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.

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