The plait from the Hedeby Apron Dress Fragment

This has been on my to-do list for quite a while, and apparently today was the day.

Several years ago, I saw this blog post on how to make the plait that was on the apron dress from Hedeby: https://blog.eibeck.de/2014/plait-from-the-hedeby-apron-dress-fragment.html

I went something like "hmm, looks interesting" and mentally noted that I should try it, because, well, it's a braid and I like braids.

Not terribly long ago, someone on Instagram did this braid as a short video: https://www.instagram.com/p/DZpbK2nuE-f/

The original braid was used decoratively, sewn down over a seam or tuck or something on the archaeological textile fragment.  Decorative braids used as trim or sewn over seams are a relatively common thing and the braids can be fun to explore.

Anyway, yes, today was the day.  I cut 6 pieces of cheap acrylic yarn in two colors and braided away.

It is a very easy braid and looks good (and very similar) on both sides.  By varying the tension a bit, I can get it to fold up or lay flat.  No matter what I do, the braid spirals.  You can see that quite easily in the above photo.

No wonder it was sewn down, though it's possible that some blocking (perhaps with a weight) would reduce the spiraling a bit.  Or maybe using yarn with the opposite ply direction would have a small bit of influence, though I suspect not enough to counteract the braid's innate tendency to spiral.

A lot of braids I see from these archaeological things seem to have the over-2/under-2 kind of construction, often with doubled yarn/thread/cords.  I don't know if that means anything or if it's kind of a naturally easy way to make nice-looking braids that are a bit more interlaced than a pigtail-type braid where all the action is in the middle of the braid.  If that makes sense.

The basic plan for this 6-strand braid:

Take 6 braiding elements.  The blog post and instagram post show two colors that are alternating but obviously we can do anything we want.  The one on the apron dress probably followed the alternating color arrangement, given the experiments shown on the blog post.

Mentally (or physically) separate the elements into the left group and the right group.

On the right -- the outermost element goes over 2 elements and gets dropped in the middle.

On the left, the outermost element goes under 2 elements, then over the element that just got dropped in the middle.

Repeat.

The process is very clearly shown in both the video and the blog post referenced above.

Hmm, I wonder what it would look like if I did it more like a simple plait  -- over 2 and drop in the middle, then either over 3 or (more probably) over 2 and under the one in the middle?  It wouldn't be the Hedeby plait, though.  And I probably have done it before but was just fooling around and didn't really think about what I was doing.

Also, would it look different if done by a left-handed person, who might find it easier to do the first move (over 2 and drop in the middle) on the left side rather than the right?  Dunno.  Do I care enough to try?  And if it does look different, does that mean we can make guesses about the handedness of the braider?  Though there are many other reasons why a braider might choose one version over the other, of course.

The blog post person does not claim that this is the only way to have made the plait.  Undoubtedly that's true -- a braid only sometimes leaves evidence of the technique used to make it, and it's not always easy to see the braid structure in a not-so-good photo of a scrap of textile that's been in the ground for more than a millennium.

Anyway, I'm glad I finally played around with this braid, so many years after I originally learned about it.  I should do more of these simple little braids that are on my to-do-someday list.

A quick comment on Fill The Gap braids

I was recently given a book on straw work because the person knew I was interested in braids.  It's from the mid-1970s.

There's a section on plaits where a gap is left.  And, as the author writes, "These are often called Fill the Gap plaits." 

So there you have it.  The very term "fill the gap" comes from straw work, as do the braids.  Dunno how much earlier it dates back to in Straw Land.  In Braid World (i.e., where I learned it from), I first became aware of the term in the late 1990s or early 2000s.

The book shows several Fill the Gap plaits -- four, seven, eleven, and fifteen strands.  The book also has a few of the "multiples" or "move the extra" type braids I was nattering on about earlier, referring to them as "group linked plaits" that have a number of elements divisible by either three or four, plus one more for work.  The book says that up to 49 straws can be used this way by the skilled worker, and they specifically show 7, 9, 10, and 21.

That is all.

The book has some interesting ideas I'll want to play with.  And in general, it is kind of interesting to see how braiding is approached by people using different materials and for different purposes.

It's possible I will do a bit of research to see how far back these straw braids go, though my guess is that I'll have a tough time finding a lot from before the early to mid-19th century and also a tough time finding anything not in a European language and publication.  We'll see.  Dunno if I'll actually do anything just yet, though.

I'm dithering about my next narrow wares project(s), but that's OK, because I do that a lot.

Checks! (tablet woven band from Lieto Ristinpelto grave 86)

The pattern used for this pattern was found in a 12th-13th century grave from Lieto Ristinpelto, Grave 86.  The original was woven tubularly but I chose to do it flat.

It is written about in a paper I found here: https://muinaistutkija.journal.fi/article/view/138060/91515 which is "Liedon Ristinpellon haudan 86 nauhat -- uusia havaintoja ja ennallistuksia" by Jenni Sahramaa, Krista Wright, Maikki Karisto & Mervi Pasanen.  I think this is the source: Muinaistutkija 4/2023: 39–62

The band (or rather, cord) is charted on p.49 (chart by Maikki Karisto) and the reproduction shown on p.54 (woven by Mervi Pasanen).  This particular pattern is not in Tablet Woven Treasures though it is very similar to some of the cords that are in that book.

There are several other very interesting braids and bands described in this article.  Hmmm....

Anyway, as I wrote above, I did this as a flat band instead of a tubular band.  A lot of that was because I'm using my usual big box store #10 cotton, and I thought it would end up too thick as a cord unless I wove it around a core.  If used as piping, it could be sewed shut (possibly around a core) as it was sewn to a piece of fabric.

Also, when I first saw this band (in the photo on p.54 of the article) I didn't immediately realize it was tubular.  I thought it was flat and I liked it that way.

In addition, I was testing out some new tablets for a friend, and I just wanted to do something quick and easy and relaxing, no fighting the band or anything.  I'm still not great at adjusting the weft and beating tension for a cord so that it has a good hand with the weft not showing in the gap between the left and right edges of the warp threads and the cord not ending up too loose.

It's very cute.  I should make this again in different color combinations.  And maybe even as a cord someday.

Twelve tablets, alternating \ and / orientations, 4-threaded, threaded-in pattern, always turned forward.  Yay.  Fresh off the cards, it's about 9/16" wide (13-14mm) and about 68" long (175cm).  Both sides look the same so it can be used as a belt or strap in addition to trim.

The article says that luteolin was found in one of the red threads in the band, so the original color might have been a bit more orange before it was buried.  I followed their color choices because those are effective colors and certainly plausible given the dyes likely to have been available.

As always, I have no idea what I'm going to do next. Another braid or band from Grave 86? Sprang or netting or spinning? More braiding? The band I mentioned a while back from Tablet Woven Treasures, that has half-turns and tie-downs and a diagonal tic-tac-toe/star-like motif? There are always so many appealing options.

More little pinwheels!

This is a commission.  The recipient supplied the fibers -- tencel 8/2, in a pale gray, medium blue, and wine red/purple, from Maurice Brassard and Cotton Clouds.  The pattern is the same 9-tablet pinwheel pattern I did not too long ago, because it's narrow, quick to weave, adorable, and doesn't have a strong/noticeable asymmetry.  The recipient wanted 3m, so that's what I did!  I warped up about 12 feet (somewhere around 144"-150") and the band ended up as 3.15m (125"), and 8mm (5/16") wide.  I used the blue tencel as weft.

This was my first time tablet weaving with tencel.  I was warned that it might get a bit fuzzy, and thus I was worried a bit that it might get shredded on the warp spreader of my betterley loom.  So I used my PVC weaverly loom since the PVC is, of course, smooth.

The band was kind of slippery at times, hard to keep secured while I was weaving.  That was partly because it was narrow so there's not much area for the clamps to clamp.  But the two spring clamps plus two chip clips usually kept things from slipping, along with wrapping the already-finished band a few times around the front PVC area before clamping.  I wasn't very aggressive with the weights, either, though really, I don't pay too much attention to the overall weight as long as the weaving more or less behaves.

Tencel is surprisingly nice to work with and I like the results.  The smooth slipperiness meant that the threads mostly behaved themselves.  Even though the thread is 2-ply, I didn't get a lot of elongation or shortening due to accumulation (or removal) of twist.  There was a bit of lint or poofies, but I think most of that was cat fur, actually.  (The feline weaving assistants were On The Job!)

The tencel 8/2 is a bit thinner than the cheap big-box-store #10 crochet cotton I often use.  I had worried that the weaving would take a lot longer, but I don't think it made a huge difference, not that I kept track all that closely.  Ditto for the width.  I did end up with 8mm wide for the tencel vs 10mm-ish for cotton, which is fine, since the recipient wanted a narrow band.  Warping for a 3m band takes a bit more effort and planning than my usual lengths.  (I have easy set-ups for my usual lengths.)  But it wasn't that bad, and the slipperiness of the tencel meant that the threads weren't able to get too tangled compared to cotton and wool, even with my weaving assistants' best efforts.

Hopefully the recipient likes it.  

A few fingerlooped braids

I've done a bit of fingerloop braiding in the past few weeks.  Here are pics of them with a bit of blather about them.  I tried to pose the braids so that all sides could be seen for those braids where different sides had different appearances.  They're all about 12-13" long counting the knots and fringes.  For future reference -- lengths that are about 36" long (about 17" after folding in half and knotting) will give a braided area about 10-11" long, with enough extra at each end for knots and evenly-trimmed fringes.

One fun thing -- for the most part, when I dropped a loop (or more than one loop), I was able to recover fairly well without disrupting the braids' patterns.  Yay!!!

This is an 8-loop loop exchange braid, done in a spiral color pattern (all the green loops on one hand, all the purple loops on the other).  There's not much to say about this one except that yup, it's a loop exchange braid.  I like how it kind of looks like a twisted cord at first glance.  But it isn't.

This is a 7-loop D-shaped V-fell braid with loops taken unreversed, with 4 bicolor loops (purple/yellow) and 3 purple loops.  As you can see, the bottom is purple and a little chain or zigzag of yellow crawls along the top.

This is a 6-loop unorthodox A-fell braid (the same one as the Sion braid) with the loops taken reversed, with 3 loops of blue, then 1 loop red, 1 loop yellow, and 1 loop red.

Here's another 6-loop unorthodox A-fell braid with loops taken reversed, with four loops of blue, one loop of white, and one loop of green.

I initially tried it with a bicolor loop of green/yellow, and with the loops taken unreversed so they would mirror themselves around the center of the top (with the chevrons).  I didn't like it.  It looked looser than with reversed loops and needed careful tightening, and even then, the colors just weren't popping in a way that I liked.  However, for future reference, the bottom loop of the bicolor loop was the color closest to the center of the braid.

This one is a 7-loop orthodox square braid, V-fell, loops taken reversed (obviously).  It has 4 loops of white, then 1 loop black, 1 loop yellow, and 1 loop black.

And here's another 7-loop orthodox square braid, done as above.  With this one, there is one loop of red and 6 loops that are bicolor black/white, with the black as the top loop (in the initial starting position, 3 loops on each hand).

This one is kind of interesting because it almost looks the same as the white/black/yellow band, in that one side of the square has single-color chevrons and the other side has the trapezoids or harlequin pattern or half-chevrons or whatever you want to call it, with bicolor chevrons.  The way they differ can be seen by looking at the red loop in this braid vs the black loop in the other -- which side of the braid has a chevron vs a half-chevron.  I'm not sure it was worth the effort to set up bicolor loops for this particular color arrangement.

I tried another variation with the bicolor loops on one hand being black loop up and the ones on the other hand being white loop up, but that formed vertical stripes.  Duh.  I liked the half-chevron thing better.  It could be interesting for a future braid, though.

Anyway, much fun was had and the braids are mostly with their intended recipients.  These short braids are a very comfortable size to work with, not a lot of awkward stretching near the beginning while doing braid tightening.  They still take a while to do because big-box store #10 crochet cotton is thinner than worsted weight acrylic yarn.  But it takes less time than DMC Cebelia #30!  And braids done in these finer-than-worsted threads are attractive, in my opinion, with a good gauge/thickness/hand and with color patterns that are at a good scale to be visible but not showing unevenness or other silly stuff.

I used Ingrid Crickmore's site (loopbraider.com) for inspiration on color patterning possibilities, but these are all braids I know how to do without needing to reference all the wonderful fingerloop braid experts out there.  I've labeled this post with all of them anyway and might well have forgotten a few.  After all, that's how I learned how to do these braids, by reading all the sources and then practicing while trying to observe.

I'm not sure what I'll do next.  There's some tablet weaving on my agenda (commissions) over the next few weeks.  Dunno beyond that.

I taught my class last weekend (one-step disk braids, with the 9-strand move-the-extra braid as the example) and it went well enough.  I didn't have a lot of students so I can keep this in my repertoire for a while before I run out of victims.  Heck, by now, it's probably time to re-start teaching braids that were in heavy class rotation a few years ago, since there may well be a new set of people who weren't around then and who might be interested.

The 7-strand one-step disk braid

As I wrote in a previous post, setting up the 7-strand Fill the Gap disk braid as three groups of two strands and one group of one strand didn't work sufficiently well.  The gap kept moving around rather than always staying in the same relative position within its group.

However, setting it up as a "move the extra" rather than a "fill the gap" braid did work!

I set up three groups of strands -- two groups with two strands each, and one group of three strands.  As with the 5 and 9 strand braids, the extra strand jumps to the other side of the next group.

It doesn't matter what slits get used as long as the three groups are separated enough for the braider to know what to do next.

I am pretty sure this way of doing the 7-strand Move the Extra braid creates exactly the same braid as the Fill the Gap braid although it's conceptualized differently, plus or minus a bit of clockwise vs counterclockwise spiraling.  With the Fill the Gap set-up, you find the gap, count back two, and then move the third strand into the gap.  With this one, you jump over the four strands on the other side.  But the actual path of the thread is the same no matter which way you count it.  You move the same thread into the same position.

I'll be doing more thinking and playing around with these various tubular linked braids and one-step disk braids.  For now, though, I want to make sure I understand some of the possibilities well enough to be able to teach the 9-strand braid (and the general concept) this weekend.

.

Even more blathering about, yup, one-step disk braids

More random things (thoughts, things I've found, things I've tried, etc.) since the last post.

I mentioned in my last post some braids used to make slings described by Adele Cahlender as "spiral interlinking", believing them to be an example of the kind of braids the disks can produce.  Actually, upon a closer reading of the book (Sling Braiding of the Andes), they are apparently not quite the same thing as the spiral braids I'm doing.  Cahlender explicitly says that each row is distinct, with the last strand interlinking with the first, to make horizontal rows rather than building up in a spiral.  So, if that's actually what's going on, then these Andean spiral interlinking braids around a core are not the same kind of braid that I'm doing with these disk braids.

I cannot tell if these braids are meant to be an example of what Speiser is describing when she first talks about Tubular Linking (18C).  I think it is?  Because in section 18C.2 Substituting Threads of Contrasting Colours, she very specifically says that this "is seen frequently in Andean slings."  Speiser says that the tubular linking braid "structure grows on a helical fell, thus every subsequent linking 'locks' all the preceding ones."  Helical fell, not a horizontal row  (Speiser calls the thing where the last thread interlocks with the first and the structure builds up in tiers a Crown Sinnet [18D] and says that these are "a species of knotting" rather than braiding, though eh, I'm OK either way.)

So, either Cahlender is wrong, or Speiser is wrong, or different Andean sling braids that are described as using the tubular linking move over a core were done using different techniques, or I am not understand what the two authors are saying and I am wrong.  Well, I'm sure I'm wrong about a lot of things, of course.  Either way, I thought I'd mention it.

I briefly went back through Ashley's Book of Knots.  I believe that he describes braids that are the same or very similar to the ones I'm doing on the disk.  However, he uses different methods, quite possibly because most of his stuff is about rope or at least fairly thick cordage.   There's something about bringing some strands up and some down in his chapter on chain and crown sinnets, starting at roughly 2931 though maybe 2935.  There's also a lot of things that look slightly similar in his chapter on plat sinnets, starting at roughly 3021.

Things get a bit more interesting in his chapter on solid sinnets, where he starts to introduce the idea of disks, whether real or conceptual, and also a braiding stand that can be used with the diagrams and instructions.  I need to look more closely at these solid sinnets where he shows a disk to see exactly what's going on.  It's not a simple arrangement of strands and a simple relatively fool-proof one-step braiding method.

Until it is!  3067 is described as "a round sinnet made on the [braiding] table but without the employment of pins or numbers."  It has a one-step method that is repeated "until sufficient sinnet is made".  This looks like an interesting and easy disk braid though not quite as foolproof as the "fill the gap" or "jump the extra" braids.  You have to be able to identify the most recent disk-braiding move to know which strand gets to move next rather than having an obvious strand that moves and an obvious place to move it to.  3068 is the same as 3067 except the opposite direction (counterclockwise spiral vs clockwise spiral).  I'll have to try these.

I like how the sinnets in this chapter often have diagrams that are very similar to Speiser's track plans to show the paths of the various strands and thus the overall shape and interlockings of the braids.

Since I didn't want to get too distracted, I mostly skimmed Ashley's Book of Knots and looked at the pictures.  Someday I'll do a deeper dive.

I tried the 7-strand fill-the-gap braid by grouping things into three groups of two and one group of one strand.  Eh, it's not as simple as the move-the-extra braids.  The gap is not always in the same side of the groups (i.e. it might be gap-strand or strand-gap in the group).  This one might best be done using the 8-slotted disk or equivalent, where one can see exactly where the gap is without being confused about which strand needs to move into the gap.  I may try it using three groups of two and one group of three, to see how it works as a move-the-extra braid.

As a reminder to all, the disk serves no real purpose in braiding except to organize the strands, keep them in place until you're ready to move them, and to provide a bit of tension.  It is a guide, a tool.  It does not determine the braid structure, and the same structure can usually be made using other braiding techniques.  Which I know but can be confusing to newer people who are still learning by following explicit instructions and who haven't thought about it yet.

Another thoughtlet (i.e. a mini-thought) -- I find it cool that the same braid structures exist in many mediums.  Simple cordage, ropes, yarn, string, straw, basketry, wire, leather, etc...  Each material and purpose, plus or minus available tools, sort of guides how we think about the braid structure and how to create that braid.  Yeah, I know it's obvious.  But it's cool, and part of why narrow wares and braids and all these things (waves in the air in the general direction of the textile/fiber/etc. world) fascinate me.

-----------------

I'll be starting some new cords, probably most or all fingerlooped, to give to someone for a specific purpose.  Fun!  I've done a few already.  This project will get its own post rather than being attached to this post since the topics are somewhat different.

One exciting thing -- I dropped the loops on one of the braids and guessed where I was at in the braiding.  Several moves later it became apparently that I was wrong.  I actually managed to unweave back to where I had been, figured out which loop needed to go on which finger, and recovered where I was in the cycle.  Yay!!!!