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.

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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.

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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!!!!

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.

Initial Musings on the Anglo-Scandinavian Band from Coppergate (York, 10th century)

Long and boring rambling about something I've been reading about lately:

I've been thinking about weaving a version of the Coppergate tablet-woven band.  It was found during an excavation in York.  The actual find is a group of eight tied cords, but the appearance of the cords and how they are arranged imply that this was once a tablet woven band, and that its weft has long since rotted away.  It is artifact 1340 in the report The Archaeology of York The Small Finds 17/5, "Textiles, Cordage and Raw Fibre from 16-22 Coppergate" by Penelope Walton, 1989.

Some of the cords have a space for a missing ply, and that is interpreted to have been a vegetable fiber, also rotted away.  The rest of the cords are silk.

The original colors are hard to determine.  "Most of the cords are now dark brown, but one is a lighter shade, and adjacent to this is the 4-ply cord, consisting of two black and two light brown warp threads. Originally the darker threads were probably red and purple, as dyestuffs madder and ?indigotin plus madder were detected."  Later in the report, it is stated that actual madder (Rubia tinctorum) was used based on properties that make it distinct from other local possibilities such as wild madder and lady's bedstraw.  Indigotin is interpreted as woad (Isatis tinctoria) based on the local presence of woad and also on historical reasons why imported indigo (Indigofera tinctoria) would have been unlikely.

Yellow dyes, if present, would be gone.  The archaeological dig did discover Genista tinctoria (dyer's greenweed) in addition to woad and madder, so yellow is entirely possible as one of the dye components.  Red + blue does seem likely to have been purple.  But the threads that are merely light brown warp threads?  Or the ones with madder?  Were they dyed with yellow or dyed with yellow in addition to the detected dye colors?  If so, the ones with madder could have been red or could have been orange.  Also, madder itself has a range of red-toned colors, including pink, salmon, coral, red, orange, and even brick red.

The light brown silk could have once been yellow or green (if there's some blue left in it).  It's possible that the light brown silk was undyed and thus a golden yellow, but why would they have done that when linen would have been a reasonable substitute?  Or maybe it was a light tan or otherwise some kind of brown, which is also relatively easy color to achieve.  Or a madder or indigo exhaust bath, with a lighter color that has since deteriorated beyond detection.

The missing warp thread, if indeed linen or another similar bast fiber, might well have been white.  I know the Coptic bands tended to use linen for white and dyed wool for colors.  Other Anglo-Saxon bands such as the chasuble for Sts. Harlindis and Relindis mix dyed silk and undyed linen.  Linen is cheaper than silk and makes an easy white, I suppose, especially when bleached.  Dunno if it would have been dyed -- doesn't indigo stick to pretty much all fibers without needing a mordant?

The cords are twisted  ZSZSZZSZ, but in my opinion, it's certainly possible that they might not be in the original order any longer.  Given that there are five Z and three S, it is obviously not as simple as an alternating S Z configuration. 

Here is what the entire band looks like.  This pic is taken from another publication by The Archaeology of York 17/11 The Small Finds "Textile Production at 16-22 Coppergate" by Penelope Walton Rogers.  I'd provide something larger, but alas, the resolution isn't quite good enough to see enough details.  The light-colored cords are definitely light-colored in comparison to the dark ones, though.  And the number of cords varies along the length as, one supposes, some of them disintegrated over the years.  The remaining bits are 1.47m in length.

Here is a section near the top, blown up to almost the limits of reasonableness, which shows the two brown shades that remain in the band after all these years underground.

It might be possible to put some of the cords (i.e. tablets) in order since some of them do seem to be in approximately the same place for the entire length of the band.  But this could be from how it was excavated, preserved, and displayed, I suppose.

I've found some references online to people who have made a plausible re-creation.

https://eoforwicproject.com/2021/09/20/a-10th-century-tablet-woven-band-of-silk-from-york/ wove a band based on the known information.  She credits Alicja of Hrafna Norse Crafts, who did some interpreting and also provided a chart here: https://m.facebook.com/nt/screen/?params=%7B%22note_id%22%3A1411484119062360%2C%22entry_point%22%3A%22MOBILE_POST_ATTACHMENT%22%7D&path=%2Fnotes%2Fnote%2F&state

Hrafna interprets the cords as follows:

1 tablet -- 2 threads of madder + indigotin, 2 lighter colored, all silk

1 tablet -- 3 threads of lighter colored silk, 1 missing (linen?)

6 tablets -- 3 threads of madder (silk), 1 missing (linen?)

She believes that this is an asymmetric band, with a 2-tablet edge on one side (both Z oriented), and alternating SZ red-and-white stripes for the rest.

Other possibilities (I'm just noodling around here):

The 6 tablets with madder could be in the center, and there is one edge tablet on each side.

The 6 tablets with madder could be aligned into chevrons (ZZZSSS or vice versa) rather than alternating S and Z.

The 6 tablets with madder could be aligned to make horizontal stripes, or they could be some other pattern such as diagonal lines or chevrons or spots.

The other two tablets could be somewhere besides the edge(s).

There are definitely bands out there with horizontal stripes and asymmetric bands, so Hrafna's interpretation is perfectly reasonable.  There are also bands out there with chevrons.

Anglo-Saxon brocaded bands I'm aware of are variable, with arrows and diamonds and patterns that I'm not sure what they're supposed to be.  Those are from a different part of the island, though, possibly a different culture, possibly a different time, and of course brocaded rather than threaded-in.

Also, I believe that Hrafna's interpretation is that the madder-and-missing-thread tablets consist of 3 S and 3 Z, with the other two both being Z.  But it's not clear from Walton's text whether this is actually what's going on.

Also also, Hrafna points out that the drawing in Walton's paper only shows seven cords even though the text refers to eight tablets.  So who knows?  Hrafna's interpetation calls for eight tablets.

Additionally,  Walton and everyone else interpret the missing thread in the cords/tablets to have been a bast fiber.  What if it actually is an intentional missing hole?  It's not that likely, I don't believe, but it's not impossible.

Here is the Hrafna interpretation (in natural-dyed wool and undyed linen).

And here is the Eoforwic interpretation that uses the same chart but different colors for the edge tablets (I'm not sure if this is wool/linen or silk/linen).

Added later -- here's a version that is sort of based on the chevron interpretation, from Purple Cat Textile's (aka Katherine Bell's) instagram page at https://www.instagram.com/reel/DSPkSRPDCO6/

All of these are lovely.

I'm playing around on one of the charting apps, trying out various possibilities.  I'm not sure yet what I'll do.  After going through the above ruminations, I feel comfortable with pretty much anything I decide to try.

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Also in Walton's report is a little bit on cords.  There are no obvious fingerlooped braids or anything, but there are 3-strand plaits (the same one people usually use to braid their hair).  The ones that were excavated were made from hair moss or a mix of hair moss and flax stems (i.e. the bast fibers not specifically removed and then spun).  Twisted cords (both plied cords and cabled cords) were also made, from bast fibers and from wool.  There's also a picture of some "knotted wool yarns" that sure looks like a weaver's knot.

Other dyes found in various textiles include kermes and lichen-purple.  The identified species are more likely to have been from the eastern Mediterranean, so chances are that either the dyes or the dyed thread/textiles were imported.  But neither of those was detected on the tablet woven piece.

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Internet searching is REALLY awful these days.  I had downloaded the various reports and stuff long ago, luckily.  I was trying to find the links today using a search engine, and well, no luck.  AI decided I meant something entirely different and would only show me links related to what it thought I wanted.  Or would show me citations in other websites, but not the original article, even though I had bookmarked them as well as downloading them.  It is very sad.  Hopefully I'll have more luck with google scholar and maybe even archive.org, though google scholar does tend to route me to sites where I'd have to pay to access an article/website, sigh.  I mourn the Internet that Was and hope that some enterprising company will resurrect a working search engine that doesn't try to "help" me with AI garbage.  I also hope that the once-free archives that were purchased and put behind paywalls become free to access again.

Another colorful Oseberg band

A friend was admiring the colorful Oseberg band I did a while back.  Another friend has been experimenting with making tablets.  So....  I made another Oseberg band using the new tablets.

The band, fresh off the tablets, is about 1/2" wide and about 66" long.  It really is rather cheerful, cute, and entirely adorable.

Some of my tablet-weaving tablets

This isn't all of them.  People give them to me.  Or they are samples.  Or I like them and want to buy them and try them, or maybe just admire them.

They are posed against a ruler to show the variation in sizes -- from about 1" to about 3.5" (or maybe 3.25").  In age they range from the 1980s/1990s to 2026.  (I'm not sure where my meter stick is, but the foot-long ruler gives a pretty good sense of size no matter what the units are.) 

When I first started tablet-weaving, I bought a few packs of tablet-weaving tablets from Robin & Russ Handweavers.  Those are 3.25"-ish, I think.  That was a very common size for tablets then, and in fact, still is a very common available size.  I used them exclusively for many years since I didn't know any other sizes existed.  I mean, sure, I could have bought the same size tablets but with different company logos on them, but why bother?  I still see some Mary Meigs Atwater tablets around on the used-sales sites -- I wonder how old those are, and if there are older branded tablet weaving cards around?

When someone gave me some smaller tablets several years ago, it was something of a revelation.  Wow, so much easier!  I have small hands.  The smaller cards are easier for me to hold and manipulate.  The threads are easier to release if they get caught up in the corners of adjacent cards.  And there's also a bit less waste at the end of the warp.

The 3D printed tablets were made by a friend.  They are incredibly adorable and fun to use.  At some point, I'll try to get a bunch that all match in their design but are different colors, since different color tablets would be excellent for identifying groups of tablets at a glance.  (i.e. which tablets are numbers 16-22, when they end up needing to be turned in a different direction from their neighbors?)

The Lacis tablets are pretty nice because they are fairly small, and because they are plastic of some sort.  The holes don't wear out as quickly.  I expect someday that they'll become brittle with age and start breaking, but for now, they're nice to use.

I haven't tried the wooden tablets yet, mostly because the sets are fairly small and I've mostly been doing patterns lately that require more tablets than are in the wooden sets.

For some of these tablets, I only have 1.  Or 8.  Or 10, or 25.  I can use them but only for some patterns.  It's nice to have several dozen tablets of a particular type so I can make wider bands.

Someday I'll drag out more of my tablets to photograph.  By then I might have even more than I do now.  I don't buy every brand I see, but I do acquire ones that are cute and interesting and/or different from what I currently have.  I also make them myself, especially when teaching others to tablet weave.  Old cereal boxes have cardboard that works pretty well for that purpose.  I can easily get a set of 12 tablets per box.

I guess I'm a collector of tablet-weaving tablets these days.  Oh, well, could be worse!

Another little distraction -- the tablet-woven band from the Brooklyn-Museum, New York, Inv. No. 15.445

I've been thinking about this rather charming 2-hole pattern for a while.

So I warped it up and decided to use it as a vehicle for exploration and learning.

As you can see, the left side of the band (near the beginning) is narrower and the diamonds are more elongated.  I've been playing with how tight I pull the weft to see the effects on the aspect ratio of the diamonds.  In the middle or a bit to the right, the weft is so loose that it's leaving little bloops along the edges.  Dunno if the band will spread out more or it that's kind of it.  However, the diamonds are not nearly as elongated.  The far right of the above shows how tight I'm currently pulling the weft, which is still loose-ish but not so loose as to have big bloops.

I like the wider band with diamonds that are not as elongated, so that's what I'll keep doing.  I'll probably do a bit more experimenting before trying to settle down to one width.

Dunno if I'll make the far end of the band do something similar (i.e. narrow down) to pretend I meant to do it that way.  Probably not, though I'll see what I feel like doing when I get there.

Another thing that I'm experimenting with is only turning the edge tablets when the weft is about to go through it/them.  That means they turn once every other row, alternating right and left edges.  It's supposed to help with being able to beat the weft in harder.  I think it does that -- the first pattern repeats on this band have the edges turning every row, with the later ones being every other row.  I think there's a bit of a difference.  So that will be useful for a lot of future projects in various techniques.

This band is from Tablet Woven Bands from Egypt by Silvia Aisling Ungerechts, p. 44-45, the tablet-woven band from the Brooklyn-Museum, New York, Inv. No. 15.445.  I recharted it, of course, to make sure I understood what I was doing.

The original band is here: https://brooklynmuseum.org/objects/9178.  The red is wool (almost certainly madder-dyed) and the yellow is linen and probably was once a lot closer to white.  It is labeled as being from Coptic Egypt, 5th-6th century CE.  The original is 3/4" wide but mine is probably a bit wider, not that I care.  I mean, I could get mine to be 3/4" wide, but that would affect the appearance of the lozenges/diamonds.  Chances are that I'd need to use a different material (either fiber content or thickness or how it's spun or what the weft is or some combo) to get mine to look more like the original.  Or perhaps stick it in the ground in Egypt for 1500 years or so.

Mine is the usual big-box-store #10 crochet cotton, both warp and weft.  There are 32 tablets -- 30 2-holed pattern tablets, and 1 4-holed edge tablet on each side.  The pattern is a basic F/B turning sequence, nothing fancy.

The pattern is cute enough but I think I like the little diamond band from the Louvre better, at least so far.  I do love doing (and admiring) 2-hole tablet weaving so I'm not complaining!

Lots of little pinwheels

That went fast!

The band is about 1cm wide by about 170 cm long (3/8" x 68").  It is, of course, reversible.  The photos show both sides of the band.

I'll keep this pattern in my repertoire, to do in various color combinations.  It's a remarkably cute little band.

Here's a quick pic of the chart I made since I'm not sure if I'll delete it, make it public, keep it private, or whatever.  I used Twisted Threads to double-check after drawing it on a bit of graph paper, but honestly, the notation doesn't matter all that much -- this is a very simple pattern that you can chart out using whatever your favorite charting method is, using whatever colors you feel like using.  Turn all forward all the time.

Time for some little pinwheels

This is the start of my next tablet woven band.  It's probably less than 1cm in width.  It's very cute!  And also very easy and relaxing to weave.

I was looking at tablet weaving projects on Ravelry to see what cool things other people were doing and saw a band with this pattern.  It's been on my to-do list for a while, and, well, I decided that today was the day.  I charted it from the person's photo, but also found it a few times in the public patterns on Twisted Threads, and it's also in Tablets at Work (by Claudia Wollny), p.118, and no doubt on other websites and in other books/mags/etc.  The motif looks like little flowers or pinwheels, in my opinion.  The band is reversible, too.

Anyway, I quickly warped it up and started weaving.  I don't need to think, just turn the tablets and throw the weft, repeat until it's time to advance the warp and work out the twist, and then continue.

The band calls for 9 tablets, alternating / and \  orientation, 4-threaded, all-forward turning.  As usual, I'm using big-box-store #10 crochet cotton.  I'm not sure what the weft is -- it's some kind of cotton leftovers that could possibly be the same thing.

Dunno what I'll do with it when it's done.  Dunno if I'll turn my Twisted Threads chart public or keep it private or even delete it -- it's not like this is any kind of unique pattern.

My previous tablet has been soaked in water and wound around a cardboard tube to see if that'll straighten out the slight twist.  Not that it's related to anything else in this post, but I just wanted to mention it.

One reason I'm doing this quick little pinwheels band is because I really am thinking about doing a sampler of various double techniques.  And, because the Universe works this way, someone else has been posting about Icelandic double cloth, which is one of the things I want to explore with the sampler.  I don't understand how or why there's some kind of Collective Subconscious about tablet weaving but I do seem to be part of the hive mind in my own little way.  Eh, probably there are always people posting about all kinds of things, but I mostly notice the ones I've also been thinking about lately. The existence of a Collective Subconscious seems more cool, though.

I'm writing the following paragraphs to remind me of what I want to explore in this potential Doubles sampler.

Double face.  I want to get a rough gauge so I can plan out a different project.  In other words, how long a warp will I need in order to include my planned inscription and related motifs?  Will the warp need to be longer if I want to include everything, or is everything sufficiently short that I will need to add more motifs to get to my minimum desired length?

I want to do the \ / type double-face, and also the square-block double-face, where all the tablets have the same orientation.  For the square-block double-face, I want to see how many tablets I need to actually get squares -- 3? or 4?  Is my gauge/tension different for doing SZ vs ZZ double-face?

I want to look at different edge treatments and their effects on gauge -- all forward turning all the time, versus only turning the side where the weft is about to go through.

I want to explore the thing I've seen where tablets turn 180º to change colors.  Collingwood has a paragraph about this on p.199, I think, in a section talking about "working with half-turns between picks".  There's also something about hopsack using 4 threads per tablet on p.148.

Shelagh has a little something about turning tablets 180º in her pdf about doing one of the double-face Durham seal tags -- she calls it double-faced repp:  https://www.shelaghlewins.com/tablet_weaving/double_faced_repp/double_faced_repp.pdf but I'm not sure it's exactly the same thing.  Something to explore when I get there, I guess.

I want to do Icelandic double-cloth, and to see what motifs look like in this technique vs block-style double-face.  Claudia Wollny has a chapter on this method, and I think Collingwood's discussion starts on p.157, "warp-faced plain weave double cloth".  This too will be an opportunity to see if I need 3 or 4 tablets of each color to make a square block.

Collingwood talks about what might be a different method of doing double-cloth starting on p.129 in a section called "two-strand warp-twined double cloth".

I want to chart out a few capital letters for an inscription in my future different project, and maybe chart out a few specific motifs if I can't find something suitable that someone else has already charted out, plus maybe weave motifs where I have a chart but not what it looks like when woven.  I'll probably use one of Linda Hendrickson's charted alphabets which is why I want to come up with some capital letters to go along with the lower case letters.

I want to continue improving my set-up for doing continuous warping.

I have no plans to do 3/1 twill or Sulawesi or other related techniques for this sampler.  (everything is related to everything...)  The primary purpose is answering basic questions about SZ and ZZ double face and double cloth.

Maybe this is an entirely imaginary exercise.  But maybe I'll do it.

In the meantime, I'll be weaving little pinwheels.

I'm also feeling the urge to do some other things -- braids, slings, sprang, netting, basketry, and some of the simpler things in Collingwood's The Maker's Hand.  Plus all the non-narrow-ware stuff.  Plus I have a few other tablet weaving patterns that I might want to do before I start the sampler, of this same simple type (i.e. fairly straightforward and not requiring a lot of individual tablet manipulation).

Real Life is rather busy, though, and it takes precedence over all the just-for-fun stuff.  Hopefully I can get through enough Real Life things to squeeze in some time to play.

I like zig-zags

I was randomly looking at pics of tablet woven bands and saw one that I thought a friend of mine would like.  So I decided to weave a copy -- same pattern, same colors, etc.  I recharted it to make sure I understood what was going on, then warped and wove.

It's a very striking pattern.  Well, a simple pattern, but the three colors and how they're arranged make for a sharp and striking-looking band.

The pattern is from someone's project on Ravelry: https://www.ravelry.com/projects/Patrick-Zein/warp-6-lingonberry-belt

The little blips in the edging are kind of a medium sage/olive green color.  The other colors are red, black, and white.

This pattern is of course just like so many other zig-zag patterns out there, but the colors really help it stand out.  I'd like to try it in other color combos.  It could also be interesting as a 3-hole pattern.

I used the usual big-box store #10 crochet cotton.  I think the weft was leftover crochet cotton from previous tablet-woven bands rather than leftover doily-knitting cotton.  It was red to match the edges.

This band has a bit of torque to it, probably because the edges all lean in the same direction rather than alternating.  I think I'll alternate them next time I do this kind of band (i.e., / \ / for the three edge tablets).  There are 12 tablets total, 6 for the center and 3 for each edge.  The central pattern tablets are 10F/10B and the edge tablets always turn forward.

The unblocked band is about 1/2" wide and about 65" long.

I had thought my next project was going to be a sampler of "double" techniques.  I guess not!  Another exploration of zig-zags is always a fun thing to do.  I have no idea what my next project will be.

Flash (in a flash)

Well, not quite in a flash, but still fairly quick.  Once it was warped up, all went smoothly.  Warping didn't take all that long, either, considering that there were 27 tablets.

The photo above is unblocked.

The band is about 1-1/8" wide (30mm) and about 63" long (160 cm).  It is indeed reversible -- the photo shows both sides of the band.

I enjoyed making this and should keep it in my repertoire for future commissions.  It's a very easy pattern that looks more complicated than it is.

As I wrote in my previous post, this is the Flash pattern by Catherine Weaver, from her blog: https://www.tabletweavingintheoryandpractice.co.uk/2024/06/flash.html.  Her version is 17 tablets, but I adapted it to be wider by adding 10 more tablets to get another set of 2 pattern motif stripes.  (each stripe is 5 tablets wide, and the stripes alternate twist directions and colors and zigzag placement.)

The color contrast is not quite strong enough but the colors do go well together.

This is the first band I've done in several months.  And, alas, the first one done since the household's most helpful (not) feline weaving assistant passed away last September.  The other feline weaving assistants are not as spry as they used to be and had some trouble getting to the weaving area.  The band is not completely covered in cat hair, and I didn't have a ton of feline assistance that needed to be undone.  It's bittersweet to not need to fend off cats and pick off fluffs of cat fur while warping and weaving.  They did keep me company, at least, even if they didn't sit on the warp.

Dunno what's next.  I guess I'll find out when it happens.  There are things I want to do, but real life takes precedence and there are other things going on that are higher priority for now.  Darn it.

Space! and a bit of Time!

It's been a busy few months.  My little weaving area has been in storage for way longer than planned.

But finally, I've managed to find some time and the weaving area was available, and now I'm set up again for a bit of weaving.

I'm doing a very simple pattern, Flash, by Catherine Weaver, from her blog: https://www.tabletweavingintheoryandpractice.co.uk/2024/06/flash.html

I expanded it by another 10 tablets (another set of alternating light/dark pattern motifs) because I wanted a wider band.  I'm not sure who will end up with it, but it could be a strap for a musical instrument or a case/bag/purse, or a belt, etc., as well as just being used for trim.  So I wanted something that was at least an inch or so wide since that seemed like a more useful width for its eventual purpose.  Having it be reversible was important, and I also wanted something that would be quick to weave.  Usually I set up something like stripes, but this pattern caught my eye.  It's only slightly more complicated than stripes and still has a stripe-like feel.

The colors in the original are red and yellow.  I'm using teal and sage, in my usual big-box-store #10 crochet cotton.  Why teal and sage?  They have good color contrast, I have a fair amount of each color, and I don't use these colors as often, especially for historic patterns, so this is a good opportunity to use them for something cute.  Plus the two colors look good together.

It's going well.  I do like the rhythm of tablet weaving, even something as simple as this.  I'd make this pattern again because it's very striking, lots of bang for the buck.

I took a photo of the band-in-progress but the light is wrong so it's hard to see the pattern motifs.  Eh, not so important.  I'd rather get a post out on this blog (the first in MONTHS!!!) rather than spend a lot of time on my nearly non-existent photo skills.  Therefore, this post is text only, no pics.

Hopefully I'll be able to keep doing stuff after this band is finished.