifs on a blue background as well as blue motifs on a green background.  I'm sure I will keep things VERY simple and abstract-ish rather than doing animals.  Twill is slow enough by itself (straightforward, but a trifle fiddly and thus slow) and I'm sure it'll only get slower if I am adding designs on top of the structure.

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I found some Lacis tablets at a local-ish spot.  They have good reviews so I decided to try them.  I think I like them.  They are small (2.5") and white and plastic and come in packs of 25 cards.  I've enjoyed working with smaller cards, so that was a plus.  I wasn't sure if these were laminated cardboard or actual plastic.  They are actual plastic, thin and somewhat flexible.  I expect that they will eventually chip or crack.

The cards are labeled ABCD in a clockwise way, not that it matters.  There's also a hole in the middle of the cards in addition to the ABCD holes.  There aren't any colors or notches or anything else on the edges.  If anyone cares.

My Robin & Russ tablets are getting kind of ratty-looking.  They're cardboard and have woven many bands.  It's kind of fun to see the wear.  I have a lot more of them but I tend to use the ones I've already used, partly to watch this slow deterioration.  I don't do a lot of really wide bands but I have plenty of these cards for when I do!

I must admit that I prefer smaller cards in general.  My hands are relatively small, and also the smaller cards allow me to work in a smaller space since there's not as much room needed to turn the cards.  That's especially true for eking out the last inch or two of weaving when the warp is almost done.  The shed seems to be perfectly reasonably sized for the smaller tablets I've used, so I don't necessarily need a card that is over 3".

I hope someday to return to the Merisalo 147 band because it's gorgeous and because I usually do like doing diagonals patterns.  But for now, it's gonna be twill!  And then maybe some double-face if I don't return to my two-hole/two-thread obsession.  Or maybe Saxon (i.e. pack-idling).  Or Sulawesi.  So many wonderful things;  I am glad that modern tablet-weavers have done so much to resurrect these old techniques and old (and new!) patterns for today's weavers.

Red Triangles (6th century Coptic tablet woven band from Whitworth Art Gallery)

My latest band is another simple threaded-in pattern.
 

It's the pattern used in the tablet woven band from the Whitworth Art Gallery that is thought to be one of the 6th century Coptic textiles.  The original is wool but I used cotton.  Someday I'll have a stash of colorful wool with which to tablet-weave...  Gotta drag out the dyepots someday and/or find an affordable source.

I love that the band is so well preserved.  Not only is the pattern clear, but the colors are still quite discernable!  Red triangles on a green background, with edges in blue, red, and yellow (though the yellow might once have been white, or at least natural-colored).  It's a small, cheerful, and effective pattern.

So I threaded it up and wove it.  All turnings are forward, nothing challenging whatsoever, but it was still fun to crank through it.  Since I used a warp-weighted loom, I untwist everything when advancing the warp.

I ended up with a band of about 1/2" wide and 88" long (13mm by 224cm), unblocked.  The original is apparently 11mm wide, not that I care.

The reverse side is slightly different (as can be seen in the photo) yet also quite attractive.

The band is described and charted in a few places.  Not that one needs a chart when such a good photo is available, but I wouldn't have known about this band if not for the photos and descriptions I found online.  Silvia Aisling Ungerechts wrote about it (with a chart) in this pdf, in what seems to have originally been a series of articles in Twist from 2020.  I've already done one other band from the set that is described, the cute little white X motif on a red background.  It's also here from L'Atelier de Micky, where it's described as being from Antinoupolis/Antinoè.

Although it would have been interesting to try yet again to do the technique described by Micky where one removes twist by pairing identically-threaded Z and S oriented tablets, I wasn't in the mood to do so.  So this still remains a technique that I will try again someday to see if it's worth adding to my everyday repertoire.

This pattern would be an excellent one for a beginner, even if one occasionally reversed the turning directions to avoid excessive twist build-up.

I'll probably do more bands based on motifs and techniques from these Coptic textiles.  Even with simple patterns, it's kind of cool to know that one is doing the same twists and turns as was done by an anonymous tablet-weaver (and the tablet-weaving community) so many centuries ago.

What did I learn?

Cats are terrible weaving assistants.  Good thing they're cute.

Simple patterns can be very effective.  Well, I already knew that, but it's still a good reminder.  Chances are that they were more commonly done in antiquity than we realize, and that the bands tended not to be preserved since they weren't the fancier, more time-consuming work that one might save for rich people and/or their graves.  Or they don't get published in the modern literature as often as the fancier work.

There's a lot of cool stuff preserved in museums and probably also in obscure archaeology writings in various languages.  I am grateful to the people who comb through existing artifacts and archaeologic reports to find and publicize these fabulous things.  (I'd love to see similar work for braids, cordage, other narrow wares, knots, etc., though of course there's a fair amount of that already out there, too.)

What's next?  I'm not sure.  A two-hole pattern?  More threaded-in patterns?  Something colorful or something more monotone?  Some other technique such as double-face or 3/1-twill?  Something else such as inkle bands or braids/cords?  I'm not sure what I'm in the mood for.

Zigzags with a Red Stripe

 I guess I'm into zigzags this month....

My weaving area is available again.  I wanted something quick.  Some of the easy four-threaded forward-and-back patterns in Tablet Woven Treasures have been calling to me.

So that's what I made.

This is the 27. Kaukola, Kekomäki band.  I liked the red, yellow, and blue of the pattern in the book, so that's what I chose to use, too.  Well, my colors are the nearest equivalent in my cotton stash, not natural-dyed wool, but other than that...

It was easy and I like the results.  I think this would look good in other color combinations, too.  Maybe green instead of red?  And with purple diagonals on a white background?  Also, I'm not sure the tubular selvedges add that much to the design.  Maybe next time I'll drop the edge tablets to two each and skip the tubular part.

I warped up about 3 yards, and ended up with about 85" (207cm) plus fringes and what-not before blocking.  The width is roughly 12mm (with a few spots being closer to 11 or 13 mm).  The weft was some fine crochet cotton that happened to be on my shuttle.  It ran out about 2-3 repeats before the end of the band and then I finished with something comparable though not exactly identical.  I'm glad it's all used up now since it likes to kink up and twist back on itself, sometimes on the edges or underside of the band without me noticing, sigh.

I'm not sure what's next.  I'm thinking about doing another even simpler threaded-in pattern that is based on another archaeologic find.  Also, someone asked me if I'd done any of the Hallstatt patterns.  No, not yet.  Everyone weaves them, and although they're adorable, there are other patterns that I find more alluring.  I hadn't remembered that one of them is now thought to be a two-hole pattern.  Well.  It's a lot cuter as a two-hole design!  Maybe I need to weave that one, quite possibly in the same colors as I used for this pattern.  The original has a greenish and a brownish section.  The green could be replaced by blue, and the brown by red.  The light-colored motifs could be white or, more probably, yellow.  Maikki Karisto and Mervi Pasanen have a good chart I can work from, and so does Sylvia.  I think Elewys does, too.  Or I could re-chart it myself.

And of course it's always fun to continue making two-hole brick-patterned designs.  So I can't say for sure what the next few bands will be.

Felixstowe Tablet-Woven Band (chevron stripes and pack-idling)

It is done!

I successfully re-charted it and then was able to weave something that looked like it was supposed to look.  Interestingly, the right half of my chart matched Crowfoot's chart but the left half was different.  It's still entirely possible that I don't understand Crowfoot's charting style.

I did add a 14th tablet.  As Collingwood points out (and experience had already shown), one needs an even number of tablets for this pack-idling technique.  Rather, one needs the left edge and right edge to turn at different times in order to catch each edge tablet's threads with the weft. That can be done with an even number of tablets, or by having one of the odd tablets join the evens or vice versa, or by adding edge tablets that turn all the time.  With an even number of tablets, the chevron turns out to be slightly asymmetric, but that's OK.  The chevron points are nice and sharp and the asymmetry is not all that obvious unless one looks for it.

To re-cap, this is a re-creation of the Felixstowe band, which is a short piece of tablet weaving found inside of a belt buckle of probable late Medieval age in England.  It is described, sketched, and charted in Crowfoot, Grace M. "A Medieval Tablet Woven Braid from a Buckle found at Felixstowe." Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology  XXV:2 (1950): 201-204.

Crowfoot sketched and charted thirteen tablets while noting that the band's edges are not well-preserved.  I'm not sure what was done to successfully weave a replica using the chart she gives.

She is pretty sure that the band is woven from linen or possibly from hemp.  I, as usual, used cotton.  I'm pretty sure I used cotton rug warp, probably 8/4 but I'm not sure.  I had two cones each of the light and dark purple so it was easy to warp up using a continuous method.

I really like how the band turned out.  It has a nice heft and would be very suitable as a belt -- thick and sturdy, flexible, not too elastic/stretchy, the same pattern on both sides, and a very well-defined pattern at that.  Mine turned out to be about 1/2" wide (14mm) and a bit more than 5' (155cm) long.  The first inch or so is a bit wonky, but I can hide that if/when I stitch that end to a buckle to turn this into a belt.

I'll probably weave this again in the same and different colors/thread.  I may also play around and design a few patterns of my own.  There's also the Cambridge Diamond pattern, which is another historic band that uses this pack-idling technique.

Oh, wow, bless the internet and generous museums -- I found the Felixstowe belt online, yay!  Or at least the buckle and the woven replica of the actual band.

I think this link goes to the entry at the Norwich Castle Museum.  If that doesn't work, try this: https://www.museums.norfolk.gov.uk/collections/collections-object-page?id=NWHCM+%3a+1894.76.697.  Its accession number is NWHCM 1894.76.697.

Here are the pics of the buckle alone (or more specifically, the copper alloy decorated strap fitting and strap end), and of the buckle with the band replica displayed in the museum.  I can't get a high enough resolution on the belt pic to see how the replica weaver dealt with having an odd number of tablets, but it kind of looks like he/she slid one of the odds to the evens pack or vice-versa.

What did I learn?

Continuous warping went quite well, though that's not really anything new.  I didn't bother to label the tablets before warping, which meant that I had to use the tablet slant and thread position to know where I was in the weaving.  Not that this is a new thing for me or that it's a problem, but it does take slightly longer to keep track of accurate positioning of the tablets during weaving than it does when the tablets are numbered and labeled.

Pack-idling makes for an interesting texture and interesting color possibilities.  Again, I already knew this to some extent.  This is my first full band using this technique and it won't be my last.

A couple of things I noticed during the weaving: The pack that is forward vs backward makes a small difference since, for me, the tablets were more likely to tangle one way vs the other.  (I ended up having the / cards closer to me and the \ cards farther from me.)  I'm not sure why it made a difference, but it seemed to.   Another thing I noticed: It's easier to keep the packs from tangling after there's a bit of twist in the warp.  When I worked out the twist, it took several turns of painstakingly separating tangled cards before things started to behave better.  More tension helped but didn't eliminate the problem.  Also, things were a bit uneven for a few turns when I started weaving again after advancing the warp.  My guess is that it's impossible to precisely match the tension for each card after working out the twist and re-hanging the weights and there's also a slight difference in tension between the woven band and the unwoven warp.  I think that most of that will relax out and/or block out, though, plus it's not all that obvious unless I go looking for it.

I learned a lot more about pack-idling by doing this weaving.  Things that were sort of theoretical became a lot more understandable with my hands on the actual warp and weft.  I also gained some confidence in re-charting (or designing) this style of pattern.

Something that is interesting:  After Collingwood describes this style of tablet-weaving on p.121-122,  he goes on to describe how to do it with two threads per tablet.  He writes that the two-strand version of four-thread pack-idling "can be worked with all of the tablets in one pack".  I'm pretty sure his description of how to do it matches the technique for the two-hole brick patterns I have been weaving so often lately.

Cats are terrible weaving assistants.  Furthermore, during shedding season, they will happily contribute fine floof to the weaving that is almost impossible to eliminate.  I did not bleed on the band nor did any feline chew through any threads nor put tooth-marks into any tablets.  I count that as a win.

I'm not sure what I'll make next.  I guess it'll be obvious by the next time I post here.  My tablet-weaving area will need to be packed up for a while so a new post (and band) might not happen right away.

I'm also thinking it's time that I organize my handwritten notes and charts.  I've done several dozen bands in the past few years and I often repeat patterns and/or give away the bands.  I have a nice graph-paper-lined composition book that I'll start using to record bands and also various ideas and plans, though I'll probably keep the loose sheets I've done so far in the folder they're already being kept in.  I already use hand-written notebooks like that for knitting projects and other things.  There's already a notebook that has kumihimo stuff recorded (mixed with natural dye experiments, doily and other knitted lace pattern charts, stranded colorwork patterns, etc.), but it's getting rather full.  So... a new notebook it is.  Yes, I use the internet (such as this blog), but I like the redundancy of low-tech no-electricity paper.

May's Tablet Weaving

I'm still tablet weaving!  I don't always remember or have the time to post each band.  So here are some photos and comments about weaving since my last post.

This first band looks very similar to one I posted last month.  It's based on the Staraja Ladoga zig-zag pattern.  Some people chart it as a two-hole pattern while others do four-hole.  Some people chart it with three pattern tablets, some four.  Some call for tubular edges, some don't.

I mostly followed the one from Mervi Pasanen and Marikki Karisto's Facebook page, except that I decided I didn't like how the tubular edges looked so didn't bother with them after the first few pattern repeats.  Other versions of this band have been charted by Aisling and Elewys (Elewys also did a four-thread version) and there are other versions as well.  My colors are the same as the previous zig-zag band -- red borders, and purple zigzags on a white background.

I like this, probably because I like the texture of two-hole patterns.  Both of my zigzag bands look good.  I haven't decided if I'm going to try the similar-ish Oseberg pattern (27D and/or 27J2, I believe) or not.  I don't have a lot of this purple thread left.

After that, I did a few more two-hole brick-patterned bands, just because.  Both are patterns I've woven before.  The spot band has red edges and spots on a blue background.  The other one is a monochrome pink band.  The person I gave the previous pink band to was using it as a belt (rather than trim) and commented that it was too wide to easily use as a belt.  This one is narrower, pretty much the same width as the original archaeologic artifact, and will hopefully be pleasing.

My current project is the Felixstowe band.  Or rather, started as the Felixstowe band.  The original band is a small strip of tablet-weaving found inside a buckle of presumed late-Medieval age (based on the ornamental style of the buckle).  Grace Crowfoot published a short article about it, including a sketch and a chart.  She interprets it as an example of the pack-idling technique.

Someone else wrote a blog post about making this band and doesn't say anything about Crowfoot's chart although (a) the chevrons are Vs rather than arrows/carets, and (b) it is obvious that one of the odd cards has joined in with the evens group or vice versa.

I used continuous warping for the cards, using some cotton rug warp where I have two skeins per color.  The tablets are very straightforward to warp with two light and two dark threads per tablet, with the colors in adjacent blocks rather than opposite.  Yay, that went well, even with the cats trying to help.  There are 13 tablets.  I cut the warp to hang it on my warp-weighted loom.  I wasn't tempted to try again to match tablets to automatically work out extra twist.

I've done pack-idling before.  It's slightly tedious but not difficult.

But. The chart doesn't match the sketch.  Or rather, I am not sure exactly what Crowfoot's charting conventions are, and my quick attempt to make my own chart from her sketch didn't work well, either.

So I guess this is going to be a learning experience.

The first learning moment -- the odd-pack card on the left side isn't caught up by the weft.  Aha!  So slide it into the evens pack, and then it is caught when the evens pack is turned.

However, I'm not getting clean diagonal chevrons.  I can't quite figure out how Crowfoot's chart matches her own sketch, even.  Those are two more learning moments, I suppose.  Unweaving is slightly tedious, and the cotton is showing signs of wear already.

I finally consulted Collingwood's The Techniques of Tablet Weaving, p.121-122.

Enlightenment!  He points out that one needs an even number of cards, for just that reason (of catching the weft on both sets of turns).  Crowfoot did say that the band she described was not in great shape and both sides were damaged.  So my guess is that there are edges that are gone and/or this band once had an even number of tablets.

Collingwood gives a chart for part of the chevron (as a diagonal stripe), so I will follow that and adapt it to hopefully end up with the chevron that the original band displays.  I should probably warp up one more tablet, too.

Or maybe I'll just switch to a diagonals or double face or 3/1 twill pattern or stripes/checks or something since the tablets are conveniently warped for any of those.

After this warp is dealt with, I am not sure what's next.  More two-hole?  Diagonals/double-face/twill?  A simple threaded-in pattern  (there's a Coptic pattern that's been calling to me, a dead simple threaded-in pattern of triangles)?  Something else?  We'll see!

More April tablet-weaving

 Wow, I haven't posted for a while.  I have been tablet-weaving, though!

I finished the backstrap-woven band.  I still need to work on how to rig up the backstrap so that I can weave comfortably and also advance the warp without too much hassle (and remove excess twist every now and then).  I do want to have a portable way to weave, so I'm motivated to keep practicing.

Next up are a couple of brick patterns.  Above is a pattern I've done before and will no doubt do again.  I do like this simple two-hole spot band, though I have a tendency to give them away.  This one is white with dark purple edges and spots.  I need to make a few more in different color combinations.

This blue/green one is from a post on the Karisto/Pasanen Lautanauhat/Tablet weaving Facebook page from August 19, 2021.  Mine isn't as cute, sadly.  Instead of lining up the speckles, I offset the middle speckles from the edge speckles.  This improved things a bit.  I'm not sure why I don't like mine as much as the one on the Facebook page.  I'm going to blame wool vs cotton even though that's probably not it.

This next one (above) is a cotton version of a wool band that was found in a grave.  The actual pattern is in a newly published book along with other details of clothing from the person in the grave.  I used a version of the chart that I found on Aisling's blog/website, but added back in the tubular edges that Karisto/Pasanen show on Facebook in their re-creation for the book.  The grave is from 13th century Finland.  It is known as the Ravattula Ristimäki grave 41/2016.  This particular band (or two of them, actually) had attractive tassels and were used as garters.  I made one band and it has no fancy finishes.  Anyway, I like it and I'll probably make it again, possibly in different colors, either with or without tubular edges.

There's one more band that I wove in April.  I saw it as a piece of trim on someone else's clothing and took a quick (and blurry) photo, then reverse-engineered it from the photo.  I eventually talked to the weaver who told me it was a variation on one of the Oseberg bands.  It also looks very similar to one of the Staraja Ladoga patterns.

So....  that was fun to weave.  The above photo is the result, and it looks very similar to the band that inspired it.  The motifs are a little bit elongated since apparently I can't beat quite tight enough to squoosh the lines into right angles, but that's OK.  Also, the band that inspired me has green zigzags while mine are dark purple.

Eventually I did my usual poking around and found a couple of versions of the Staraja Ladoga pattern, including a few two-hole versions.  I charted them up and played around for a bit, creating some variations as well as a version that looks very similar to the band I reverse engineered, except that it is two-hole, of course.  I'm almost done with the two-hole version I settled on and will do a write-up on the blog after it's finished.  I'm still going to look at the Oseberg band that might have been the original weaver's inspiration and see how that looks.  I might try a few variations, too, because it's an attractive motif.

I'm also feeling the urge to make cordage and knots and braids.  We'll see what happens there.

Another thing I did in April was to finally buy the Latvian tablet-weaving book.  It is full of swoon-worthy two-hole patterns to blast my two-hole tablet-weaving obsession to new heights.  There are also lots of other great patterns and motifs and techniques to inspire me in addition to the two-hole bands.  I know not one word of Latvian (except for some doily-knitting terminology) but that's OK.  There are apps and programs to translate important things.  I can puzzle out a few words.  And the charts and photos are sufficient to keep me learning and playing for quite a while.  I'm very glad I bought it.  Balticsmith, the etsy seller who sometimes has them in stock, is sold out again.

Tablet weaving explorations (two quick bands)

I haven't yet started the next two-hole tablet weaving band.

But!  I have been tablet-weaving.  And learning.

First -- I was invited to attend a class for beginning tablet weavers.  The band was the famous (and very suitable for beginners) Oseberg band, 12L1.  I've done that one before.  It's a great pattern and I certainly don't mind weaving it again.

The teacher provided some charming 2" 3D-printed tablets.  I love those tablets.  Mine are purple, but she had them in a lot of different colors.  I begged her for more -- any quantity, any color, and I'd be happy to reimburse her.  We'll see what happens.  But maybe I can get access to a 3D printer from a friend or the local library, and print my own.

The other new-to-me thing about the class was that it was done backstrap-style.  I haven't done backstrap-style tablet weaving in a long time, so it was a nice re-introduction.  This time, since I'm fairly experienced at tablet weaving, it gave me no trouble.  I'm still working on how to work out excess twist when it's time to advance the band and re-tie the warp.  I can do it, but it's not terribly efficient yet.

I don't have a photo of the band or the tablets or the set-up yet.

Second -- I liked the colors I used on the Fine Crooked Knees with Small Applesies band from the book Applesies and Fox Noses.  So I used the same colors on another band from the book, United Chicken Runs.

I have to give it a big eh.  The pattern is cute enough -- spiders and diamonds.  But the colors aren't as effective as they were in the previous band.  It looks kind of southwestern or central-American with the turquoise-and-black juxtaposition.  Or maybe something from 1950s suburban home decor colors.

The band is nicer than it looks in the photo.  I mostly take these pics to jog my memory and to show the motifs clearly rather than artistically.

It's another diagonals-type pattern, balanced (except for the edges), with tablets changing direction in groups of two, with at least two picks after each change.  The colors are two dark, two light, offset diagonally across the warp, very typical diagonals-type warping.

However, I did try a few new things.  I did continuous warping.  Again, it's not completely new.  I've done it before.  But I'm a lot better at keeping things from tangling, so it was a lot more successful.  Also, I managed to keep the clamps steady so that they didn't bend or rotate or otherwise mess with the tension as I went along.  I carefully rotated and stacked the cards before threading them so that I could keep the ABCD markings to use as a guide for weaving.  This wasn't perfect since I still had to do one or two threads separately for the edge cards since I only had two balls of some of the colors.  I didn't want to make mini-skeins, at least not yet.

I also wanted to try linking cards with opposite twist, so that as twist accumulated, it could be pushed to the end of the warp, and the excess twist would get canceled out.  That would be a useful thing to do.  Alas, for whatever reason, this was kind of a dismal failure.  I'm going to have to think about this and try again someday.  For now, I'll just cut the ends of the loops and work the twist out as I usually do.  Harumph.

So....  this post doesn't have exciting photos, but it does describe two bands as well as several things I either learned and/or gained more experience with.

* 2" plastic tablets -- a big yes.  I'd wanted to try colorful tablets with the goal of using them to help me keep track of card numbers  (i.e. put a different color every 5th tablet, or use different colors for edges or the center tablets or different parts of the design, etc.).  I was also curious to see how small of a tablet I'd enjoy weaving with.  So yes to all of this -- small, plastic, colorful, 3D printing.

* Backstrap weaving -- once I do better at advancing the warp and getting everything properly secured and anchored, this will be a good way to increase the portability of my tablet weaving.  Or band weaving in general.

* Continuous warp -- yes, even though I haven't totally perfected my warping skills (i.e. things not getting too tangled), I'm a lot better than I used to be.  It'll be even better if/when I can do the entire warp with this, but it's OK that some cards get a few extra threads added afterwards.  It's even better when I can stack the cards before I warp them so that the tablet markings (ABCD) end up where I want them to be.  Not that I need the ABCD, but it does make keeping track of stuff a little bit easier during the weaving.

* Neutralizing twist in oppositely-slanted tablets -- it's a fine idea, but it didn't work well in my first attempt.  Try this again sometime in the future.

It was also fun to do another pattern from Applesies and Fox Noses.  I'm not sure which pattern from this book I might do next.  Maybe 21 Applesies in a Grand Sieve?  It reminds me of turtles,  Or maybe some kind of lizard.  24.  Reversed Corners is also kind of cute.  It reminds me of a moon and stars.  There are lots of other patterns calling my name, so it could be a while.  Yes, I can and do design my own patterns, but there are a lot of great ones already out there that I find appealing.

Next up will be another two-hole brick-style pattern.  It'll be fun.  I could have done continuous warping for everything except the edge cards but I didn't feel like it.  I'll probably go back and forth a bit with both warping methods for a while as I work out ways to make things easier/better.

A monochromatic sampler band (plus a few comments and speculations)

 

I was poking around the internet, re-visiting some of my favorite tablet-weaving sites.  One of them is this old (but still wonderful) page from Thora (Carolyn Priest-Dorman): https://www.cs.vassar.edu/~capriest/3recipes.html.  These are 14th-15th century tablet-woven braids found in London that were described by Grace Crowfoot.  The middle one (Braid 450) I recognized as the one Mervi Pasanen (I think it was Mervi) was weaving in a Facebook post (with video!) in the Lautaunat/Tablet Weaving page on Facebook on December 30, 2018.  She even credits it as a "medieval silk belt, 14th century London," so I'm pretty sure she's using the same instructions.  It's here: https://www.facebook.com/Lautanauhat/videos/2241382072561960

Hmm.  The belt is described by Grace Crowfoot in this reference: Crowfoot, Elisabeth; Pritchard, Frances; and Staniland, Kay. Textiles and Clothing c. 1150-c. 1450. Medieval Finds from Excavations in London, 4. London: HMSO, 1992.   Which, thanks to the miracle that is the Internet, I was able to find.

Crowfoot describes the braid thus (I'm including the photo that is Fig 100B, too):

In the text near the braids photographed as Fig. 100, she describes the braid as a "lozenge pattern," that was "possibly monochrome."  The braid next to it, Fig 100A, is also described as a lozenge pattern "with at least two colors."  That braid, Braid 143, is later described as a "double-faced weave with lozenge pattern" in the paragraph above Braid 450's description.

Staniland 1975, 167 is in the bibliography as this:

Which, amazingly enough, I also found online.  Here is the entirety of references to tablet weaving on p. 167 in the "excavated textiles" section:

I have not yet figured out if there are further references, nor how the numbers (e.g. 594) compare to the number Grace Crowfoot uses.  I haven't yet found the braid online in some Museum of London database, though I might still go deep-diving for more info.

Anyway.

The double-face surface appearance of braid 450 can be achieved much more easily than Crowfoot specifies.  If one just sets the tablets with alternating S and Z orientations, it is regular double-face -- FFBB.

Also, it looks similar to some of the two-hole brick-patterned bands I've been making.

So, I have questions.  Is this genuinely a four-hole pattern?  I suppose one can count the fringe ends and be fairly certain of it --16 vs 32 ends.   And, how did Crowfoot decide that it was made by alternating FFBB tablets with BBFF tablets instead of being straight double-face?  Elsewhere in the same section of the reference, as I quoted above, she actually calls out some double-face tablets, so she knows what double-face is, for sure.

I charted up both possibilities.   For Crowfoot's band, the FFBB threads are twisting around the weft in an ABCD order, while the BBFF ones are twisting in a DCBA order.  In a monochrome band where all the threads are the same, it makes no difference.  For a colorful band (or one with threads that have different textures), you can get the exact same order of threads by how you thread the tablets.  It would be rather a pain, but it's not hard.  Maybe doing it this way leads to subtle differences in the band's appearance?  Or is a way of balancing out irregularities in the threads while keeping the warping simple?

Obviously some real-world experimentation was called for.

I haven't really played around with double-face yet, so this was a good opportunity to do so.  Also, while I was being all monochromatic, I might as well see what the other two bands on Carolyn Priest-Dorman's page are like.  One of them (braid 449) has the same structure of the El Cigarralejo band I recently did, and I thought it would be fun to see what it looked like in a flat-colored smooth yarn instead of the heathery and slightly fuzzy wool.  The other one (braid 423) uses two staggered packs that alternate being turned and being idled.  Well, that's a new trick to play with, so sure, why not?  After that, I'd see what I felt like doing.

As far as I can tell, there is little or no difference in the appearance of these two methods of making a band with a double-face surface.  Setting the tablets in alternating SZ and doing FFBB looks identical or nearly identical to setting them all as Z (or S) and turning the odd tablets as FFBB and the evens as BBFF.  Any slight difference could be due to the hassle of either dealing with multiple packs of tablets, or, as I did in another experiment, manipulating each tablet individually, as opposed to turning everything as a single pack.  I really do not see a "diagonal twill effect" that is any different in any version I tried.

So that's interesting.  Why did Crowfoot determine that the band was made with this very laborious method vs the much easier method of turning the entire pack of cards the exact same way?  I will see if I can find out any more info online, and then maybe ask some of the more experienced tablet-weavers out there.

One more question -- Was the band all warped up at the same time, with all the tablets in the same orientation, and then half the tablets were flipped (and then rotated as necessary) to give alternating orientation before weaving?  It's not quite the same if the four threads are different colors, I don't think, but it is for two colors.  Maybe it is for four colors as well, but I'm not wrapping my brain around it properly and I'm not going to warp it up right now to double-check.  I will keep this possibility in mind as I look online, too.

While I was playing around with these two forms of creating a double-face type of appearance, I also experimenting with the effect of weft tension and a bit with warp tension.  As I expected, a looser tension enabled me to keep the weft threads closer together.  That made things a little closer to square, though consequently the weft bleps were a little more obvious.  So...  for future projects when I want to do double-face, I can control some of the technique's characteristic motif elongation to some extent, though I'll also want to consider how contrast-y the weft color is.

So that's braid 450, plus some exploration of double-face with alternating SZ tablets.  I forgot to do some regular FFBB double-face when I had the cards all in the same orientation, oops, but that's a fairly minor thing.

Then it was playtime.  Braid 423, with two packs, half of which idle per turn, was kind of fun.  It's a bit slow and fiddly, but not at all difficult.  So now I can confidently tackle the Cambridge Diamonds pattern if I ever want to do so, which I might very well because it's kind of cute.  Again, the appearance of this band is not dissimilar to the appearance of some of the two-hole brick patterns described by Karisto and Pasanen.  I did not mess around with weft tension, which could prove interesting.

While I was perusing Collingwood Chapter 10, on the subject of some tablets idling or getting extra turns, I tried out some of the ideas he presented about idling tablets.  That was OK.  I would have needed to do larger areas to bring out the textural differences and/or use a thread that was shinier and more tightly twisted to make the contrast more obvious.  It can also be a bit fiddly to do.  It's a fairly intriguing idea, though.  I do want to explore it again someday -- chapter 10 is full of crazy-complex stuff.

I later did a few sections where I'd change the directions of different tablets to make shapes that were defined by S or Z tablets.  That works, for sure.  A lot of people (such as Claudia Wollny) seem to use the term "structure weave" for this latter technique, which is mostly a diagonals-type technique in one color.

I also wove a bit of Braid 449 (monochromatic rather than two colors) just to complete the trifecta of braids on Priest-Dorman's website.  Yup, I like making this braid, and perhaps I should make it in two colors someday.

I had some space left, so it was time to do a bit of 3/1 twill since I haven't done that before, either.  To my delight, it's very straightforward whether the twill lines climb to the left or the right.  It, umm, works better if all the tablets are oriented the same rather than alternating SZ, at least for the charts and explanations I was using.  But to learn that was also educational.

I can't remember if I did much else.  The band itself is not particularly attractive, but that wasn't its purpose.  I learned a lot from doing it.  I now feel confident about doing double-face or 3/1 twill patterns whenever I want to, knowing that the underlying structure is something I have already done.  I'm ready to do the Cambridge diamonds pattern whenever I want, and also to play around with other ideas involving idling tablets.  And I have some questions about Braid 450 and thus some research to do.  Even so, I know I can make something that looks like that band whenever I want, whether or not my method is the one Crowfoot claims it is.

A couple of other cool things for the future:  There are several other cords in the Crowfoot article, with tubular tablet weaving, finger-looping, and plaiting.  Fun times!  She also describes tabby-woven narrow wares, an interesting decorative trim for garters, and of course other tablet-weaving techniques for the narrow wares (such as brocade).

The article from the Staniland reference shows some knots a few pages earlier!  They're all in leather, from the section on Medieval Leather by Jennifer Jones.

I'm not sure what I will be doing next.  More two-hole?  More samplers?  Something besides tablet-weaving?  We'll see...  The tablet-weaving area has been disassembled for the next week or so, requiring some improvisation if I want to do tablet-weaving.

A non-two-hole interlude (diagonals-type band)

This is one of the patterns in Applesies and Fox Noses by Maikki Karisto and Mervi Pasanen.  It is pattern 8, Fine Crooked Knees and Small Applesies.  Umm, OK.  It is a very striking pattern, in my opinion.  It's been on my want-to-do list for a long time.  Since I am still dithering about which two-hole (or other) pattern I want to do next, I shrugged and made this one.

I chose cotton from the #10 crochet cotton stash, in a dark color, a medium-ish contrast color, and a light contrast color that is more or less in the same color family as the medium-ish color.  In this case, it meant black, teal, and sage.  The edges turned forward continuously, while the others went forward and back in pattern.  I used white or off-white #20 or #30 cotton for the weft since it was already on the shuttle.  I kind of like the little edge dots one gets from using a contrasting color for the weft.

It is a balanced pattern.  I love this style of pattern, with blocks of tablets having the same set of turns as other blocks, either mirrored or offset, and with the turns balanced.  If that makes sense, because I'm not sure how else to describe it.  (The S-sign pattern, also in this book, is similar in its underlying principles.)

The band is based on 7s (or 14s which of course is just 2x14).  Fourteen tablets.  Fourteen rows in the pattern.  Reversal patterns based on seven  (either 7-7 or 4-3-3-4).

It's in the category of diagonals-type patterns, even with all the odd numbers.  Some people say that Egyptian Diagonals, in the way the term was originally used in English-language card weaving books, always involves moving cards from F to B and vice versa in blocks of two, meaning two cards and two picks.  Obviously that is not required, since this pattern has blocks of three tablets, going from F to B after three picks.

Anyway.  It was fun and relatively quick to make once the underlying logic settled in.  It is a very striking pattern, and I'd be willing to make it again.  It would look amazing in silk, not that I have any.

The smoothness of the band is a bit of a contrast to the pebbly texture of two-hole bands.

It's about 61.5" long and 0.5" wide pre-blocking.  I think the backside is also quite attractive.

And now I'm back to dithering.  There are a couple of two-hole patterns that are whispering to me, and ditto for some monochrome things (some two-hole, some not), plus there are plenty of other wonderful patterns and pattern ideas out there.  Yes, I can do my own patterns if I want to, and I have.  But there are a lot of cool examples out there already, whether they're already charted up or if I need to re-chart them based on a photo or description or partial chart.