Noobish Nalbinding cont'd

Here's the current bit of nalbinding noobishness, and the first pic I've taken.  I've done a foundation chain in Oslo stitch and have started a new round of Oslo stitch, yay, using only one loop from the previous round.

There are still plenty of oddities, as one would expect.

I'm using some random cotton that's lying around and tying knots to join the pieces.  It's a noob piece; I don't care.

Plans are to keep going until I get bored.  I might do a few increases or decreases, but really, those seem to be exactly how it's done in crochet or knitting, so I don't expect any conceptual difficulties.  Reality might be a bit different, I suppose.

And then I guess it's time for an actual useful-ish project.  After that, I'll experiment with some other stitches and stitch variations, and also do more projects and try different materials.

It still feels like sewing.  I guess there's a bit of magic in sewing interconnected loops into a 3D structure.  I wonder how much chain mail takes inspiration from nalbinding structures and vice versa.

Nalbinding -- first steps (and noobish commentary)

I guess I did decide that it's time to learn nalbinding.

I'm doing foundation chains in Oslo stitch, practicing until it becomes smooth and the stitches consistent.  Then I'll learn the various joining options to make circles or cylinders or whatever, i.e., turning this from a cord to a fabric by joining lengths of cords.  (which is how it overlaps with narrow wares and also some types of basketry, straw hats, etc.)

People kept telling me that it was like crochet but in reverse, sort of.  Nope, it really feels like sewing, not at all like crochet.  It seems to consist of sewing loops that intersect with other loops to lock the loops in place, using your thumb as a tensioning and loop-sizing device.  The different stitches seem to be different ways of intersecting the active loop(s) with previously made loop(s).

Since I've started, I'll keep going, at least until I can make the kinds of things I want to make -- hats, bags, mats, baskets, that kind of thing.  Dunno if I'll bother with mittens and socks and other shaped things.  I am curious to test out a nalbinding hat vs a knitted hat to see if the nalbinding one is more wind resistant.

I'm also curious to try out the different things done with nalbinding by different cultures.  It's one of those "everyone did/does some version of it" kinds of fiber technologies.

I'm using one of my knitting tapestry needles and random lengths of whatever worsted-weight yarn I have lying around that is already in short lengths.  I know that a lot of people like using fat single-ply wool.  A friend of mine who spins and does nalbinding says that in her experience 2-ply works as well or better than single ply.  I also see lots of artifacts made from non-animal yarn (i.e. bast cordage and yarns), so I'll just continue doing whatever I feel like doing, at least for now.

No photos yet -- I keep undoing my yarn and then repeating, to gain practice.  My tension is still inconsistent.  Every now and then I get a brain fart and can no longer identify which loop is which, and then I undo my chain and start over.  Sooner or later I'll be able to get that figured out.

I'm not sure if any of the books out there are worth getting.  I'm watching youtube videos and they are painfully slow.  Sometimes that's very much appreciated, of course -- watching the path of the needle and yarn can help me see what's going on.  I'm also checking out websites.  This is another fiber/textile arts community that is quite international and a lot of very interesting sites/videos are not in English.

I'm sure I'll get much better at the terminology as I go on.  For now, I'll ignore it since I'm not sure which system is more commonly used or which I will want to use.  Oslo stitch has the needle going through one loop behind the thumb and one loop in front of the thumb.  It's considered a nice easy stitch for beginners to learn.

Yay, me.

Dunno if I should use a different needle.  Can I rig up something from a piece of wire or a paperclip?  I know I have plastic tapestry needles around somewhere, though the metal one works perfectly well.  Or I could make a few -- whittling/carving, 3D printing, getting a friend who does laser-cut wood things to do it, etc.

Some of what I want to do with nalbinding are the simpler/earlier variants -- the kinds of simple looping and looping-with-an-extra-twist stuff that is somewhere between nalbinding and netting and basketry.  But I do also want to learn Oslo stitch and some of the other stitches that are used to make, say, warm hats and solid-ish bags and mats.

I'm still wanting to learn netting, but that too seems very straightforward to get started in.  We'll see, I suppose!  A family member has a netting shuttle and some learning materials, and I can use a ruler or paint stirring stick as a gauge to get started.  I can probably learn netting at the same time as nalbinding while also exploring other things I'm gaining skills/experience in.

A few idle thoughts

There's really nothing much in this post.

Trenzas por lazos is the term for fingerloop braiding in Spanish, or at least in Peru/Chile.  (There are some really fun braid-related websites and social media accounts and videos and stuff in Spanish)

I'm thinking that it might be time to learn nalbinding on more than an idle/occasional basis.  The people I know who do it mostly don't live in the area any longer, and there have been requests for classes.  So I think I might go back and learn it well enough to teach others.  Well, as long as it doesn't annoy me too much.  Should that be in this blog or in my knitting blog?  I write about sprang in this blog, and nalbinding is in the category of weird specialty techniques, so maybe it should be here.  Ditto for netting, which I do plan to keep in this blog.  And ply-splitting, too.

But it's traditionally used to make fabric-like items such as hats and mittens/socks, which would put it closer to the knit/spin/dye/weave/crochet subjects that I discuss in the knitting blog.

Dunno.

I'll probably keep it here, because it overlaps with a lot of other techniques that I write about on this blog.  I could always start a new blog for things that aren't quite narrow wares and aren't quite modern.  But I'd rather keep thing simple.  Nalbinding isn't knitting, crochet, or weaving.  That means that basketry will probably be included in this blog, too.  (Hmm, did I write about my foray into learning how to make wa'paas a few years ago?  Or other basketry research and explorations?)

I've been asked to demo braiding this weekend at a Scottish festival, but I'm thinking maybe not this year.  I might still change my mind, especially if they need more people to demo stuff.  But I've had a lot of busy weekends for the past several months, and there are some household things that need to happen soon-ish and that can only happen on weekends.

Again, dunno.

I have a requested tablet weaving commission but it's not due for a few months.  It should be wide enough to be a belt or instrument strap (1" or so) and should look reasonable on both sides.  I'll probably do something rainbow-ish again.

I still have a long list of things I want to do -- braid a few belts, do more sprang, learn netting (as in bags and fishing nets and hammocks), do some more complicated tablet weaving, and plenty more.  I am doing a fair amount of knitting and spinning at the moment, so it's not like I'm completely idle or anything.

I mostly wanted to write this post to include the Spanish term for fingerloop braiding.  It was an advertisement for a class and the video that accompanied it showed fingerloop braiding, so I'm pretty sure "trenzas por lazos" is it.  Braids with bows.

A narrow rainbow striped tablet woven band

This was done as a gift.  It's a simple pattern but of course very effective and fun to weave.  I did this on 14 tablets, all 4-threaded, all warped with just one color per tablet, 2 of each color (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple) and 1 tablet of white on each edge, to match the white weft.  Orientation is alternating / and \ and the turning is all forward.  It looks the same on both front and back.  The warp and weft are all big-box-store #10 crochet cotton.

The band ended up being about 1.5cm wide (9/16") and about 230cm long (about 89-90").  I hope the recipient likes it.

And I suppose it's a color wheel band as much as a rainbow band, depending on what one thinks about the blue/indigo/violet continuum and why the rainbow was defined as having 7 colors in the first place.

There's not much else going on.  I did teach two classes last weekend.  It was fun!

I'm not 100% sure about how I taught lucet.  I taught the no-turn method first and then the turn method.  I think I should have done the opposite, mostly concentrating on the turn method and then at the end showing how it can be done without needing to turn.  Well, I wanted to follow my friend's teaching plan since I was subbing.  And I haven't taught lucet in a class-like setting before.

Someone else at the event showed me something obvious yet very helpful when doing the no-turn method -- instead of wrapping both sides of the lucet and then pulling the old thread over the new, wrap one side, pull thread over, then wrap the other side, pull thread over, etc.  It makes conceptual sense, makes it easier to control tension, and in my opinion, shows more clearly how both the no-turn and the turn methods are really the same.

People learned how to work a lucet and they all seemed to go away happy, so hopefully I was sufficiently effective as a teacher.

The other class on disk braiding (8-strand Z-spiral kongo gumi) went well, too.

What next?  Quite possibly sprang or braiding, though I never really know for sure what will catch  my fancy.  I have such a long list of things I want to do, across so many techniques.

My 200th post on this blog went by last month.  Clearly I didn't notice so didn't do any kind of summary of the past or plans for the future or anything else.

I've learned a lot over the years.  I hope to keep learning.  And of course, having fun in my narrow minded way.

Dunno what I'll do if Google gets too weird with blogspot, but I guess I'll worry about that if and when things start getting weirder.