The latest two-color two-hole brick-patterned band

 I do like this pattern.  Obviously, since I make it a lot.  This time it's teal on a gold background.  The person wanted two matching bands of a particular length.  So I did X repeats, put in a spacer, then did another X repeats.  There was a bit of warp left over, so after the second spacer, I wove another few inches until I reached a reasonable stopping point.

I am not sure yet, but it kind of looks like my weaving was not absolutely consistent.  The bands might be slightly different lengths.  Rats.  I'll see how it is after blocking.  I can probably re-block it by pinning the two bands together in hopes that the slightly shorter one will stretch out just enough.

The smaller piece will end up being a bookmark or a keychain fob or something similar.

Why is my weaving not consistent?  I need to get that figured out.

I'm making this as a gift, for someone who wants gold and teal.  I might make a few more gold and teal doo-dads, and maybe even a band that is all teal.  All are likely to be simple patterns I've made before.

I do want to dive back into trying new things and doing more complicated patterns.  But for now, it's kind of fun to crank out these quick pieces.  (But why is my weaving not consistent?)

Simple tablet woven belt(s) -- #3 in a series

In this version, the pattern tablets that are in the / orientation are threaded in AC while the ones in the \ orientation are threaded in BD.  Everything else is the same as the previous two bands -- 16 tablets (2 4-threaded edge tablets per side plus 12 2-threaded pattern tablets in the middle), alternating / and \ tablet orientations, same medium brown carpet warp and caramel brown doily leftovers cotton.

I like this one, too.

All three are pretty much the same dimensions -- 5/8" wide (roughly 17mm) and close to 65" long, give or take a bit, depending on how ambitious I felt about squishing in that last half-inch or so of weaving.

I like the different textures from such a seemingly minor variation in how the 2-threaded tablets were arranged.  My least favorite is the ribbed weave but even that one is nice and would make a good background for further embellishment.

I'm wondering about some of the pack-idling monochrome belt patterns that Grace Crowfoot described.  Could some of them have been brick-patterned 2-hole patterns instead?  (I suppose that's easy to determine by counting the number of threads dangling from the ends.)

I think I'm temporarily tapped out on medium brown brick-patterned belts/bands.  The next one will be a different color, at least.  Chances are I'll start playing with some of the 4-threaded monochrome belt pattern variations.  Those will end up wider and thicker, too.  Or maybe I'll flip back to fun color patterns, whether from historic or modern bands.

Simple tablet-woven belt(s) -- #2 in a series

Another simple tablet-woven belt, also monochrome, also 2-threaded, also on 16 tablets (12 pattern tablets, 2 4-threaded edge tablets per side), also alternating \ and / tablet orientation.

For this one, all of the threads and holes were lined up rather than offset.

I've made this one before in acrylic and also in wool.  This is what it looks like in cotton, the same brown carpet warp (and light brown doily cotton leftovers for weft) as before.  The camera still prefers to correct the color to blue/gray, but it really is a medium brown.

I'll see how it looks after blocking.  It's kind of boring now, but I think it would be a good base for fancy buckles or adding little metal doo-hickeys or embroidery to embellish it.

Here's where I originally saw this band: https://www.facebook.com/Lautanauhat/photos/a.470865722996944/1078309905585853  (from a post on August 16, 2016)

The width is the same as the other one, about 5/8" (17mm).  I didn't try to eke out every last inch of weaving, but it's not quite 65" (163cm) long.

Next up?  Dunno.  Maybe I'll do another variation, where both threads and orientations alternate.  (i.e. / tablets are threaded AC and \ tablets are threaded BD).  Or something else entirely, of course.

Simple tablet woven belt(s)

Belts.  Brick-patterned, double-face, pack-idled, simple turned....  I'm in the mood.

First up is this one in brown carpet warp.  It's one of my favorite two-hole simple-minded patterns -- all the tablets are set / and \.  There are two edge tablets per side (4 total) which are 4-threaded.  The 12 pattern tablets in the middle are 2-threaded.  I'm doing the one where one alternates two tablets threaded in AC vs two in BD.  The weft is some leftover doily knitting cotton in a lighter caramel brown color.  All turns are forward.

It was fun, quick, easy, etc., and looks great even unblocked.  It ended up about 5/8" wide (17mm), about 65.5" long (166cm).  The photo color is not accurate -- the warp thread is brown, not gray nor blue.

I like the version where all the pattern tablets are threaded in AC (i.e. all the same instead of alternating) and also the version where the / tablets are AC and the \ tablets are BD.

Double-face looks good in monochrome as does simple 4-threaded all-forward turning, both with alternating / and \ tablet orientation.  Pack-idling is also fun and effective and of course there's 3/1 twill and other amusements.  I'm sure I'll get bored with monochrome and start adding color patterns again soon enough.  Or switch back to doing cords or more of those historic seal tags or fingerloop braiding or something.

Back to basics -- another two-hole two-color brick-patterned tablet-woven band

Well, "basics" for me, that is.  I keep making this pattern.  I like it and I like the results and I've given away pretty much all of the other ones I've done.  This one is also destined to be given away.

Happy sigh.  I do like this pattern.  The photo doesn't clearly show how yellow the background really is.  It's very much University of Oregon green and yellow, which I didn't fully realize until I was already weaving.

The band hasn't been blocked yet, but I measured it as 3/8" (11mm) wide and 68" (172cm) long.  There are 14 tablets, 4 of which are 4-threaded edge tablets (two per side) and 10 of which are pattern tablets that have 2 threads per tablet.

I'll probably warp up another few of these soon-ish, since there are people who want me to make a band for them.

I'm also intrigued by a dead-simple band from Archaeological Textiles Review 55.  It's "a reconstructed tablet-woven band from Drabesu Liepinas burial ground" from an article on the use of color in Latvian textiles from the 3rd to 14th centuries, with the band apparently being from an 11th century grave.  There's nothing even remotely complex about it, just a simple threaded-in dotted pattern that is always turned forward.  Also, there's no guarantee that a reconstructed band accurately reproduces the archaeologic find.  But I find the band pleasing to look at it, and it would be quick to weave.

My cheap-cotton stash is starting to get low.  I'm not sure if I'll backfill colors that run out, or just make the switch to better quality materials.  If it's the second, I'll use the cheap stuff in increasingly weird color combos until I run out, interspersing tablet-weaving, inkle-weaving, and braiding.  We'll see!  It is a relatively nice weight to weave with and the cotton is at least slightly shiny.  It's relatively economic, too.

I'm not sure what's next, but probably more fingerloop braiding mixed with tablet weaving (and other things I do that aren't narrow wares and thus aren't included in this blog).

May's Tablet Weaving

I'm still tablet weaving!  I don't always remember or have the time to post each band.  So here are some photos and comments about weaving since my last post.

This first band looks very similar to one I posted last month.  It's based on the Staraja Ladoga zig-zag pattern.  Some people chart it as a two-hole pattern while others do four-hole.  Some people chart it with three pattern tablets, some four.  Some call for tubular edges, some don't.

I mostly followed the one from Mervi Pasanen and Marikki Karisto's Facebook page, except that I decided I didn't like how the tubular edges looked so didn't bother with them after the first few pattern repeats.  Other versions of this band have been charted by Aisling and Elewys (Elewys also did a four-thread version) and there are other versions as well.  My colors are the same as the previous zig-zag band -- red borders, and purple zigzags on a white background.

I like this, probably because I like the texture of two-hole patterns.  Both of my zigzag bands look good.  I haven't decided if I'm going to try the similar-ish Oseberg pattern (27D and/or 27J2, I believe) or not.  I don't have a lot of this purple thread left.

After that, I did a few more two-hole brick-patterned bands, just because.  Both are patterns I've woven before.  The spot band has red edges and spots on a blue background.  The other one is a monochrome pink band.  The person I gave the previous pink band to was using it as a belt (rather than trim) and commented that it was too wide to easily use as a belt.  This one is narrower, pretty much the same width as the original archaeologic artifact, and will hopefully be pleasing.

My current project is the Felixstowe band.  Or rather, started as the Felixstowe band.  The original band is a small strip of tablet-weaving found inside a buckle of presumed late-Medieval age (based on the ornamental style of the buckle).  Grace Crowfoot published a short article about it, including a sketch and a chart.  She interprets it as an example of the pack-idling technique.

Someone else wrote a blog post about making this band and doesn't say anything about Crowfoot's chart although (a) the chevrons are Vs rather than arrows/carets, and (b) it is obvious that one of the odd cards has joined in with the evens group or vice versa.

I used continuous warping for the cards, using some cotton rug warp where I have two skeins per color.  The tablets are very straightforward to warp with two light and two dark threads per tablet, with the colors in adjacent blocks rather than opposite.  Yay, that went well, even with the cats trying to help.  There are 13 tablets.  I cut the warp to hang it on my warp-weighted loom.  I wasn't tempted to try again to match tablets to automatically work out extra twist.

I've done pack-idling before.  It's slightly tedious but not difficult.

But. The chart doesn't match the sketch.  Or rather, I am not sure exactly what Crowfoot's charting conventions are, and my quick attempt to make my own chart from her sketch didn't work well, either.

So I guess this is going to be a learning experience.

The first learning moment -- the odd-pack card on the left side isn't caught up by the weft.  Aha!  So slide it into the evens pack, and then it is caught when the evens pack is turned.

However, I'm not getting clean diagonal chevrons.  I can't quite figure out how Crowfoot's chart matches her own sketch, even.  Those are two more learning moments, I suppose.  Unweaving is slightly tedious, and the cotton is showing signs of wear already.

I finally consulted Collingwood's The Techniques of Tablet Weaving, p.121-122.

Enlightenment!  He points out that one needs an even number of cards, for just that reason (of catching the weft on both sets of turns).  Crowfoot did say that the band she described was not in great shape and both sides were damaged.  So my guess is that there are edges that are gone and/or this band once had an even number of tablets.

Collingwood gives a chart for part of the chevron (as a diagonal stripe), so I will follow that and adapt it to hopefully end up with the chevron that the original band displays.  I should probably warp up one more tablet, too.

Or maybe I'll just switch to a diagonals or double face or 3/1 twill pattern or stripes/checks or something since the tablets are conveniently warped for any of those.

After this warp is dealt with, I am not sure what's next.  More two-hole?  Diagonals/double-face/twill?  A simple threaded-in pattern  (there's a Coptic pattern that's been calling to me, a dead simple threaded-in pattern of triangles)?  Something else?  We'll see!

More April tablet-weaving

 Wow, I haven't posted for a while.  I have been tablet-weaving, though!

I finished the backstrap-woven band.  I still need to work on how to rig up the backstrap so that I can weave comfortably and also advance the warp without too much hassle (and remove excess twist every now and then).  I do want to have a portable way to weave, so I'm motivated to keep practicing.

Next up are a couple of brick patterns.  Above is a pattern I've done before and will no doubt do again.  I do like this simple two-hole spot band, though I have a tendency to give them away.  This one is white with dark purple edges and spots.  I need to make a few more in different color combinations.

This blue/green one is from a post on the Karisto/Pasanen Lautanauhat/Tablet weaving Facebook page from August 19, 2021.  Mine isn't as cute, sadly.  Instead of lining up the speckles, I offset the middle speckles from the edge speckles.  This improved things a bit.  I'm not sure why I don't like mine as much as the one on the Facebook page.  I'm going to blame wool vs cotton even though that's probably not it.

This next one (above) is a cotton version of a wool band that was found in a grave.  The actual pattern is in a newly published book along with other details of clothing from the person in the grave.  I used a version of the chart that I found on Aisling's blog/website, but added back in the tubular edges that Karisto/Pasanen show on Facebook in their re-creation for the book.  The grave is from 13th century Finland.  It is known as the Ravattula Ristimäki grave 41/2016.  This particular band (or two of them, actually) had attractive tassels and were used as garters.  I made one band and it has no fancy finishes.  Anyway, I like it and I'll probably make it again, possibly in different colors, either with or without tubular edges.

There's one more band that I wove in April.  I saw it as a piece of trim on someone else's clothing and took a quick (and blurry) photo, then reverse-engineered it from the photo.  I eventually talked to the weaver who told me it was a variation on one of the Oseberg bands.  It also looks very similar to one of the Staraja Ladoga patterns.

So....  that was fun to weave.  The above photo is the result, and it looks very similar to the band that inspired it.  The motifs are a little bit elongated since apparently I can't beat quite tight enough to squoosh the lines into right angles, but that's OK.  Also, the band that inspired me has green zigzags while mine are dark purple.

Eventually I did my usual poking around and found a couple of versions of the Staraja Ladoga pattern, including a few two-hole versions.  I charted them up and played around for a bit, creating some variations as well as a version that looks very similar to the band I reverse engineered, except that it is two-hole, of course.  I'm almost done with the two-hole version I settled on and will do a write-up on the blog after it's finished.  I'm still going to look at the Oseberg band that might have been the original weaver's inspiration and see how that looks.  I might try a few variations, too, because it's an attractive motif.

I'm also feeling the urge to make cordage and knots and braids.  We'll see what happens there.

Another thing I did in April was to finally buy the Latvian tablet-weaving book.  It is full of swoon-worthy two-hole patterns to blast my two-hole tablet-weaving obsession to new heights.  There are also lots of other great patterns and motifs and techniques to inspire me in addition to the two-hole bands.  I know not one word of Latvian (except for some doily-knitting terminology) but that's OK.  There are apps and programs to translate important things.  I can puzzle out a few words.  And the charts and photos are sufficient to keep me learning and playing for quite a while.  I'm very glad I bought it.  Balticsmith, the etsy seller who sometimes has them in stock, is sold out again.

Continuing the theme of two-hole tablet-weaving

 Here are the most recent bands.

This one is worsted-weight acrylic, probably something like Red Heart.  I wanted to re-do the band I did in wool, the one from Tablet-Woven Treasures where the \ pattern tablets are threaded AC and the / pattern tablets threaded in BD.

For about half the band, one of the tablets was threaded BC instead of AC.  Oops.  It's pretty subtle, even after I changed the threading.

For an acrylic band, it's not bad.

Someone on a Facebook group mentioned this one.  It appealed to me so I followed the links to see what I could find out.  The description and chart are here.  Apparently it's from a 2022 Advent Calendar on the Historical Textiles website/blog.  It's apparently from 17th century Falun (Sweden).  I was immediately charmed and had to try it.

It's very cute.  It alternates two tablets threaded in all 4 holes with a thin yarn, with two tablets threaded in only 2 holes with thick yarn.  The original was silk but since I don't have silk, that wasn't going to happen.

I found some random leftover pink cotton to use.  The darker pink is a bit thicker than #10 to my eye -- was it perl cotton, maybe?  The lighter pink looks like DMC Cebelia, probably #30 but maybe #20.  The weft is the same light pink thread.

The two thicknesses don't show enough contrast to my eye, but I do like the color and texture contrast.  It's a very elegant little band.

I'm almost certainly going to do this one again.  It could easily be made wider by adding tablets in multiples of four (2 four-threaded and 2 two-threaded).  I like the idea of using different colors for the stripes.  I should also try making the two-hole yarn quite a bit thicker than the four-hole yarn.  I think it would look good in wool, too.

It would seem that I'm not over my obsession with stripes.  Good thing that it can run in parallel (haha) with my other current obsessions.

---------------

In Collingwood's Techniques of Tablet Weaving, he talks about patterns where textural contrast occurs by idling some tablets while turning others.  I've been mulling this over.  There are also the types of patterns and ideas in the "structure weave" chapter in Claudia Wollny's Tablets at Work.  The El Cigarralejo band and the Draft 14 band I did fall under that category, I guess.  So apparently monochromatic bands are still calling to me.  Though so are two-hole bands.  Chances are I'll do a few more two-hole patterns before doing more than superficially exploring other techniques.

Also, and also completely unrelatedly, I've been thinking about possibly creating a quickie class about doing one braid using three different techniques.  The simple four-strand (two loop) fingerlooped braid that I showed in my previous post about simple cords can also be done on a disk/marudai or as a free-end braid in the hand.  Hmmm.

I also found another source for the finger-crocheted cord (aka two strand chain sinnet aka ABOK 2896 aka Zipper Sinnet).  In Tassels: The Fanciful Embellishment by Nancy Welch, in the chapter on cords and braids, she shows something she calls Finger Crocheted Cords.  She says that other names she knows this by is "monkey chain" and "idiot's delight".  The drawings are a little different from the one in Montse Stanley's book, but I'm pretty sure this is the same cord.  Interesting...  And of course she also includes the same 4-strand braids I see elsewhere, done as free-end braiding.  She has a section on fingerlooped braids, too!  She refers to them as Slentre (and says it's called "puncetto" work in the Italian Alps).  I knew that Slentre referred to a style of fingerlooping (fingerloop braiding with some quirks), but I hadn't heard about puncetto involving any kind of fingerloop braiding techniques before.

Explorations in monochrome tablet weaving

I have been continuing to work with the wool yarn this week, exploring some new patterns.

First, I decided to play with structural stuff, where the tablet orientation makes the pattern.  I considered the plain part of the belt of Philip of Swabia -- it's a monochrome checkerboard pattern, more or less.  Here is one version of that texture pattern.  Here is another.

I finally decided that the wool is too heathery to really show the details of the checkerboard.  However, this textural pattern, consisting of vertical stripes rather than checkboards, seemed like it might fit my yarn better.

I used 15 tablets, alternating threaded S and Z (or \ and /), 3 per orientation before switching to the other orientation.  All turns were forward, as I usually do, with no reversals.

Interestingly, and not surprisingly, the yarn was a bit stickier than with the two-hole patterns.  Nothing was felting or anything.  But the threads weren't always thrilled to slide smoothly past each other when opening the shed.  I had to help it along a little bit.

The pattern is subtle in this yarn but I still like it a lot.  This band is quite wide, 1.25-1.5", compared to the two-hole bands I've been doing.  It's also a bit shorter -- there was a bit more take-up, quite possibly because there are four threads per tablet.  I think this pattern would look really nice in a flat, non-heathery color, in a shinier yarn, maybe more tightly twisted.  So it was good for me to play with it and add this pattern concept to my idea bank for when I just want to crank out something simple.

Next up, I wanted to play around more with the idea of two adjacent empty holes per tablet, in the manner of Candace Crockett's Draft 14.  Peter Collingwood discusses this concept briefly in The Techniques of Tablet Weaving, on p.93-94 in my edition.  I charted up a simple chevron.

I was worried that the pattern wouldn't show up well in the heathery gray, so I tried it in some red vintage-store crochet cotton.  I like how it turned out, but I decided it was a bit too subtle for the heathery gray.  Also, the two sides are slightly different, in a more noticeable way than I wanted for the gray yarn.  I used the same red for weft as for warp, and I wonder what it would have looked like with a contrast color for the weft.  Another variation that mildly interests me is doing diagonal lines instead of chevrons -- doing a strip/stripe of the line going one way, alternating with strips/stripes of the line going the other way, with maybe a couple of tablets with 4 threads in between the stripes.  Hmm, someday.

Another interesting comment I found online about these patterns with two empty holes adjacent rather than diagonally opposite, from Phiala's venerable Stringpage site, in the section on two-hole tablet-weaving: "If the tablet is threaded through two adjacent holes, all possible sheds can be produced (both up, both down, one up and one down), making it possible to weave any structure possible with a four-harness loom!"

I'm going to have to think about that for a bit.  In addition, of course, there is Andean Pebble weaving done with tablets.  That uses two colors, but they are adjacent rather than diagonally opposite.  Linda Hendrickson has published some English-language stuff on this, Claudia Wollny discusses it in her book Tablets at Work, and I know there are other resources, in English and other languages, even though I'm not gonna list them all here right now.

Anyway!

Back to the monochrome brick patterns of Karisto and Pasanen!  This time I returned to Tablet Woven Treasures and chose the charming pattern on p.109.  I added a tablet to the left edge to make it symmetric.  Thus it uses 10 tablets.  The two tablets on each edge are threaded with four threads, and the six pattern tablets have two threads each.  The tablet slants alternate \ and /.  For the pattern tablets, the \ tablets are threaded in AC and the / tablets in BD.  The weft is the same as the warp.

I really like this one a lot!  The band turned out to be about 3/4" wide and about 62" long unblocked.  I will definitely make this one again.  As with the other brick patterns I've done, it could be expanded with more two-hole brick-pattern tablets, or by adding stripes and what-not (possibly in different colors) for the edges.

What did I learn?

Uhh....  I still like weaving with wool and no longer fear tablet-weaving with it.  I liked all of these new-to-me patterns and should do them again.  I'd like to explore more of the two-adjacent-hole patterns.  Doesn't the true pebble-weave structure done with tablet weaving use this technique, though of course that concentrates on the color patterns rather than subtle monochromatic structures.  Hmmm.

Cats are not particularly useful weaving assistants.  As always.  But they do like to keep an eye on what I'm doing even when they're not actively helping. I hope that the recipients (a few of these will be gifts) don't mind a bit of cat fur mixed into their bands.

It was slightly difficult to maintain even tension for a few of the bands.  I need to think about that for a bit.  Is it because I didn't put even weight on each card?  Is it because of the slight effort needed in making a shed?  Is it because some cards were \ and some /, some two-hole and some four-hole, and thus there was different take-up when combined with the ply of the yarn?  If so, would weighting individual tablets rather than the entire bundle make that better, worse, or no change?  Will most of it go away with blocking/steaming/ironing/weighting/using?

What's next?  I'm not sure!  I might re-do the wool bands using cotton.  Or I might resume multi-color tablet-weaving or even knock out a few inkle bands.  I'm still enamored with two-hole patterns, so that seems most likely.  But you never know.  Some braids are still calling my name -- that Whitehorse Hill cist burial braid (which seems to be a 13-strand plait which can be done freehand or using fingerlooping) and a 6-strand braid from the Hedeby apron, which has an online site showing it done freehand, but I suspect fingerlooping might have been involved in the original.

More two-hole brick-patterned belts/bands -- in wool!

 OK, I've now tablet-woven using wool.  It was nowhere near as dire as I'd been warned.  Whew!  I used wool yarn that was on cones, intended for weaving.  I believe that it is less elastic than knitting yarn and also probably has a coating/sizing on it to help it flow better.  Whatever the reason was, I had no trouble at all.  I think doing a two-hole band might have helped -- I noticed a bit more stickiness with the band where the threaded vs non-threaded holes were aligned compared to the band where the threaded vs non-threaded holes were diagonally opposite.  (In other words, more stickiness for the band where the threaded holes were all AC and empty all BD, as opposed to the band where some were AC and some were BD.

While weaving, the tension flattened out the pattern.  It showed up better once tension was released.  After the bands were finished, I gave them a long soak and then hung them to dry.  They shortened up and fluffed up a bit more.

The patterns are subtle but I like them.  I like weaving with wool, too.

The white (or natural) band (shown above) is done with some kind of old tapestry wool I found lurking in my stash, from who knows where.  I've been slowly using it for natural dyeing experiments.  It's a cabled construction -- three plies of yarn, with each ply being a two-ply strand.  The pattern is the one from Tablet-Woven Treasures, p.113, from an archeologic find that was used as a belt for a carrying a knife sheath.  I do like that pattern.

The gray wool is Harrisville Designs Highland in Oatmeal, a heathery light gray.  I did the same belt pattern from Tablet-Woven Treasures (see photo above).  Then I did another Medieval belt pattern, the same one I had done in tan acrylic a while back (see photo below).  I like this pattern a lot, too.  The wool doesn't show the ribbed pattern as clearly as the acrylic, but it's still very nice.  I haven't had a chance to soak it yet so maybe that'll help.

I wonder if I should try using less tension to see if I can do a tighter beat, and if that makes a major difference in what the finished belt/band will look like.  As it was, I didn't use a huge amount of weight, but it did stretch out the yarn a bit while I was weaving.

All of the belts are roughly 5 feet long (they were about 5.5 feet when straight off the loom -- they shrunk after soaking) and about 3/4" to 1" wide.  The pattern from Tablet-Woven Treasures uses 10 tablets, and the one from the Facebook page uses 12.

I'm glad that wool turned out to be reasonable to weave with.

I have my eye on a 12-strand braid pattern to make from this wool.  Someone showed me a video, though it's a pretty straightforward pattern.  The braid is from an armband, made from cattle hair and studded with little tin ornaments, from the Whitehorse Hill cist burial.  Sally Pointer used her locally-gathered bast-fiber cordage to braid a belt.  I'm just going to use wool.  It's interesting that the strands and braid have a lot of two-over and two-under moves -- it makes me thing of things like finger-looping and finger-weaving, and, I suppose, some kinds of basketry.  I do not plan to add tin ornaments even though they do look very charming on the original armband.

There are other interesting braided belts out there.  I also have my eye on the 12-strand (also with double strands, as with the Whitehorse Hill braid) Skjoldehamn belt.

For tablet-weaving, I'm still entirely enamored with two-hole tablet weaving.  There are so many possibilities that I've actually had to start a list.  I'm not sure which one I'll do next.  At some point, I do want to explore another technique.  But not just yet.

Two more two-hole bands

Someone wanted to see what I could do with sport-weight cotton (or cotton blends), with an eye towards wider bands that were quicker to make.

The first band is the same spot pattern (from Maikki Karisto's Lautanauhat) I've been making this month, this time in white with black spots.  It's about 5/8" wide.  That is wider than I get with #10 cotton, but still not all that wide.  I'd like to do this again, but add a couple of edge tablets on each side, to probably make vertical stripes.

The second band is monochrome.  I picked a two-hole pattern (Draft 14) that was in Candace Crockett's Card Weaving. It's interesting in that the empty holes are adjacent to each other, rather than being diagonally opposite holes like the other two-hole patterns I've been doing.  The pattern itself is sort of like the letter W.  The outer legs are not symmetric with the inner legs (i.e. this is a W, not the bottom halves of two diamonds).  The entire pattern is 18 tablets -- 4 edge tablets with 4 threads each, and 14 tablets with 2 thread each.

For the weft, I used leftover purple #10 crochet cotton, in hopes that the color of the weft would be a nicely visible contrast with the warp.

The band ended up being about 7/8" wide.

I like the band.  The texture is a bit subtle -- it's very visible from some angles and not too noticeable from others.  The purple blips of the weft are definitely visible and rather charming.  It reminds me of simple brocade except of course it's the absence of warp rather than a supplementary weft making the pattern.  The two sides are similar in their now-you-see-it-now-you-don't texture even though their overall appearance is slightly different.

Peter Collingwood mentions this kind of 2-hole pattern, where the two empty holes are adjacent instead of diagonally opposite, in his section on missed-hole techniques in The Techniques of Tablet Weaving.  He says that "such simple diagonal grooves and chevrons are known on bands from Egypt and Syria" and that "two woolen belts from the Iron Age finds at Vaalermoor and Dätgen are said to show this technique."  Hmm, those are described in some kind of obscure German reference from 1911.  I wonder how hard that would be to find so that I can see the belts for myself?

I'm not so sure about the cotton/acrylic blend I used for the pink belt.  The yarn is a cabled construction, several plies that are each thin 2-plied yarn.  By the last foot or so of the band, some of the thin 2-plies were shredding and making a bit of a mess.  Luckily it's not enough to affect the appearance or strength of the band.  But it was annoying to deal with, and I'm sure it would have continued to get worse if my warp had been longer.  It is possible that the breaks were where the cats had been helping -- they grabbed the yarn a couple of times as I was warping and/or advancing the warp.

Both yarns (the black and white yarns, and the pink yarn) are soft and look like they'll be prone to pilling.  We'll see!

What's next?  Wool, I think.  I haven't tried tablet-weaving with wool yet.  Also, I've seen some interesting monochrome braided bands/belts that could be fun to make.  But you never know what will catch my fancy.

And another... (2-hole, 2-color, brick-patterned band)

 

It's exactly like the last one, except the thrift-store vintage thread is specifically labeled as Knit-Cro-Sheen, and the colors are red and yellow rather than purple and white.

These are kind of adorable and rather addictive.  I must make more.

I am not sure what band pattern will be next except that it'll probably be another 2-hole pattern.

More fun with 2-hole brick-patterned bands

 This one was a ton of fun to make and I very much like the results.

The chart is from Lautanauhat by Maikki Karisto, p.101, band #3.  I don't read Finnish so I have no idea what the text says about the band.  I looked at the pictures and followed the chart.

This is very similar to one of the brick-patterned bands in Tablet-Woven Treasures (by Maikki Karisto and Mervi Pasanen), except that it doesn't have tubular edges.  It's also similar to (or the same as) as some of the bands that have showed up in their Facebok page.

It's a brick-patterned band -- two threads per card for the pattern cards, with alternating AC and BD orientations in a pattern, alternating tablet set, and a couple of edge tablets.  I can see from the book photo that they do not appear to be tubular selvedges.

I used thrift-store vintage #10-ish crochet cotton.  Knit-Cro-Sheen, Aunt Lydia's, etc., are all a bit thicker than #10 Cebelia, so it's probably closer to #7 or #8, not that it matters.  The colors are purple and white.  I used leftover #30 DMC Cebelia white or off-white crochet cotton for the weft.

I didn't bother to do reversals or anything.  I just wove until the twist was too tight, which was around the time I needed to advance the warp anyway.  I worked out the twist as part of advancing the warp.

It took a little while to get used to not doing tubular selvedges since I've done them on the past few bands.

Fun fun fun.  And I really like how it looks, with the little blips of purple on a brick-textured white ground.  I will make more of these in various colors.

What's next?  Probably more two-hole patterns, whether another one of these or something else.  At some point I will want to explore another technique.  But for now, I am entranced by these two-hole techniques, both the brick patterned bands and the Latvian/Estonian/etc.-style bands.

Another Belt Pattern (2-hole)

Here's another belt from the Lautanauhat Facebook page (the people who did Applesies and Fox Noses and Tablet Woven Treasures), this one from a description in a post from  August 16, 2016.  Here is the link to the photo plus written description.  The pattern is described as a "medieval tablet woven band in wool."  It is a monochrome two-hole (or two-thread) pattern that is similar to the brick patterned belt I posted about roughly a week ago.

As usual, I substituted acrylic for wool for this first attempt.  It worked, but undoubtedly wool would have been better.  I really must start using wool instead of acrylic for tablet weaving.  I'll need to learn how to handle wool since everyone warns me that it's sticky, which I assume is a polite term about the threads trying to felt to each other from all the twisting.

The acrylic was rather stretchy.  My guess is that it's not Red Heart, which tends to be scratchier but less elastic.  Since I wove under tension, it'll be interesting to see if/how the band changes as it gets a chance to relax and I block it.  (Well, wet block it.  I know that synthetics don't truly change much unless one uses an iron to change their texture.)  I used the same acrylic for both warp and weft.

The band is pretty cute.  I do not like the reversals much.  They're too obvious and messy.  So...  for the next time I make this, I'll probably work out the twist and keep going forward.  If I flip the cards to reverse again, I'll try to space them out regularly and then put something on the belt in that area to hide or distract from the reversal, to make it seem intentional rather than messy.

I think it would be fun to use two different colors for this pattern to make another series of horizontally-striped bands, this time in 2-hole tablet weaving rather than simple inkle weaving.

I take rather terrible photos, alas.  The weaving is actually consistent (horizontally and vertically) except for the little bloops at the reversals.  Any weirdness is due to a quick photo taken with the band not being carefully flattened and posed and my shadow (of course) in the photo.  That's true for most of the photos I take, alas.

What did I learn?

I like two-hole patterns.  I like these simple belt patterns.  I like brick patterns (which are two-hole patterns that I am using to make belts).  I like a lot of these little throwaway patterns in the Lautanauhat Facebook page (in addition to their fabulous gift patterns, of course).  There are several more of them, often simple little belts and cords and the like that have only a brief written description to go along with the photo or video.  I'm happy that I can work with the description and don't necessarily need a charted pattern.

I don't like flipping tablets.  I don't like reversals that are done merely for the purpose of removing and reversing built-up twist.  I am fine with reversals for other purposes, of course, including historical accuracy as well as for pattern-development purposes.

I used my regular cards (from Robin & Russ Handweavers, so you know they're old/vintage!) since I didn't have enough of the little ones.  They work fine, of course.  I kind of prefer the little ones so I'll have to see if I can find a source for more.

The cats slept through most of this band so weren't available to act as weaving assistants.

What's next?  More two-hole and/or more belt patterns, possibly.  Or maybe something simpler.  We'll see.  I'm eyeing some straightforward diagonal-ish patterns, but also thinking that one of those threads can clearly be removed, with a contrasting color used for the weft to highlight the missed hole.  As usual, we'll see.

Brick-patterned belt (2-hole tablet-weaving)

Tablet-woven brick patterns have intrigued me for a while.  I like their texture.  There are some in Lautanauhat by Maikki Karisto, and more in Tablet Woven Treasures by Maikki Karisto and Mervi Pasanen.

I've also been eyeing the cute little 2-hole patterns with colorful designs that are all over the 'net.

Well!  Let's do it!  (We'll ignore the siren song of Double Face for a little while longer.  And 3/1 twill.  And Sulawesi.  And everything else.  Eventually.  Soon.  Really.)

So this is my first band doing a 2-hole technique.  It gives me a good introduction to working with 2 yarns/threads per tablet.  It's not that working with 2 threads per tablet is inherently difficult, but I often see the warning that tablet management can be tricky because the tablets want to turn partway rather than being well-behaved.

The brick pattern I chose is pattern 6, p.113, from Tablet Woven Treasures.  It looks like a good first pattern for this technique, and also I like it a lot.  It is based on a belt for carrying a wide bronze knife sheath, from a Finnish Iron Age cemetery

It has a mere 10 tablets, which is good, since I want to use the small tablets I was given last year, and I only have 10 of them.  It's all one color, warp and weft and everything.  It's made from "thick two-stranded S-plied wool", which is close enough to Red Heart acrylic for my purposes.  There's only turning forward, no reversals at all.  This is a problem for people who use inkle looms for their tablet weaving, but since I do warp-weighted weaving, it's no problem at all -- I take out the excess twist when I advance the warp and rehang the weights.  The tablet slant is a simple alternating S and Z.  Or / and \, if you'd prefer, since my current convention is to use SZ for charting based on thread slant, and /\ for charting based on tablet slant.  The chart I'm following uses tablet slant, and honestly, I like that better than charts with thread direction.

It has been mentioned that edge tablets can distort the weaving since there are 4 threads vs. the 2 threads in the center tablets.  The solution offered is to turn the edge card when the weft is going through from that side, and to not turn it when the weft is coming through from the other side (or vice versa).  Pattern 6 shows every card turning on every row, so that's what I'm gonna do.  Maybe I'll try something different for the next band.

Tablet management turned out not to be too bad.  I used a bamboo skewer.  I put it in the upper hole closest to me.  Throw the thread, turn the tablets, throw the thread.  Hang onto the pack, turn the tablets, replace the skewer, and repeat.  Every now and then I'd forget, and then, yeah, the tablets would spin like a children's toy.  Since I used the cheat of labeled tablets and had them all lined up before I began weaving, it was fairly straightforward to get them back to where they needed to be.

I enjoyed this project and I really like how it turned out.  The photo is of the unblocked band.  I do hope some of the irregularities will disappear after blocking.  Some of it, of course, is me -- slightly inconsistent width, mostly, along with what looks like a few errors where I caught (or didn't catch) a thread from the other side of the shed.  I can also tell where I advanced the warp -- there are some slight tension irregularities, either from differences in thread tension or from where I clamped the already-woven band or both.

The band is long enough to use as a belt, yay!  I have no idea how much take-up there was since I didn't measure too closely.  The width is somewhat less than 1" though wider than the 12mm of the original archaeologic artifact.  As usual with one-direction tablet-weaving, yarn lengths change by the end of the weaving as the twist either gets tighter or looser based on the tablet slant, plus there are textural differences in the differently-slanted tablets due to this tighter/looser effect.  Some of the irregularity in the weaving might be due to that, too.

I should make more of these, in various colors and various weights of thread/yarn.  Maybe I'll even try wool someday.  A lot of these brick patterns have different colors rather than all one color.  Those will be fun, too.

Next up is a different 2-thread pattern, a design in the Latvian tradition, in crochet cotton.  Tablet management will be a little more complicated, hmmm, since some tablets will turn forward and others backward.   I have more bamboo skewers and we'll see if that's enough.