Well, it's done. Yay! By the end, I was very tired of it. I started with roughly 3 yards of warp and ended up with about 83" of band. I could have eked out another few inches, but Yet Another warp thread had frayed and broke, and I was tired of replacing them.
The band's width varies from about 7/8" to about 15/16", which is a bit more than I like to see. Hopefully some of that will go away when I block it. Ditto for the wavy lines which are a result of how I tensioned it and advanced the warp.
As I wrote in the previous post, this is the pattern seen in the Museum of London band 449 (according to Grace Crowfoot) and also in the pre-Roman El Cigarralejo pattern (according to Aisling). It consists of 4-threaded tablets that alternate orientations -- 3Z and then 3S (or vice versa). I used 30 tablets. My aim was to get it to be >1" but obviously that didn't happen. It's a nice looking band anyway.
I used my Robin & Russ Handweaver tablets since I didn't know how many tablets I'd thread up when I started. The thread is the same teal thin cotton 2-ply I've been using, as gifts for a friend. The combination of large tablets and thin loosely-plied yarn was not a great one. It was hard to turn the tablets and clear the shed, and eventually the thread started to fray and pill. My weaving area has a thin layer of blue lint and cotton-plus-cat-fur pills under where the band was being woven.
I think the R&R tablets are going to be retired unless I'm doing a project where I don't have enough tablets of a smaller size. Some are getting worn out, but the real reason is that I do truly prefer the smaller tablets. I probably have a few Linda Hendrickson tablets around that have extra holes for Andean pebble weave, but those are special purpose tablets that aren't going to be in general use. Plus I bought them to support one of the wonderful people who publicize and teach the various techniques of tablet-weaving.
I'm not sure what I'll do next. The Mammen 3/1 twill band is calling to me (Aisling's chart, probably). Or maybe I need to do more cords or the double-face Durham seal tag patterns. Or play with the little 3D-printed rigid heddle someone gave me. Or do more inkle weaving or backstrap weaving. Etc. I'm also gonna be doing a bit more spinning and knitting as the weather cools.
I might try to make more stuff from the teal and gold my friend supplied. We'll see. Right now I'm irritated at it, so it's all gonna be in timeout for a while.
I taught another class recently. I wasn't sure what to teach so I took my cue from the attendees. It ended up being twisted cords and the 4-strand Fill the Gap braid. They had fun and so did I.
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