OK, I've now tablet-woven using wool. It was nowhere near as dire as I'd been warned. Whew! I used wool yarn that was on cones, intended for weaving. I believe that it is less elastic than knitting yarn and also probably has a coating/sizing on it to help it flow better. Whatever the reason was, I had no trouble at all. I think doing a two-hole band might have helped -- I noticed a bit more stickiness with the band where the threaded vs non-threaded holes were aligned compared to the band where the threaded vs non-threaded holes were diagonally opposite. (In other words, more stickiness for the band where the threaded holes were all AC and empty all BD, as opposed to the band where some were AC and some were BD.
While weaving, the tension flattened out the pattern. It showed up better once tension was released. After the bands were finished, I gave them a long soak and then hung them to dry. They shortened up and fluffed up a bit more.
The patterns are subtle but I like them. I like weaving with wool, too.
The white (or natural) band (shown above) is done with some kind of old tapestry wool I found lurking in my stash, from who knows where. I've been slowly using it for natural dyeing experiments. It's a cabled construction -- three plies of yarn, with each ply being a two-ply strand. The pattern is the one from Tablet-Woven Treasures, p.113, from an archeologic find that was used as a belt for a carrying a knife sheath. I do like that pattern.
The gray wool is Harrisville Designs Highland in Oatmeal, a heathery light gray. I did the same belt pattern from Tablet-Woven Treasures (see photo above). Then I did another Medieval belt pattern, the same one I had done in tan acrylic a while back (see photo below). I like this pattern a lot, too. The wool doesn't show the ribbed pattern as clearly as the acrylic, but it's still very nice. I haven't had a chance to soak it yet so maybe that'll help.
I wonder if I should try using less tension to see if I can do a tighter beat, and if that makes a major difference in what the finished belt/band will look like. As it was, I didn't use a huge amount of weight, but it did stretch out the yarn a bit while I was weaving.
All of the belts are roughly 5 feet long (they were about 5.5 feet when straight off the loom -- they shrunk after soaking) and about 3/4" to 1" wide. The pattern from Tablet-Woven Treasures uses 10 tablets, and the one from the Facebook page uses 12.
I'm glad that wool turned out to be reasonable to weave with.
I have my eye on a 12-strand braid pattern to make from this wool. Someone showed me a video, though it's a pretty straightforward pattern. The braid is from an armband, made from cattle hair and studded with little tin ornaments, from the Whitehorse Hill cist burial. Sally Pointer used her locally-gathered bast-fiber cordage to braid a belt. I'm just going to use wool. It's interesting that the strands and braid have a lot of two-over and two-under moves -- it makes me thing of things like finger-looping and finger-weaving, and, I suppose, some kinds of basketry. I do not plan to add tin ornaments even though they do look very charming on the original armband.
There are other interesting braided belts out there. I also have my eye on the 12-strand (also with double strands, as with the Whitehorse Hill braid) Skjoldehamn belt.
For tablet-weaving, I'm still entirely enamored with two-hole tablet weaving. There are so many possibilities that I've actually had to start a list. I'm not sure which one I'll do next. At some point, I do want to explore another technique. But not just yet.
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