The demo/teaching thing

I did the demo/teaching thing referred to in the last post.  Most people took their braids, but a few were left behind, or were ones I did as part of teaching and demoing.

I mostly taught people the 5-strand unorthodox fingerloop braid, A-fell.  (though it was kind of slentre-like in that it was easiest to go through the middle finger loop on the way to the ring finger loop by holding my hands mostly palm-downwards rather than palms-facing)

For a few young children, I did twisted-loop cords with them.  One slightly older child learned the 7-strand fill-the-gap disk braid.  (I had a pile of disks with me for just that purpose)

A few people already had done fingerloop braiding, so we had fun with 5-loop orthodox braids (square, flat, and split/double), 7-loop orthodox braids (square and flat), 7-loop unorthodox braids, and the 7-loop pigtail braid done as a V-fell braid (load up 4 fingers on one hand and 4 on the other, and the empty little finger grabs the index finger loop of the other hand).  We also did a 4-loop loop-exchange braid, and I tried playing around a bit with various unorthodox 7-loop braids though none turned out so well that I needed to write them down.

As you can see from the above photos, people had fun choosing different colors to see what would happen.  With the unorthodox braids, sometimes the back side (the one that looks interwoven) is more interesting than the front side (the one that looks like Vs).

I also got to spin a bit, on both wheels and spindles.  Someone had some raffia and shared it around so we could all make some cordage (twist one side and fold it over/under the other side).  And as always I had my knitting with me and got a fair amount of knitting done.

It was fun, both the teaching and the hanging out with other people who enjoy playing with fiber.

My weaving area is still unavailable, so I haven't done much else in the way of narrow wares this month, at least not so far.  All the stuff mentioned in my last post is still on my want-to-do list.  We'll see what happens.

One of my feline weaving assistants has passed away.  She was old and it was sudden.  I'll miss her.  Yes, even her deeply non-helpful weaving assistance.

Thoughts for an upcoming demo/teaching thing (braiding)

My tablet-weaving area is still unavailable, thus no tablet-weaving or other narrow wares this past month.  I did do some real weaving on a rigid heddle loom.  I'm sure my experience with band weaving (tablet, inkle, heddle, etc.) helped as I did my first beginner-ish project.  If/when I do more weaving, I can add some narrow wares to use as handles and trim and what-not.

I've been asked to be part of a demo this weekend.  Specifically, I've been asked to demo/teach braiding, and in particular, fingerloop braiding.  I'll be in the family crafts area, so I'll be doing quick one-on-one teaching to people of all ages, plus or minus a bit of whatever I want to demo when I don't have customers to teach.

Hmmm.

This calls for the standard, most common/famous fingerloop braid, right?  The 5-loop unorthodox A-fell braid!  It's pretty easy to learn, not much to wrap your brain around.  The hardest part is the finger dexterity as you walk the loops.

Put loops on the index, middle, and ring finger of one hand, and the middle and ring finger of the other.  Use the empty index finger to go through the middle-finger loop on the other hand and pick up the ring finger loop.  Walk the loops down on that hand, and repeat with the other index finger.  Etc.  It doesn't matter if the loops are taken reversed or non-reversed.  Well, with the usual caveats about bicolor loops, I suppose, or the other subtle differences in the braid's structure or appearance.  But the braid looks roughly the same either way and it doesn't do anything weird like fall apart or become two braids.

For people for whom that is too complicated, we can do the 3-loop variation.

What I like about the above braid (in addition to its near-universal prevalence) is that it is relatively bomb-proof, i.e., you'll end up with SOME kind of braid, and also that it generalizes very easily.  With your index finger of one hand, go through the loop next to the loop on the smallest finger on the other hand and pick it up, then walk the loops and repeat with the other hand.  That works whether it's 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, etc. loops.

I might bring discs with me to teach the 7-strand fill-the-gap braid, too.  Or even the 8-strand kongo-gumi braid.

I should have some random demo braids on display, as well.  Plus maybe make sure I remember how to do several other kinds of braids if I get bored, either for demo or to teach.  Other variations on a 5-loop braid, of course.  Maybe one of the loop-transfer braids (the 4-loop, probably), since that's fairly easy to teach.

Should I pre-cut yarn in addition to having some for others to cut their own lengths with?  Should I do this in the context of making a project such as a small bracelet?  Or not, and suggest using the braid as a bookmark or keyring attachment or small tie, etc.?

I should probably also re-read a bit on the history of cordage so I can spout a few facts and what-not at people.

I might want to bring a hand-out, taped down, that people can take pics of if they want info on links to good websites and other resources for learning.

Should I bring silly things such as a sprang project?  Plus my knitting, of course.  The inkle loom is probably too fragile to be out in public (i.e. too easy for people to break or steal).

I want to practice some in-hand Andean-style braiding at some point (in addition to everything else I want to do), so that's another potential project for me to bring to entertain myself with.  Hmmm...  is that a possible method that could have been used by people doing the common 4-strand sennit/braid?  Or does it not generalize as easily?  Is the braid easier to make going up from the hand, or down from a tie-on point?

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I also wanted to mention that Noemi Speiser has passed away.  She was 99, I believe -- a good, long, productive life. Her contributions to our knowledge of historic braiding and braiding techniques are immense.  I've learned a lot from her publications and from the people she educated and inspired, and I have plenty more to learn as I continue to explore the world of braiding and other narrow wares, both woven and not.

https://trauer.nzz.ch/traueranzeige/noemi-speiser

Some idle thoughts

No tablet weaving is currently happening, alas.  My tablet weaving space is not currently available.  I've been doing other things but not tablet weaving.

I am thinking about a Next Project, though.  I'm thinking it's going to be the practice band for the tie-down technique, #50 in Tablet Woven Treasures.  Not because I specifically want practice, but because I rather like the motif.  Mervi Pasanen posted a pic of it done in different colors and that sent me looking...

Here's an instagram pic of it:  https://www.instagram.com/p/DMUzit3t7Kj

I do not plan on doing tubular selvedges at this point though it's possible I could change my mind.  I might do the wrapped/braided tassels, though.

I'm also considering some other potential tablet weaving projects.  Nothing I can remember offhand, but I do remember that they're all less fiddly techniques.  Eh, we'll see what happens once the tablet-weaving area is available again.

Speaking of Finnish Iron Age bands, Applesies and Fox Noses has been reprinted, yay!  It's available through a couple of different sources.

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I was going to be teaching some fingerloop braiding this weekend, but a conflict came up so that won't be happening.

I did do some impromptu teaching/demos a few weeks ago.  I showed/taught the 2-loop loop-exchange braid, the 4-loop loop exchange braid (in two colors, for a spiral), and then the 4-loop sinnet (the Skjoldehamn 4-loop braid), also in a two-color spiral.

Although I haven't done much other braiding recently, I was having fun going through some online museum archives and spotting the braids, whether or not I could get enough resolution to see what was going on or not.

One of them is the International Dunhuang Programme.  Here are a couple of links to braids in the collection, including a couple of slings!

https://idp.bl.uk/collection/D244E5464D954BE2855CEDF81EF4077D/

https://idp.bl.uk/collection/EE55C581E46942499DD8DAB5455B588A/

https://idp.bl.uk/collection/1B110B210B104CBC9AAE6E407CE0A7A2/

https://idp.bl.uk/collection/B7289C7590C441ABAA857511168C12A9/

https://idp.bl.uk/collection/48FF9807471C4CD896A5796DB6694AA9/ is a cute little purse that does have some cordage.  I can't quite tell from the photo if it's a twisted cord or a small braid, though my first impression is twisted cord.

The collection has some cool shoes and sandals, too, made from cordage and weaving/interlacing techniques.  There are a bunch of "strings" in the collection as well, most of which appear to be simple bast-fiber cordage.

Ack, there was some other site I'd been wandering through recently with either bands or braids or both, but it's slipped my mind for the moment.  What a reminder to me to keep good notes, perhaps even in this here blog!

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For some reason, I recently watched a few Youtube videos on World War I archaeology, which included a project where the bones of unknown soldiers were recovered.  What was interesting to me (in addition to everything else in the videos) is how badly preserved any textiles are.  It's only been a century (less than a century when some of the digs happened) and not much is left, and what is left is usually fragmentary and filthy.  That gives me a bit of perspective on the much older sites where textiles or textile fragments have been preserved, both the ones where anything left is in bad shape and ones where the preservation is excellent (such as the Dunhuang textiles in the above paragraph).  It also gives me a bit of perspective on the effectiveness of Our Microscopic Friends and how efficiently and effectively they go about their recycling work, and ditto for natural chemical processes.

Leather tended to be better preserved than cloth, or rather, boots often at least partially survived their long decades underground.  Some metal was preserved with a lot being very corroded.  No soft body tissues seemed to be present but bones were still in pretty good shape, some showing terrible injuries that no doubt contributed to the deaths of the people whose bones they were.

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I don't remember if there was anything else I wanted to write down.  I can always add to this post later.  Or write another.

Rib weave tablet woven band from Maksu, Humikkala (a 2-hole pattern from Tablet-Woven Treasures)

This one has appealed to me for a while.  I'm not sure why I decided to do it now, but that's fine.  It was a pretty straightforward project.

The band is in Tablet Woven Treasures by Maikki Karisto and Mervi Pasanen.  It's on p.131, 15. Maksu, Humikkala (KM 8656:H30:1).  They call it a rib-weave pattern.  It's a two-threaded pattern with all the threads in holes A and C, not offset like a lot of other 2-hole patterns.  There are 7 pattern tablets.  Each side has 3 four-threaded edge tablets which are tubular-woven.  (In other words, both sides have tubular edges and all 3 edge cards on each side are part of the tubular edge.)  That makes 13 tablets total, 6 edge and 7 pattern tablets.

It's pretty adorable!  Unblocked, it's about 7/16" wide and about 65" long.

A warp thread snapped in the middle, yikes!  I have no idea whether to blame the cats, the thread quality, or happenstance.  I'm glad I already have experience with this, and indeed, it was not an issue to attach a new warp thread and keep going.  There's one spot where apparently I forgot to do the tubular edge on one of the sides.  I tried to fix that, too, a bit less successfully.  It looks fine on the top but is slightly visible on the bottom if one knows it's there and looks at the right spot.  Or if one runs fingers along the band -- the repair spot feels a bit different, but that's also true of the unrepaired area before I tried to fix it.

The width varies slightly.  I really wanted the red on the edge tablet to show.  But I had to balance that against pulling the weft tight enough for the pattern to look right.  I'm a trifle disappointed that the red edge is not too visible most of the time.  Oh, well, it can be a secret, I guess.  Or I can use this as a strap since both sides of the band are very cute.  Or attach it at the very edge of something and/or attach it loosely so the red can be glimpsed.

I'm glad I did this band, but I think I'm tired of tubular edges for a while.

I have no idea what I'll do next.  Something, I'm sure!

Brocade Sampler, 8th and maybe the last post -- it's finished!

Done!

Here are the last few in-progress pics:

The top photo is a 13-tablet pattern taken from Ecclesiastical Pomp & Aristocratic Circumstances, p.120.  It's the border from band "2. Band on the chasuble attributed to St. Wolfgang, Bishop of Regensburg, 11th/12th century".  I did two repeats.

The middle photo has two motifs.  The one on the left is a 9-tablet pattern from the Saxon Rabbit handout, from Grave 44 mid 6th century, Lyminge, Kent, pattern 10 in the Crowfoot paper.  I did 4 pattern repeats.  The longer one on the right is a 13-tablet pattern from Anna Neuper's Modelbuch, No. 76 (fol 79v), p.56.  I did 4 pattern repeats.

I ran out of background weft at this point.  The new stuff is the same color but maybe a bit thicker and softer.  It doesn't matter.

The bottom photo has the last two motifs.  The motif on the left is a 9-tablet pattern from Roslein und Wecklein, #214, p.179.  I did 2 repeats.  (Hmm, it would look nice with a pearl or pretty bead in the spot between motifs.)  The motif on the right, the last one, is a 13-tablet pattern, a motif adapted from EC&AC, p. 134, pattern "17. Bands on a pontifical skull cap, 11th/12th century".  I did the little diamond motif on the upper left part of the chart, 2 diamonds and then one more row to close up the upper diamond.

I maybe could have gotten one more small motif in, but I decided that was enough, and so endeth my first brocade sampler band.

Fresh off the tablets, unblocked, the band is about 5/8" wide and about 63" long.

There are 25 different motifs.  Wow.  I didn't even get to all of the charts I'd printed out, and also didn't end up making up more of my own patterns.

Many of the motifs look better in person.  The brocade weft is shiny enough that it affects how the pics look.  Not surprisingly, the later motifs tend to look better than the earlier ones I did.

I'm still working on consistency though I'm getting better.  Adding a brocade border stripe, as many of the historic patterns did, probably helps with that since then the slight angle difference at the turning points will be in the edge stripe rather than in the main motif.

I really like the interplay of positive and negative space -- both the brocade and the tiedowns (in the background warp) make interesting patterns.

I'm pretty sure I managed to not accidentally weave any swastikas.

Brocade is pretty easy as tablet-weaving techniques go, at least for the basics, and really about the same, time-wise, as other fiddly tablet-weaving techniques.

I'll definitely do brocade again!  It'll be interesting to do it with silk and/or metallic threads, similar to the materials used for many of the historic bands.

Now to decide what project I feel like doing next.  So many possibilities but nothing is screaming at me.  So I'll do some thinking and browsing of books and websites and what-not to see what appeals.

Brocade sampler, 7th post (and still going....)

Another three samples in my brocade sampler are in this pic.

The left one is  a 13-tablet pattern from Roslein und Wecklein, #169 on p.151.  I did 4 pattern repeats.  The middle one is a 13-tablet pattern from Anna Neuper's Modelbuch, pattern No. 74 (fol 78v), p,54.  I did 3 pattern repeats.  Since the left is 12 rows long and the middle 16, each one is 48 rows long.

The one on the right is a 13-tablet motif from Roslein und Wecklein, #164 on p.147.  I did one repeat because I didn't feel like doing two.  I assume this little motif is a standalone star rather than a repeating motif.  And of course I could have added pearls!

I like all of these.  I'm also able to unweave fairly quickly when I notice a problem, assuming the problem isn't so far back that I prefer to ignore it.  I feel fairly comfortable doing brocade, so this band achieved its hoped-for purpose.  I can add brocade to the list of techniques I have experience with.  I'll do it again, for sure.

What next for this sampler?  Possibly a few more 13-tablet patterns from R+W and ANM.  Maybe another coptic.  Maybe some free-association stuff, or another Birka (if there are others that fit into my band's number of tablets).  I'm also going to see if anything from Ecclesiastical Pomp is narrow enough.

I probably won't bother switching brocade thread since I still have plenty of this stuff left.  But you never know.  And if nothing else appeals, I can plain-weave until the end, or play around with texture patterns on the monochrome warp

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Brocade sampler, sixth post

Wow, I'm really spamming my own blog with every little bit of progress on this sampler brocade band!

This is the brocade motif from the 10th-century Chernigov, Ukraine band.  I used the chart from Aisling's website.  Here is where she discusses it (with a link to the chart): https://aisling.biz/index.php/galerie/historisch/fruehmittelalter/262-chernigov-ukraine and here is the chart: https://aisling.biz/images/brettchenweben/Anleitung/Chernigov.pdf

This is a fairly popular band -- I found a good half-dozen or so examples of it that people have woven.  What is interesting to me is that most of the ones other people have done use a thinner brocade weft that lies flatter, so that the background-warp tiedowns are more prominent and noticeable.

Hmmm.  That is something to ponder for future bands.  I know that the interaction of background warp and brocade weft threads are one of the issues people deal with when weaving brocade.  I might not be doing those kinds of experiments with this sampler band since I don't have thin metallic thread lying around.  But I wanted to note this specifically so that I am reminded on future tablet-woven brocade projects.

The ones I see online also have the extra strip of brocade as part of the edge pattern (19 tablets total rather than the 11 needed for the center motif).  I have no idea if or how that affects things.

There are three repeats above, each 26 rows, and it's an 11-tablet pattern.  I messed up a bit on the first repeat, oops, but it's not too noticeable.  It's a cute pattern.  I like it, though I do prefer other people's versions, where the background tiedowns really stand out against the gold and silver bling.

This was another chart where the tick marks referred to the tiedown and blanks were brocaded squares.  This means I'll be confused for a few rows on the next motif if it's charted in the opposite way!  But again, it's interesting to think about positive vs negative space and how brocading can emphasize either the pattern of the brocade weft or the pattern of the background-warp tiedowns.

I'm probably more than half down with my sampler band.  It's not going to be particularly long or anything.  Most of these little snippets of motifs are a mere few inches long.  I believe all of them are fewer than 100 row, each with 2-4 rows of plain tablet-weaving between them.

Dunno if I'll do any more brocading today.  If not, then there will be another post after the next few motifs are done!  (or if there's something I particularly want to mention, as I did today)