More blathering on simple one-step disc braids

Here are some further thoughts on these extremely easy one-step disk braids I've been making lately (the 7-strand fill-the gap and others in the Braid Society handouts, the 4X+1 braids I recently did, etc.).  I'm trying to keep track of my thoughts and interesting things I've found so I don't forget.  Not all of these thoughts will end up being useful, correct, etc.  And yeah, I'm probably gonna use disk and disc somewhat interchangeably.

I went looking in Noemi Speiser's Manual of Braiding to see if I could find something to match what I've been doing.

I'm not sure, because Noemi Speiser is a braiding master and I am a wee grasshopper.

But I think these braids are described as Tubular Braids, and in particular, as a subhead under "18C Tubular Linking", namely "18C.3. Three or More Span Floats."  The little diagram shown as 18*26(d) sure looks like the kind of thing that we're doing here, though with different numbers than I've been using so far.

I looked at Ashley's Book of Knots and some of the sections on sinnets and other decorative knots, but I don't yet see the braids I'm doing.

If this is actually what these braids are doing, then the number of strands and number of strands jumped over generalize quite nicely, as long as one jumps a number of other threads without a common denominator.  In other words, every strand needs to move/jump before we get back to the original thread, which is very much like Spirograph patterns.  Or one could think about the holes moving instead of the strands, especially for fill-the-gap braids as opposed to the multiple-plus-extra braid.  (Holes and their migrations are a concept that is useful in semiconductor physics and other materials science applications and theories.)

Speiser's version of that is "Note that the total number of threads has a certain relationship with the number skipped between each linking.  If the pattern is not planned appropriately, you will be perplexed to find some threads floating on the surface, which are not engaged in the linkings at all."

Hmm, that implies some design possibilities, doesn't it?  Threads don't have to engage at all and can float, and perhaps one can switch them in and out of the braiding for interesting effects.  Or add beads and baubles.  Or something.  Also, all of these braids can be done around a core, and if the core consists of a bundle of threads, one can switch core threads in and out, as we do with Andean sling braiding techniques.

And, speaking of Andean sling braiding, there are examples of slings with what Adele Cahlender calls "spiral interlinking" around a core, complete with color substitutions.  She shows it as the two-span float method described by Noemi Speiser as "18C.1. Two Span Floats" and "18C.2. Substituting Threads of Contrasting Colour", where Speiser specifically mentions Andean sling braiding.

The braids I've been doing are easy one-step braids where it's very hard to lose your place.  So...  to make a more general braid, one should be able to arrange the strands in a way that makes it easy to repeat one movement over and over, that can be identified without trouble, so that the braid can be picked up and put down easily without having to keep track of where you were.  I think these are a lot of fun which is why I'm sort of exploring them and thinking about teaching them, including the 7-strand Fill the Gap braid but not including the types of braids which combine moves and/or have groups of strands that don't interact with each other such as kongo gumi or the Andean square braids.

I'm going to go back through Ashley's Book of Knots again.   Also, the braid concepts that are being generalized to yarn/thread disk-braiding seem to be coming from the straw-plaiting community.  But google searching sucks and I can't find sites that discuss more than simple 3-strand and 7-strand plaits.  Harumph.  I know they've gotta be out there whether online or in books.

And aha! I've found a few!  The secret term seems to be "spiral plait".  Here's the 5-strand one that matches the 5-strand disk braid I'm doing: https://www.strawcraftsmen.co.uk/project06.php and here's a link to another that has spiral plaits: https://carrickseeds.ca/articles-resources/ornamental-straw-work/.  Plus I found a few links to videos.  Cool, now that I know, I can hopefully find more.

The spiral interlinking thing also seems to be related to some of the basketry I've seen but I don't want to get into that just yet.

This gives me more ideas to play with though some will be on hold for a while.

A slightly wider tablet woven band in blue, red, and yellow

It's done!

It's about 1.5cm wide, between 235 and 240cm long.  The backside is cute, too.

Narrow two-hole brick patterned band in red, yellow, and blue

I showed a pic of this band shortly after I started it.  Here it is after I finished, though before soaking/blocking.

I included an American quarter and an American dime in this pic, for scale, to help the recipient visualize the actual dimensions.  The band is 7mm wide and roughly 2.4m long (a bit more then 1/4" wide and 95-ish" long).

It's pretty adorable!  As always, I love the texture of the 2-hole brick patterning.

I've started a companion band for the same recipient, in the same colors but a different pattern.  It'll be a threaded-in design, 4-threaded rather than 2-threaded.  The design will be simple, paying homage to some specific existing historic patterns.

Both bands are meant to be plausible for Anglo-Saxon cultures that are post-Roman but pre-Conquest.  Sure, they're cotton rather than wool, silk, or bast fiber (linen/hemp/nettle), but I wanted the dimensions and patterns/techniques to be consistent with the actual evidence.

The one I started takes some ideas that are consistent with the Coppergate/York band, as well as having motifs that are found in other western and northern European cultures of that approximate time.  Well, OK, that approximate time includes a good many centuries and a good many cultures, but I don't need to be too precise here.

The one in the pic above uses a structure and motif from the Finnish Iron Age finds.  There are Anglo-Saxon bands from various cemetery and other archaeological finds that do use this two-hole tablet-weaving technique even though color has not remained and/or wasn't analyzed.

An interesting variety of tablet-weaving techniques were used by the Anglo-Saxons, and they weren't too picky about the material they used, either.  Chances are that people in general just used what was easily available/affordable to them, but given how rare it is to find well-preserved textiles, very little evidence remains, and it is skewed by various preservation biases.

Anyway, given that two-hole tablet-weaving has been documented in Anglo-Saxon tablet-weaving, and given the dyes known and available to people at that time, my little dotted band seems plausible to me.

Brocaded bands, which are fairly well represented in surviving artifacts from that time, show fairly simple motifs ("steps, crosses, and chevrons" according to Nancy Spies).  Also, the Anglo-Saxon metal-brocaded bands tended to be very narrow bands that were either used as headbands or to edge veils, according to how the evidence has been interpreted.  The band I'm starting is not brocaded, but the brocade patterns do give a sense of the kinds of motifs that were popular at the time.

A few of the non-brocaded bands that have remnants of color (shades of mostly decomposed dark brown and darker brown, mostly, with some exceptions) show chevrons or diamonds or blocks, maybe.  The York band clearly had some kind of threaded-in color pattern in a design that was probably fairly simple, whether it was stripes or diamonds or chevrons or zigzags.

Sure, more complicated techniques were known, and wider bands were made, but I'm not trying to re-create something that would have been worn by the wealthiest or highest status people.  (I finally found the papers I'd been looking for by Grace Crowfoot and Penelope Walton Rogers, yay!)

I also looked at a few illuminations.  They show that clothing probably did have patterned borders.  But the designs aren't necessarily ones that are easy to make with tablet-weaving.  So it's either artistic license (since the motifs match motifs on other items in the illumination) or a variety of techniques were used to decorate the clothing borders (such as embroidery or some other kind of weaving or fabric stamping/painting, or maybe these are meant to be tablet woven brocade).  Or both or something else entirely.

The motifs on the illustrations I saw included circles (with a dot inside) and spiral motifs (which would look something like the S on the famous Finnish Iron Age bands, or would look like Kivrim patterns even though those are mostly documented from a much different place and time).  They also showed (in general, not necessarily the clothing) lots of fun interlacements and other ornamental doodlings.  I need to double-check to see what centuries these are from, because it might be from later centuries rather than earlier.  Also, I'm still quite ignorant about all this, so all of the above might be hogwash.

There's also the embroidery evidence, especially in the later centuries.  I don't remember the exact reference but there's some stuff about going towards more flowing and botanic motifs in the later years.  I don't know if that would carry over to the simple bands that edged clothing.  Those motifs would be achievable with 3/1 twill, double-face, Sulawesi, brocade, and some other techniques.  All except Sulawesi are techniques that were known to the Anglo-Saxon tablet-weavers, and there is one band that actually has a Sulawesi-compatible tablet orientation (/ / \ \ / / \ \ etc.) so it's not completely impossible.

I don't want to do anything too time-consuming for this band and I don't want it to be monochrome, so I'm going with a threaded-in 4-holed pattern that uses the 3-and-1 color scheme that the York band does (the York band has several tablets with 3 red and 1 probably-unbleached-linen thread along with tablets that had other color mixes) and is consistent with the kinds of simple threaded-in geometric patterns found throughout that part of the world.

Anyway.

I'm not really trying for true authenticity.  But hopefully the band will be reasonable attractive and will be at least somewhat consistent and/or compatible with  Anglo-Saxon aesthetic mores even though neither of the bands will exactly match a known historic/archaeologic specimen.

And I seem to use lots of parentheses in my bloviating.

A 5-strand braid in the Fill the Gap family

One obvious variation on the 9-strand braid I just finished is a 5-strand braid.

As before, on the side with the extra strand, the lower strand jumps over the other strand on that side and the strand on the side after that.  As before, I did this counter-clockwise, but clockwise works well, too, as long as you commit and/or figure out how to change directions.

The above is a crude diagram, showing how the traveling thread jumps and where its new position is.  After it's in its new position, rotate the disk and continue doing the same thing.

And here is what it looks like so far.

I used 1 blue and 4 green threads this time.  It's a cute braid.

If the 9-strand braid was a 4X + 1 and the traveling thread jumps 2X threads, where X=2, then this is 4X + 1, where X=1.  It probably generalizes pretty well in theory, but in practice, I don't know how large X can be before the resulting braid is too thick and/or doesn't look right.  I also don't know if this works for numbers other that "4" -- what does it look like with 3X+1 or 5X+1, for example.  (3X+1=7 when X=2, hmmm)

Another way to think about this braid and the 9-strand one, and also the 7-strand one, is that the number of threads that get jumped over isn't a common denominator of the total number of strands.  So, for the 7 strand braid, you get a group of 2 and a group of 5.  For the 9-strand braid, it's a group of 4 and a group of 5.  For the 5 strand braid, it's a group of 2 and a group of 3.  Maybe -- I'm still thinking about this idea.  I mean, it does seem kind of obvious that each thread needs to travel along a path that eventually brings it back to where it began while weaving over and under the other threads in some patterned way.  So as long as there's a repeatable path, things like denominators and multiples aren't that important, even with disk braiding.  But maybe it'll be useful for these simple repeat-one-easy-move kinds of braids.

The Braid Society has a write-up of a few other groupings that work -- two different 10-strand braids (with 11 slots in the disk), either jumping 2 or jumping 3; a 14 strand (15 slots) that jumps 3; and a 20 strand (21 slots) that jumps 7.  Those are all fill-the-gap braids as opposed to whatever one wants to call the X+1 braid I'm doing.  (These can all be found through the links at https://thebraidsociety.wildapricot.org/Fill-the-gap)

Probably all of this has been worked out by braid mathematicians and/or engineers of factory braiding equipment.  But it's kind of fun to think it through.  I need to see what, if anything, Noemi Speiser had to say about it.  If I can generalize a track plan I can see what other braiding methods end up with the same structure.  Plus it kind of reminds me of all those old Spirograph things that are (and were) sold as toys.

Another thing about this braid (and probably others in this family) -- when I first pulled on it, it seemed somewhat elastic and stretchy.  But when I tugged on it a bit harder, that seemed to fix the strands in place.  Dunno if that's something to do with the acrylic I'm using, or the tension when I braid, the braid structure, etc.

I do like how simple these braids are to set up and braid.  And so far, they are attractive braids that hold together and all those other things we expect from a braid.

Early May Progress Report

I finished the 9-strand braid I mentioned in the last post.  It turned out well.  I will add it to my braid-teaching repertoire.  I might make a few more and/or experiment with other possible numbers of strands and braiding patterns.  I really like these braids where one just needs to know one easy-to-determine move that repeats over and over without any hassle.

I also started a new tablet woven band.  It's the basic two-hole brick pattern with a dot in the middle that I'm very fond of weaving.  It's based on the similar patterns in Tablet Woven Treasures, though I've modified it slightly, mostly by not doing tubular selvedges.  It's also similar to the one in the Lautanauhat book that I initially found the pattern in (p. 101 band 3, and yes, I have that memorized, apparently).  It's about 7mm wide, something like 8 tablets and the usual big-box-store #10 crochet cotton for both warp and weft.

This is destined to be a gift.

That's it for this post!

A 9-strand braid in the Fill-the-Gap family

I saw this 9-strand straw braid on Facebook ( https://www.facebook.com/reel/1282550473504103 ) and immediately saw how easy it would be to translate to other things besides straw.

It's in the fill-the-gap braid family, where a simple, repetitive, easy-to-memorize pattern leads to a lovely braid.

And indeed it did.

I took a piece of cardboard (square because I'm lazy, though round or other shapes are fine), put a hole in the middle, and cut 16 slots around the edge (4 per side on my square piece of cardboard).  This disk doesn't have to be perfect -- it's only to hold the yarn under light tension.  I did 16 slots so I'd have a blank slot between groups of yarn as I rotated around the disk.

Obviously one doesn't need any kind of disk -- it can be done in the hand, or on a marudai, or by means of whatever other aids you find useful.

Take 9 strands of yarn (or thread or straw or whatever).  Since I'm using yarn, I knotted the end and pushed it down through the hole.  Then I  put two strands per side (each in two adjacent slots).  I put the last piece on one of the sides, next to the two strands that are already there.

Take the outermost strand on the side with 3 strands and jump it over to the other side of the adjacent set of 2 strands.  Repeat.

Here's a rough diagram.  You can see how there are 3 groups of two strands and 1 group of 3 strands.  The strand that is marked in blue jumps over to the other side of the adjacent group of two (the intended destination is shown as a dashed blue line).  Rotate (or not) the disk and continue doing the same thing.

You can go either clockwise or counterclockwise as long as you are consistent with the traveling strand going over four other strands.  Dunno how easy it would be to reverse direction but it's probably not impossible.

I'm sure this generalizes to a lot of other set-ups, too -- quite possibly any multiple of X while using that multiple plus one.  The fill-the-gap works on the opposite principle -- a multiple of X while using that multiple minus one.  There are many other possibilities, of course.  I might have to do some playing around...

I may post a photo of the completed braid, especially if I also do a few more experiments either with different colors or with different braiding patterns.  Or not, because there are other things ping-ponging around in my brain at the moment and one of those might emerge first.

The two-hole band from the Brooklyn Museum

Hmm, I forgot to post a follow-up when I finished the two-hole band from the Brooklyn Museum.

I finished it in about a week, definitely before starting the next band.  It's about 7/8" wide, about 67" long.  As a reminder, it's a 32-card band, two 4-threaded edge tablets (one on each side), and 30 2-threaded pattern tablets.  I think it's a little bit wider than the original, not that I care about that.  The pic above is unblocked and shows both sides.

I didn't change the weft tightness at the other end to match my experiments at the beginning, mostly because I was tired of the band and just wanted to get it done.  Also, with a band this long, it's not hugely noticeable.

I am totally fine with turning edge tablets every other time rather than every time.  I think it might make a little bit of difference in how firmly I can beat the weft, though I don't think it's a huge overall impact.  It did mean that I didn't have to work out excess twist all that often.  The pattern area is twist neutral, so twist only accumulates in the edge tablets.  With turning each edge every other time, twist accumulated half as much.

The band is cute enough.  I rather like the little one I did better, though (the one from the bands in the Louvre).

Other than that, I don't have much to say about it!

Next up -- I don't know.  As usual.  Maybe I'll chart out several possible Coppergate bands (i.e. make charts that are consistent with the evidence I have, which may not be fully accurate).  Or maybe I'll do something entirely different.

I am doing more reading about pre-medieval Anglo-Saxon tablet weaving -- there are a few other papers written by Penelope Walton (Rogers) about cemetery finds.  There's quite a lot of variety in the techniques that were used.  Interesting...  I'm still trying to match some of her terminology to my understanding of what those terms refer to.  But it's all very cool, and I hate that it's so hard to do good internet searching these days to find out more.