Today's Sion purse 269 6-loop unorthodox fingerloop braid exploration (so far)

 

The above pics show the fronts and backs of the braids.

Both are unorthodox 6-loop fingerloop braids, A-fell technique, index finger goes through middle finger loop before grabbing the little-finger loop on the other hand.

Both are done with 6 different colors, using 2 strands for each color.  For each strand, I did one long loop, hooked it around my tie-off point, and put a finger into both loop ends.  If that makes sense.

The top one (both pics) was done with the loops reversed, hooked from the bottom of the loops.  The bottom one (both pics) was done with loops unreversed.

Conclusions:

The loops-reversed braid is a little wider and flatter than the loops-unreversed braid.  The loops-unreversed braid is narrower and more domed.

The loops-unreversed braid is less nicely interlaced on the flat side of the braid than the loops-reversed braid, but it's still possible that's something about how I braided and tensioned things.

In the loops-unreversed braid, I can see little peek-throughs of the previous-color strand.  That corresponds to what I see in the Sion purse photos I've been talking about, and is consistent with my initial conclusions about how the drawstring braids and purse strap braids were done.  I can see them in the loops-reversed braid but they're not as obvious.

Now that I've worked with these braids for a while and know what to look for, I can sort of see the flat/interlaced sides of the braids in the Kornbluth photos in addition to the sides with the Vs.

I think that I'm done with this braid for the moment, at least in the context of trying to understand the braids on Sion purse 269.  But I've said that before, so who knows?

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I'm pretty sure my next tablet weaving project is going to be in the Icelandic missed-hole/3-hole technique.  I'm curious about what Wollny calls "waffling" -- areas where the tablets turn forwards and backwards to keep the missing-hole tablet position on the top (or bottom) of the band, so that there are floats on one side and a tabby-looking area on the other.  She has a fair number of charts in Tablets at Work, so I can do a sampler and check out some of the different characteristics of this technique.