Tablet-Woven 3-Hole Sampler Band

It is finished.

I ended up doing all of the 12-tablet charts in the 3-hole chapter of Tablets at Work.  The photos show the entire length of the band, with a lot of overlap from photo to photo to make sure I didn't miss anything.  I'm not showing the backside because it's kind of irrelevant, even though parts of it actually look kind of cool.

As you can see, I used 2 strands of white and 1 strand of teal per tablet.  There are 12 pattern tablets (3-threaded) and 2 edge tablets (4-threaded) per side, for 16 tablets total.  All the pattern tablets had a / tablet orientation (S-threaded) except for the edge cards, which were / \.  The weft was the same color and thickness as the white background threads of the warp.

The chapter (and my band) started out with a bit of the basic background pattern, which is pretty similar to the Sulawesi background pattern (in its 3-hole variation).

Then there were a few diagonals-type patterns that showed the interest added by the line of missing holes.

Then Wollny goes into what she calls "waffling", which is when the hole orientation of the tablet is turned back and forth to keep the hole on top of the band (the reverse side shows a float).  It ends up looking like those parts of the band are woven cloth rather than tablet-woven.  She also goes through the floats that can be added by waffling the pattern color and then each of the background colors.

Then she shows a tacking stitch, which is when two adjacent tablets either turn slightly forward or slightly backwards to bring up the pattern color for just that one throw of the weft.  She shows this as turning the tablets 1/8 turn.  I found that awkward.  So, for one tacking stitch set, I can use my fingers to manipulate the threads on the two tablets, one up and one down or vice versa.  Or, because that becomes annoying with more than one of these, I can do an extra quarter-turn of each of the cards, through the weft, and then return the cards to their former orientation before the next pattern row.  This is pretty similar to the Finnish half-turns that are in some of the Finnish diagonals-type patterns.

The next two motifs have two more fill patterns -- one is the background pattern that we started with, and the other is also a double-face type pattern but with the pattern thread and one of the background threads showing instead of only the background threads.

And that finished the charts shown in the teaching/demonstration part of the chapter.  (Yes, I read the text, too.)  On to Wollny's pattern charts!

I didn't know how much room I'd have, but it turned out that I was able to do every single 12-tablet pattern in the chapter.  I used a few transitional rows between some of the charts, and I had room for one variation of my own devising (only a little bit different from one of Wollny's charts).

For charts that showed pattern repeat blocks, I tried to make sure that at least two pattern repeats were part of my sampler.  For one long chart, I divided it in half, doing the first part, then another pattern, then the second part.  I didn't do a second repeat of that chart, though.

My edition (the first) has an error in the chart on the upper right of p.508.  It looked really strange when I got to it, so I looked it up.  Yup, mistake.

In no particular order, I did charts from the following pages of the 3-hole chapter (which has a dark blue heading and is on p.476-523 of Tablets at Work by Claudia Wollny):

482 (all 3 charts), 485 (charts B and C; A is boring), 488 (all 3 charts), p.490 (A; the other two are not suitable for this band since I didn't want to add brocade), p.498 (the charts that are not repeats of other charts), 506 (tablet set-up and background repeat), 508 (upper and lower right; watch for the error in the upper chart rows 5-6), 509 (upper, middle, and lower left), 510 (upper and lower right), 511 (upper and lower left), 512 (right; I did the first part, did another motif, then the second part), 519 (upper left, upper middle, and upper right), 521 (upper left, upper middle, upper right).

And that's all of the 12-tablet charts I saw in the chapter.  There's one more at the beginning of the chapter but it's roughly the same as one of the other early ones I did.

It's not a particularly difficult technique, but as with anything else requiring a lot of individual tablet manipulation, can be a bit fiddly.  I did a certain amount of unweaving...

My conclusions and thoughts and what-not:

My favorite patterns and tablet manipulations are the very textural ones -- waffling holes plus or minus floats of the threads.  These are what I had thought of as the Icelandic Missed Hole technique.

The ones that are more like traditional diagonals patterns are nice enough, with the little line of holes adding some textural interest.

A lot of the patterns use ideas about modern diagonals -- tablets moving in sets of two, two tablets and two rows at a time.

Three hole feels very different from two hole, though some of that might be because I like weaving the Latvian two hole designs and these three hole designs feel like they are coming from a different designing/weaving tradition.

This technique has some similarities with Sulawesi as well as, of course, diagonals.  And float patterns.  And double-face.  Heck, the more tablet weaving I do, the more connected everything feels to everything else.  All of the techniques are variations of other techniques.  Or so it sometimes feels like.

Wollny gave a very simple/universal/general tablet setup, suitable for anything.  Depending on the design, it might make more sense to have the tablets in a long V formation (the tablets on the left half of the pattern set in one orientation, either / or \, and the other half set the other way) for symmetric designs.  Or set them Sulawesi style, with two tablets set / alternating with two tablets set \.  Or maybe this way ends up working best for bands that will have floats and hole waffling.

I'm glad I did the sampler.  I have some ideas for my own designs, for the next time I do this technique.

And at some point, I'll start adding brocade, since that seems to have been a fairly common element of these bands in the archaeological record.

All of the above are subject to change as I think about it more and gain more experience and knowledge.

What's next?  I'm not sure.

Finished: Band 41 from Tablet Woven Treasures

It is done!

You can see the waviness in this pic (given the way the light was, it highlighted this particular aspect of the band) -- that's pretty typical for patterns made using the diagonals technique.  It'll block out, especially if I iron the band.  I kind of like the three-dimensionality, actually.  Most of the time it's not that noticeable unless the light hits it just right.

Here's another view:

The band turned out well.  Occasionally the edges do pull in more than I had planned.  It required a bit of care to keep the width consistent while doing the tubular edges.  I eventually started using a chip clip just below the weaving zone to keep the band flat, and that helped keep it from curling inward.

I had thought I'd run out of weft partway through and need to switch, but I finished with about 6-8" to spare.  OK, maybe I could have eked out one last pattern repeat, but even the final one I did was kind of awkward.

The finished band is about 5/8" wide, give or take a bit (15mm) and about 65" long (164cm). I like the motif.  Even with a lot of individual tablet manipulation, it was fairly quick and straightforward to weave.

There are 52 pattern repeats of 16 rows each, 11 tablets (7 pattern tablets and 2 edge tablets per side), diagonals technique with tubular edges (both sides) and half turns, and including a few areas where 3/1 twill and double-face techniques are used to maintain the background colors.

Dunno what band will be next.  So many wonderful possibilities....  Plus there's the fingerlooping and other things on my want-to-do list.

Band 41 from Tablet Woven Treasures (from Kaukola, Kekomäki (KM 2489: parts 67-68, 107 (H1))

It's been a while since I've done a Karisto/Pasanen band.  I was flipping through Tablet Woven Treasures for inspiration and decided to do Band 41, which was the top edge of a skirt from Kaukola, Kekomäki (p.190-191).  This is a cute little 4-threaded band that uses the diagonals technique with half-turns (along with a little bit of 3/1 twill and double-face sensibilities) and has tubular edges.  I like the motif.

The book shows the band in blue, yellow, and red.  My cheap cotton stash is starting to get low, so I ended up choosing different colors that I had a bigger supply of.  Mine is aqua/teal, sage green, and burgundy red.  It's pretty reasonable, I think.  (The pic's colors are not quite right, but close enough.)  The weft is random leftovers, as usual.  Since this isn't necessarily going to be a gift, and since both sides have tubular edges, I'm not going to worry about possibly needing to change my weft thread partway through the band.

There are 11 tablets, 7 for the pattern and 2 on each side for the tubular edges.  One thing I'm noticing is that one side curls under a lot more than the other.  Hmmm.  Dunno if it's my technique and tension, or if it's something about how the tablet orientation interacts with the yarn twist and the path of the weft.  I'll try to loosen up a bit to see if it helps.  If it is tension, I'm not sure which direction is tighter than it should be.

It's going pretty quickly.  There's nothing very difficult about it, but I do have to pay attention.  I like it so far.

Mostly unrelated:  There's a book that's been around for a while on Anatolian tablet weaving  (Tablet Weaving from Anatolia and the Ottoman Court).  Sarah Goslee's review (https://www.archaeologicaltextiles.net/pages/anatoliaTW.html) mentions kivrim aka ram's horn style motifs on some of the bands, and that these motifs weren't found on bands (in the book's photo section) that were pre-17th century.  So there's an approximate date for when kivrim patterns were known to exist.  They go back to at least the 17th century in that part of the world.  So there.

The newest tablet-weaving project (Fajum graveyard fragment)

I've been busy with other things these past few weeks.  However, today I started a new band.  As often happens, it wasn't the band I had thought I was going to do next.  It is another one of the Coptic bands in Aisling's book Tablet Woven Bands from Egypt (by Silvia "Aisling" Ungerechts).  It's in the 3/1 Twill section on p.100-101.  The book says that this was a small tablet-woven band on the wrist of a sleeve fragment.  The origin was described as "from the graveyard of Fajum".  She estimates it to be 5th to 7th century and typically Coptic.  The band is currently in the archives of the Skulpturensammlung und Museum fur Byzantinische Kunst, Berlin, Inv. no. 11429.

The band has only 8 tablets, 2 of which are edge tablets.  The design is white zigzags on a blue background with red edges.  Although that sounds simple, 3/1 broken twill and tie-downs (or whatever the opposite of a float is called) are used to create crisp lines.

I recharted the pattern to make sure I understood it.  Aisling warns that she's not always perfect at noting thread orientation vs tablet orientation for her charts, but since she likes to chart top-down and I like to chart bottom-up it ended up being kind of moot.  She does have a row 37 in the chart that seems to be unnecessary.  Also, as charted, there ends up being a white blip on rows 1 and 36 which doesn't seem to be in the woven band that's in the photograph on page 100.  For those two rows, I push down the white thread before passing the shuttle through the shed.  I could have turned back and forward instead but that would have left a float, I believe, and the photo doesn't seem to show a float.

As suggested, I'm using white and blue for the zigzags and red for the edge, and a similar shade of blue for the weft.  I'm using a darker red since the brighter one was not as colorfast as it should have been when I last used it, yikes!  I've only done a few pattern repeats but I like it a lot so far.  It weaves up pretty quickly and seems very rhythmic.  So far it's fun rather than frustrating.

The original is wool and linen, but as usual, I'm doing cotton.  The original is about 1cm wide.  Mine is likely to be a bit thinner than that.

This band is somewhat similar to a band in Tablet Woven Treasures by Maikki Karisto and Mervi Pasanen.  It too is a narrow band with zigzags of different widths.  In their book, it's number 36. Kaukola, Kekomaki (KM 2489:5 H1), p. 176-177.  The graveyard in which this particular fragment was found is thought to have been used during the Crusader Era, 1100-1300.  So that's interesting.

Onward!

Time for Twill

 The weaving area is set up again, and it's time to weave!

I did a continuous warp of 17 tablets (plus 3 edge tablets per side for 23 tablets total) with two light and two dark threads.  This is a great set-up for diagonals or double-face or twill.

My initial plan was to do the latest diagonals pattern posted on the Lautanauhat Facebook page.  It's Merisalo 147.  There's a version in Applesies and Fox Noses (21.  Applesies in a grand sieve, p.66-67) that I've been eyeing for a while.  And now these two new versions!

I warped up with dark blue and sage green cotton and got ready to party.

And I didn't like it.

First I tried the version with half-turns.  Then the version without.  They're both lovely patterns.  But the weaving was just not fun.

Sigh.  I didn't even bother with the version in Applesies.

Now what?  I wanted to weave something!

Well, for a while, I've been thinking about something I read on Aisling's website.  She wrote that after she first learned how to do 3/1 broken twill from a class with Ottfried Staudigel, she did bands that were simple and plain, no color patterning at all.  I thought they were very handsome bands and wanted to make a few of my own.

So that's what I'm doing.  I re-arranged the tablet orientations and thread positions and got started.  Fun!  This is clearly the right thing to be doing, since I keep returning to do "just one more" set of turns, over and over again.  In general, for this type of weaving, I do a set of four turns at a time (i.e. one pattern repeat) and then consider if I am still able to focus or if I need to step away for a minute or two.  If I lose focus, then I tend to spend the next little while unweaving.

I'm using Claudia Wollny's charting and weaving instructions since I might want to add motifs at some point.  She has a bunch of motif charts in Tablets at Work and also in the two Lily Grove books.  There's also the Arlon book, but those are all very wide motifs and I have a mere 17 pattern tablets to play with!  The charts are all modular and work with her general charting scheme, very convenient.

I was reading back through Sarah Goslee's website and noticed her description of the two-pack method for doing twill.  I've been doing the one-pack method so far.  Maybe I'll try the two-pack method for a future band.  Though that one would almost certainly be plain since I don't really like flipping or rotating cards around their axis; I usually prefer to switch the turning direction.  This means I also need to read up on Peter Collingwood's discussion of twill.

It's been quite a few lovely inches of weaving, and I really am starting to think about adding motifs.  The finished band will be around 1" wide 5 to 5.5 feet long, good dimensions for a belt.  A few motifs would look quite nice, wouldn't they?  Hmm, maybe do some color-switching, too, so that I have green motifs on a blue background as well as blue motifs on a green background.  I'm sure I will keep things VERY simple and abstract-ish rather than doing animals.  Twill is slow enough by itself (straightforward, but a trifle fiddly and thus slow) and I'm sure it'll only get slower if I am adding designs on top of the structure.

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I found some Lacis tablets at a local-ish spot.  They have good reviews so I decided to try them.  I think I like them.  They are small (2.5") and white and plastic and come in packs of 25 cards.  I've enjoyed working with smaller cards, so that was a plus.  I wasn't sure if these were laminated cardboard or actual plastic.  They are actual plastic, thin and somewhat flexible.  I expect that they will eventually chip or crack.

The cards are labeled ABCD in a clockwise way, not that it matters.  There's also a hole in the middle of the cards in addition to the ABCD holes.  There aren't any colors or notches or anything else on the edges.  If anyone cares.

My Robin & Russ tablets are getting kind of ratty-looking.  They're cardboard and have woven many bands.  It's kind of fun to see the wear.  I have a lot more of them but I tend to use the ones I've already used, partly to watch this slow deterioration.  I don't do a lot of really wide bands but I have plenty of these cards for when I do!

I must admit that I prefer smaller cards in general.  My hands are relatively small, and also the smaller cards allow me to work in a smaller space since there's not as much room needed to turn the cards.  That's especially true for eking out the last inch or two of weaving when the warp is almost done.  The shed seems to be perfectly reasonably sized for the smaller tablets I've used, so I don't necessarily need a card that is over 3".

I hope someday to return to the Merisalo 147 band because it's gorgeous and because I usually do like doing diagonals patterns.  But for now, it's gonna be twill!  And then maybe some double-face if I don't return to my two-hole/two-thread obsession.  Or maybe Saxon (i.e. pack-idling).  Or Sulawesi.  So many wonderful things;  I am glad that modern tablet-weavers have done so much to resurrect these old techniques and old (and new!) patterns for today's weavers.

Tablet weaving explorations (two quick bands)

I haven't yet started the next two-hole tablet weaving band.

But!  I have been tablet-weaving.  And learning.

First -- I was invited to attend a class for beginning tablet weavers.  The band was the famous (and very suitable for beginners) Oseberg band, 12L1.  I've done that one before.  It's a great pattern and I certainly don't mind weaving it again.

The teacher provided some charming 2" 3D-printed tablets.  I love those tablets.  Mine are purple, but she had them in a lot of different colors.  I begged her for more -- any quantity, any color, and I'd be happy to reimburse her.  We'll see what happens.  But maybe I can get access to a 3D printer from a friend or the local library, and print my own.

The other new-to-me thing about the class was that it was done backstrap-style.  I haven't done backstrap-style tablet weaving in a long time, so it was a nice re-introduction.  This time, since I'm fairly experienced at tablet weaving, it gave me no trouble.  I'm still working on how to work out excess twist when it's time to advance the band and re-tie the warp.  I can do it, but it's not terribly efficient yet.

I don't have a photo of the band or the tablets or the set-up yet.

Second -- I liked the colors I used on the Fine Crooked Knees with Small Applesies band from the book Applesies and Fox Noses.  So I used the same colors on another band from the book, United Chicken Runs.

I have to give it a big eh.  The pattern is cute enough -- spiders and diamonds.  But the colors aren't as effective as they were in the previous band.  It looks kind of southwestern or central-American with the turquoise-and-black juxtaposition.  Or maybe something from 1950s suburban home decor colors.

The band is nicer than it looks in the photo.  I mostly take these pics to jog my memory and to show the motifs clearly rather than artistically.

It's another diagonals-type pattern, balanced (except for the edges), with tablets changing direction in groups of two, with at least two picks after each change.  The colors are two dark, two light, offset diagonally across the warp, very typical diagonals-type warping.

However, I did try a few new things.  I did continuous warping.  Again, it's not completely new.  I've done it before.  But I'm a lot better at keeping things from tangling, so it was a lot more successful.  Also, I managed to keep the clamps steady so that they didn't bend or rotate or otherwise mess with the tension as I went along.  I carefully rotated and stacked the cards before threading them so that I could keep the ABCD markings to use as a guide for weaving.  This wasn't perfect since I still had to do one or two threads separately for the edge cards since I only had two balls of some of the colors.  I didn't want to make mini-skeins, at least not yet.

I also wanted to try linking cards with opposite twist, so that as twist accumulated, it could be pushed to the end of the warp, and the excess twist would get canceled out.  That would be a useful thing to do.  Alas, for whatever reason, this was kind of a dismal failure.  I'm going to have to think about this and try again someday.  For now, I'll just cut the ends of the loops and work the twist out as I usually do.  Harumph.

So....  this post doesn't have exciting photos, but it does describe two bands as well as several things I either learned and/or gained more experience with.

* 2" plastic tablets -- a big yes.  I'd wanted to try colorful tablets with the goal of using them to help me keep track of card numbers  (i.e. put a different color every 5th tablet, or use different colors for edges or the center tablets or different parts of the design, etc.).  I was also curious to see how small of a tablet I'd enjoy weaving with.  So yes to all of this -- small, plastic, colorful, 3D printing.

* Backstrap weaving -- once I do better at advancing the warp and getting everything properly secured and anchored, this will be a good way to increase the portability of my tablet weaving.  Or band weaving in general.

* Continuous warp -- yes, even though I haven't totally perfected my warping skills (i.e. things not getting too tangled), I'm a lot better than I used to be.  It'll be even better if/when I can do the entire warp with this, but it's OK that some cards get a few extra threads added afterwards.  It's even better when I can stack the cards before I warp them so that the tablet markings (ABCD) end up where I want them to be.  Not that I need the ABCD, but it does make keeping track of stuff a little bit easier during the weaving.

* Neutralizing twist in oppositely-slanted tablets -- it's a fine idea, but it didn't work well in my first attempt.  Try this again sometime in the future.

It was also fun to do another pattern from Applesies and Fox Noses.  I'm not sure which pattern from this book I might do next.  Maybe 21 Applesies in a Grand Sieve?  It reminds me of turtles,  Or maybe some kind of lizard.  24.  Reversed Corners is also kind of cute.  It reminds me of a moon and stars.  There are lots of other patterns calling my name, so it could be a while.  Yes, I can and do design my own patterns, but there are a lot of great ones already out there that I find appealing.

Next up will be another two-hole brick-style pattern.  It'll be fun.  I could have done continuous warping for everything except the edge cards but I didn't feel like it.  I'll probably go back and forth a bit with both warping methods for a while as I work out ways to make things easier/better.

A non-two-hole interlude (diagonals-type band)

This is one of the patterns in Applesies and Fox Noses by Maikki Karisto and Mervi Pasanen.  It is pattern 8, Fine Crooked Knees and Small Applesies.  Umm, OK.  It is a very striking pattern, in my opinion.  It's been on my want-to-do list for a long time.  Since I am still dithering about which two-hole (or other) pattern I want to do next, I shrugged and made this one.

I chose cotton from the #10 crochet cotton stash, in a dark color, a medium-ish contrast color, and a light contrast color that is more or less in the same color family as the medium-ish color.  In this case, it meant black, teal, and sage.  The edges turned forward continuously, while the others went forward and back in pattern.  I used white or off-white #20 or #30 cotton for the weft since it was already on the shuttle.  I kind of like the little edge dots one gets from using a contrasting color for the weft.

It is a balanced pattern.  I love this style of pattern, with blocks of tablets having the same set of turns as other blocks, either mirrored or offset, and with the turns balanced.  If that makes sense, because I'm not sure how else to describe it.  (The S-sign pattern, also in this book, is similar in its underlying principles.)

The band is based on 7s (or 14s which of course is just 2x14).  Fourteen tablets.  Fourteen rows in the pattern.  Reversal patterns based on seven  (either 7-7 or 4-3-3-4).

It's in the category of diagonals-type patterns, even with all the odd numbers.  Some people say that Egyptian Diagonals, in the way the term was originally used in English-language card weaving books, always involves moving cards from F to B and vice versa in blocks of two, meaning two cards and two picks.  Obviously that is not required, since this pattern has blocks of three tablets, going from F to B after three picks.

Anyway.  It was fun and relatively quick to make once the underlying logic settled in.  It is a very striking pattern, and I'd be willing to make it again.  It would look amazing in silk, not that I have any.

The smoothness of the band is a bit of a contrast to the pebbly texture of two-hole bands.

It's about 61.5" long and 0.5" wide pre-blocking.  I think the backside is also quite attractive.

And now I'm back to dithering.  There are a couple of two-hole patterns that are whispering to me, and ditto for some monochrome things (some two-hole, some not), plus there are plenty of other wonderful patterns and pattern ideas out there.  Yes, I can do my own patterns if I want to, and I have.  But there are a lot of cool examples out there already, whether they're already charted up or if I need to re-chart them based on a photo or description or partial chart.

Small Estonian Style Band (2-hole)

I have been admiring this little pattern for a long time.  So finally I decided it was time to do it -- a 2-hole (or 2-thread) pattern in the style of those narrow Estonian/Latvian/etc. bands.  This one has 6 pattern cards, and 2 edge cards on each side.

The draft is from the Lautanauhat/Tablet Weaving Facebook page.  They posted this pattern in March, 2016.  I think this is the link, though I don't know what will happen for those who avoid Facebook.  I don't see it posted elsewhere, though I haven't looked too hard yet.  They call it a "small Estonian style pattern."

Mine isn't nearly as cute or well-done as theirs, but that's OK.  I used leftover crochet cotton, probably #10 or so.  The weft is also white, probably #30 crochet cotton.  I gambled on the purple being dark enough to show up well against the white, but in reality, the white is more obvious.  I still prefer the looks of the purple side.  On the reverse side, the white looks a bit fuzzy, no doubt partially due to the white weft and probably also the whole reverse-side reverse-twist thing (is that a thing in this technique?).

This was a lot of fun to weave!  The first repeat was a little rough, but then the internal logic of the pattern became clear, and the rest was fairly straightforward.  The ABCD labels on the tablets kept me where I needed to be and helped me get back on track when things got funny.

I wasn't able to beat it hard enough to make it as compact as the original pattern.  I tried dropping the weight a bit but it made little difference.  I did turn the edge tablets every time, and I've seen the warning that this will elongate the pattern.  Maybe next time I'll do the thing of only turning one edge at a time, except that I kind of like how compact and tightly twisted the edges look.  Maybe wool vs cotton plays a role, too?  Oh, well, I still like this a lot.

The band ended up being roughly 8-9 feet long and maybe 1/4 inch wide.  I did 8 full repeats and then 2/3 of the 9th repeat, to end at a good stopping point.

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Cats are not terribly useful weaving assistants, though the one lying on my neck was less disruptive than the one sitting on the warp and the one playing with the skewer that was holding my tablets.

My warping process went like this:

1. Cut lots of warp yarn, trying to keep it under control so it doesn't tangle.

2. Untangle yarn.  Thread tablets.

3. Drop tablets.  Untangle yarn.

4. Set up everything and do my test run (4 turns forward, using skewers, to double-check orientation and threading).

5. Realize that all the cards are threaded backwards, since I had threaded them as if the side away from me was the beginning, when of course it was the side closest to me.

6. Dither for a few minutes about possibly just flipping and re-arranging the cards.  Decide to re-thread each card.  (I am SOOOO glad I did that.)

7.  Re-tension the tablets.  Play around with weights as if I'm Goldilocks with the three bears.  (This continued for the first two to three pattern repeats, when I finally decided I was OK with what I had.)  Re-do the pattern/orientation testing.

8. Start weaving.

9. Realize after about an inch that I've made grievous errors and I can't easily figure out where I am in the chart.  Undo the weft and return to zero.  Or rather, to the skewers, since they make a nice horizontal surface to start the band against.

10. Start weaving, take two.

I used a bamboo skewer through one of the corner holes on the tablets after each turn so that they didn't rotate or flip or otherwise get frisky.  That proved to be both easy and very helpful.  The skewer went into the upper hole closest to me on the first turn of the 2-turn pair of turns, and the upper hole farthest from me on the second.  I think it really helped to ritualize as much as possible so I would be less likely to make mistakes if I lost concentration, or a cat batted around my row marker, or whatever.

Having labeled cards also proved to be helpful -- I could tell at a glance where I was in the pattern (within reason) and also if the cards were where they needed to be.  I can sort of tell by looking at the thread and the band, but it takes more effort than glancing at the printed letters.

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Here is one of their blog posts (from the Swan River Crafts blog) where they talk about this style of pattern and how to create them.

Eva Sandermann Olsen has a bunch of these little motifs in her pdf booklet Tablet Weaving, p.36-37 along with how to create them.  I think this is a link to the pdf file.

Recently a band from Iceland in this style was posted in various places with re-created charts, including this version from Silvia Aisling Ungerechts' website.  She has other 2-hole patterns on her site.  The various people who post on the various Facebook and other tablet weaving forums have contributed other charts and patterns.

Claudia Wollny's Tablets at Work has a section on 2-hole patterns, though the patterns she included in the book are more elaborate than this narrower Estonian/Latvian style of band.  She too has instructions on how to make your own patterns.

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I'm very glad I decided to try this pattern.  Now I feel comfortable weaving these types of patterns.  I'm also very tempted to start creating my own designs in addition to using motifs created by others.

So....   what's next?  More of these adorable little 2-hole bands?  More 2-hole brick patterns?  Double-face?  An easy threaded-in pattern with minimal individual-card manipulation?  Back to the inkle or tape loom, or make a bunch of braids?  We'll see.

Another Band Done (Diagonals-type pattern)

 And it's done.  I am pleased.

I ended up with about 42 repeats (at 16 turns per repeat), about 160 cm long (64-ish inches), about 3 cm wide (1.25-ish inches).  There was about 4-5" of waste at the beginning and about 9-12" at the end.  I might have been able to eke out one more repeat, but decided that it was too aggravating.  The last few repeats were already aggravating and didn't look as clean and even as earlier in the band.  I can't remember how long my initial warp was, but I think it was in the 2 meter range.  It was probably a bit longer than that if I assume that take-up was roughly 10-20%.

The above photo shows more or less what it looks like.  I think it's striking even with the imperfections.  I have no idea what I'll use it for!  I will need to sew it to something, though, since in a few places near the beginning, the weft is showing on the bottom of the band.  I think it was either near where I was unweaving a mistake or when I was catching bottom threads above the shed and hadn't realized it yet.

By the end of the band, I'd gotten into a nice rhythm.  I'd make this again, probably with 28 rather than 24 cards.  I'd love to get some plastic cards in different colors to make it easier to move cards into the proper packs (forwards vs backwards).  I counted carefully with the monochrome cards, and that was a wise thing to have done.

Things I learned:  Well, I already wrote about the main thing.  It's important to clear the shed properly.  Otherwise, you risk catching the lower threads in the upper part of the shed, and that affects the clean diagonal lines of the pattern.

I tried using chip clips to hold the warp after the warp got too short to handle in my usual way, which is to tie all of it into a knot and hang the half-full gallon milk jug from the knot.  The chip clips were so-so.  Sometimes they'd hold the tension and sometimes threads would slip.  It did keep the threads separated so that the cards were able to turn even in the fairly tight space that was left as I neared the end of the band.

I like doing diagonal-type patterns.  They're pretty straightforward and very satisfying.  Using multiple packs requires a bit more room than one-pack patterns, but that's OK.  It might be easier to do a few more repeats with smaller cards.

On to the next pattern!  Whatever shall it be?  I guess I'll find out when Inspiration strikes.

Fun with Diagonals

I am finally weaving a band that I warped up well over a year ago.  Hmm, well over two years ago, but all of my weaving stuff was in boxes in storage for at least a year of that.

The pattern is from Peregrina1 (that's her user name on Ravelry).  She posted a photo of a lovely band and was kind enough to share the pattern.  It's a diagonals-type pattern.  I didn't have the same colors she used (which are extremely attractive).  I picked colors from what I did have, making sure that the contrast color was indeed contrast-y.  I think I made a reasonable choice from what I had available.

I'm having fun with it.  It felt most comfortable to use my PVC loom, so that's what I'm doing.  I did have to track down all the pieces and remember how to put it together.  Storage, boxes, etc.

This photo shows a few pattern repeats.  You can see the white PVC of the loom and the skewers I used at the start of the band to make sure I've threaded things properly.  The perspective is a bit funky -- the band is relatively consistent in width, honest!

What am I learning?

Well, I'm getting lots more practice with unweaving.  If I'm distracted or tired, it's easy to rotate some cards forward instead of backward and not notice for an inch or so.

I'm also getting yet more reminders that it's important to watch the shed.  It's apparently very easy for me to catch bottoms threads into the top part of the shed without noticing, especially from one of the interior packs of cards.  That became very obvious when I was unweaving.  I think that's part of why the line of the pattern isn't always perfectly clear -- a thread from the lower shed is on the surface next to the proper top threads, rather than remaining properly on the backside, and thus obscuring things.  Or some of that may end up easing out when I block/finish the band -- we'll see.  Or some of it might be due to slight differences in thread tension and shed-beating, leading to slight differences in the lengths of the floats.  I don't know but I'll try to get it figured out and then do my best to improve.

I used the thread that was already on my shuttle as weft.  I like that it's thin -- it looks like #30 crochet cotton, perhaps #20.  But it is white or off-white, and it does show along the edge and sides.  I probably should have chosen something closer in color to the edge threads.  In general, the edges aren't perfect and the width isn't perfectly consistent, but given how long it's been since I've done much, I'm not gonna beat myself up about it.

I love how the pattern is built in sections -- each group of four cards is 8F8B, but each group is staggered by four rows from the adjacent group of four cards.  The outer two groups are 2 cards since the pattern is on 24 cards instead of 28, and I wanted it to be symmetric.  There are also 2 more cards at each side as edge cards, which are all blue, alternating SZ or ZS, and only turned forwards.  I'm using the two-packs method of keeping things straight -- the forward pack and the backwards pack, re-arranged every four turns.

I love how these complex-looking designs arise from such simple rules.  These kinds of bands end up being twist-neutral, too, without needing to reverse the weaving or work out extra twist or anything like that.  And obviously the forward-back turnings can be different  -- 6F6B, or 4F2B2F4B, etc. -- or the groups of cards can be offset by two rows rather than four, etc.

Not every diagonals pattern is like this, or at least I don't think they are, but a lot of the ones I find attractive are.  They also tend to be fairly easy to weave since they're made from such simple building blocks.

The cats, surprisingly, aren't as terrible about helping as they were several years ago.  They watch, but mostly they're content to chew on the wooden skewers at the beginning of the band or to bat around the warp that's hanging off the back end of the loom.  Sometimes they like to sit so they have a close view of the shed when I'm unweaving, making it tricky to determine what is a thread and what is a cat whisker.  One cat likes to lie on my neck, along my shoulders, as I weave, but that's not too big a deal.

I have no idea what I will use the band for, if anything.

The S-Sign Band

In my previous post, I was thinking about the balanced/offset diagonal-type pattern, where the tablets have a balanced X-forward/X-back turning pattern, but some of the tablets are offset in where they begin the turning pattern.

I had mentioned the S-sign band from Applesies and Fox Noses as being in this style.  It has 6 tablets for the main pattern plus 3 for each edge/border, for 12 total.

So I warped it up and wove it, using Aunt Lydia's #10 crochet cotton in purple and white.

I ended up with close to 6' of finished band.  I'm not sure how much I started with, so I don't know how much take-up there was.  I had about 10" or so of waste on each end.  The band itself is roughly 1/2" wide.

The weft was some thinner white crochet cotton from the leftover crochet cotton stash.

The weaving was quite straightforward.  My edges are reasonably straight and the weft-spacing is reasonably consistent.  Not perfect, but reasonable.


Applesies and Fox Noses Drafting Conventions:

Tablet orientation is shown (instead of thread orientation).

The AD line is at the top when starting.

Tablets are numbered from left to right.

Tablets face right.

Tablets are labeled in a counter-clockwise direction when facing right.



Things I learned:

I need a better way of handling long warps.  I keep getting them all tangled.

Cats are not very good assistants if one's goal is to untangle a bunch of cotton threads.

I was trying to do this backstrap-style.  But I got too frustrated with the warp threads since they kept tangling and I couldn't get the tension to be even.  Eventually I just transferred it to a warp-weighted loom.  I untangled the first few feet of the warp, added some weight, and was able to get the tension even enough.  So I guess I'll do backstrap-style weaving with some other band.

Instead of working out the extra twist in border cards continuously turned forward, I flipped them around their vertical axis every now and then.  (This gives the same effect as turning them backwards.)  I think I prefer to work out extra twist or to honestly start turning them backwards.  Flipping was OK but a bit fiddly.

For whatever reason, this was the first time I noticed that Applesies and Fox Noses has the cards labeled in a counter-clockwise instead of a clockwise direction.  Oh, well!  I just re-arranged cards instead of re-threading them.


I'm not sure what band I'll do next.  I still want to do a double-face sampler plus there are a few diagonal-type patterns I'd like to do.  Or maybe I should blather on about braiding for a while.  Or inkle-type band weaving.  We'll see!

Ignorant Ruminations

I've been reading Claudia Wollny's Tablets at Work, while thinking about how she classifies diagonal and kivrim patterns.

She says that patterns using the diagonals technique can change the turning directions of 2 tablets at a time, every 2 picks.  These would be the classic Egyptian Diagonals method that is relatively common these days.

She says that kivrim patterns have some tablets always turning forward, while others turn forward and backward at 4-pick intervals to create hook-like motifs.  The number of tablets in the 4F/4B section(s) does not have to be a multiple of 2 or any other number.

Diagonal-type patterns use 2 colors, AABB, while kivrim patterns can use any number of colors and each tablet may be threaded with different colors.  There may be differences in S/Z orientation and starting arrangements of the colors within each tablet.

I believe that this categorization came about because of the book's way of summarizing techniques.  In particular, the tablet threading and starting positions are very important.  So the AABB one-direction staggered starting position of diagonal-type patterns contrasts with the any-color, any-tablet-orientation of the kivrim-type patterns.

Hmmm....

I think that I would generalize diagonals to include any kind of change in turning direction of individual tablets, in a way that creates hooks, spirals, diamonds, zigzags, meanders, waves, rhombi, etc. due to the threaded-in colors. (yes, this slightly overlaps with double-face, but I don't care.)

Kivrim would be one sub-type.  Egyptian diagonals would be another.

A third sub-type would be Finnish diagonal patterns, where any individual tablet might change turning directions in any pick.  Half-turns are also allowed.

Another sub-type, perhaps, would be modern patterns where some or all the rules are followed or combined or broken at will in order to create an interesting result.  These would include some of the GTT and similar patterns that can be found on pinterest and elsewhere.

For any of the above, twist may accumulate or it may be balanced.  For patterns that accumulate twist, the weaver may also balance the patterns by deliberately reversing the motifs at regular or irregular intervals.

There is another sub-type, which overlaps the above.  That is diagonal-type patterns that involve tablets changing their turning direction, but which are balanced.  In other words, the number of forward and backward turns are equal over the pattern repeat.  After every pick, any number of tablets may change directions -- it doesn't have to be an even number of tablets or an even number of picks.

The simplest ones, possible a sub-type of the above sub-type, are 4F/4B or 8F/8B patterns where different sections stagger the rows in which the forward and backward turns begin.  In other words, tablets 1-4 might be 8F/8B while tablets 5-8 would be 4F/8B/4F, and so on.  The tablets are often but not always groups of 4 tablets.  The offset might often but not always be one half to one quarter.  Although the AABB staggered set-up of Egyptian Diagonals is common, I don't know if it's required.

I mention this particular turning pattern because I've done one like that before -- the Running S band.  I'm considering another one in this style that is a bit more complex.  Before I warp that one up, though, I might do a double-face sampler band.  Or I might do the classic Finnish S pattern.  That one falls into the Balanced/Offset category -- 3 tablets are 9F/5B/5F/9B and the next 3 tablets are 5F/9B/9F/5B.

Several other patterns in Applesies and Fox Noses are balanced/offset.  Several are balanced though not offset.  Some are not balanced at all.

Hmmm...  More thinking is necessary.  Plus more weaving and more charting explorations.

I'm sure my thinking will evolve as I gain more experience and as I explore more both in these weaving techniques and in other complex/advanced weaving techniques.  But this week I am intrigued by the complexity of designs that can be generated with simple, regular balanced/offset patterns.  Plus they're easy to weave since there is no build-up of twist.

Finished! (Egyptian diagonals band)

It is finished, and I like it a lot.

I ended up with about 5.5 to 6 feet of band, not counting the fringes or anything like that.  It's about 1.25" wide.  I did 19.5 pattern repeats.  The extra .5 is so that there are the same number of complete triangles on each side.

It turned out well.  Most of what I wrote in the previous post still stands.  The edges are relatively consistent and so is the weft spacing.  I unwove mistakes that were visible from the front, though the back has a couple of spots where the weft is visible over the border cards.  I guess I missed the shed on those picks...

One book refers to Egyptian diagonals as "double diagonals"  since pairs of cards may switch turning directions after every 2 picks.  I think I like that name for it.  Finnish diagonals don't always fall into that category, though.  Not that everything needs to rigidly fit into a specific category, of course!

I still need to finish the warp ends and maybe wet-block the band to remove the slight ripple (though I like the ripple, actually).  But I won't do that until I decide what, if anything, I want to do with the band.

What shall I work on next?  When will this blog see another post?  Time will tell.

Still Narrow-Minded (Egyptian Diagonals Band)

OK, so it's been a while since I've posted.  No big deal.  I'm back with another round of playing with narrow wares and posting about them.

Since my last blog post, I have bought a few books.  Applesies and Fox Noses, by Maikki Karisto and Mervi Pasanen, is a lot of fun.  I bought it a while back even though I haven't made much from it yet.  I also follow the Facebook page and the blog, and of course look at the pretty pictures and download the gift patterns (such as the Tuhannen Kunniaksi band that is shown in my older blog posts).  Recently I picked up Claudia Wollny's new book, Tablets at Work.  Again, I'm enjoying it a lot.  I highly recommend both books to anyone who is looking for good tablet weaving books that are very clearly written with excellent charts and explanations.

I've added a few braiding books to my library, too, but that'll be some future post.  Ditto for any kind of detailed review of the tablet-weaving books.

So...  With all this new inspiration, I decided to Try Something New.  I wasn't sure if I wanted to do something with double-weaving or something with diagonals (aka Egyptian Diagonals or Finnish Diagonals).  Both start with the same threading -- 2 threads of Color A and 2 of Color B, with the colors adjacent to each other (in other words, AABB), so I warped up some tablets and dithered.

I'm still using the 5/2 cotton perle, so continuous warping is still kind of a pain since I'm running thread from both ends of each ball.  But I managed.  I'm not totally sure how long the warp is, maybe 8 feet or so?

I want to play around with double-weaving since it looks very straightforward and I haven't tried it yet.  It'll be fun to graph little designs and letters and such as well as using other people's charts and graphs.

I guess I've done diagonal-type patterns already since a lot of the GTT patterns one sees online are in that family.  Or they're in the kivrim family, or both, and anyway I've definitely done a kivrim pattern as well as the Tuhannen Kunniakski pattern with Finnish diagonals.  Claudia Wollny sees diagonals and kivrim as two different techniques, whereas I had previously considered them to be variations on a similar theme, namely the theme of changing turning directions of a subset of cards at different times in order to develop strong diagonal lines (including such things as diamonds, spirals, zigzags, etc.).  I'll be reading Claudia's chapters again more carefully so I can think about how and why she treats them as two separate pattern families.  I'll also consider how random online GTT patterns and Finnish patterns fit into the categories, especially for patterns where turning directions can change every round.  Traditional Egyptian diagonal patterns only change turning directions after two rounds, with 2 cards changing at a time, as far as I'm aware.

Anyway!

I was in a diagonals mood, so diagonals it was!  I wanted something very simple.  Although the basic pattern I wanted to weave is in a lot of different places, I used the charts from Applesies and Fox Noses, p. 57, Number 18, Spiky Gardens.  It has 12 cards for the center pattern with 2 border cards on each side, for 16 cards total.  I liked the triangles and wasn't in the mood for reversals, so I followed the chart on p. 59 and skipped the charts showing how to do reversals on p. 60.

Charting conventions:  I probably wrote this down in a previous blog post, but here it is again.  Applesies and Fox Noses charts show tablet directions (/ and \) rather than threading directions (S and Z).  The cards face right, with the AD line along the top to begin, and the cards are numbered from left to right.  Changes in turning direction are shown by shading the areas where the cards are turning towards the weaver (backwards), while the plain areas are turned away from the weaver (forwards).  I really like this charting style.  It feels very intuitive.

At this point, I want to mention Mervi Pasananen's video on how to do a continuous warp where one is cutting the end of the loop instead of weaving on a continuous loop without cutting any ends.  The pattern I chose accumulates twist, so I knew I wanted to be able to manipulate each card individually so I could get rid of excess twist every now and then.

It was still a pain separating out each set of four threads so I could tie a small overhand knot at each end.  My cats insisted on helping, which of course made it even more exciting.  A loom-weaving friend of mine says that warping is always a pain, no matter what, so I'm trying not to feel too discouraged that it takes me a while to get everything set up.

On to weaving!  And then unweaving.  And then weaving!  And then unweaving.  Etc., but finally things clicked, and now progress is being made.  I still do some occasional unweaving but the band is definitely growing while the unused warp is getting shorter and shorter.

The above photo shows how it looked after the first few pattern repeats.  The garish colors (yellow and aqua for the diagonals, darker blue and purple for the border cards) actually look pretty good.  Well, a lot of bands really do benefit from a strong color contrast.

My weft is some random medium-blue crochet cotton left over from a doily I knit a while back.  It is thinner than the warp, maybe a #10 or #20 cotton?

The pattern is really quite easy as long as one stays focused.  I don't need the chart at all unless I'm trying to figure out where I am after doing a bit of unweaving.

The back isn't quite as nice -- there are a few places where I clearly missed the border threads so that the weft thread goes underneath instead of through the shed.  But I don't care.

My edges are not perfect, but they're not terrible.  The width is relatively consistent and so is the weft spacing.  I am pleased with the strong lines of the triangles.

I've done about 10 or 11 repeats so far and expect another 4 to 6 before I run out of room to turn the cards.

I have no idea what I will do with this band.  Maybe a guitar/ukulele/instrument strap?  Or a carrying strap for a spinning wheel?  Or a belt?  I don't know how long it'll be when I'm done and that may well be a determining factor.  It is a bit more than 1" wide.

Things I've learned (so far, because it's not done yet!) or that are new/different/educational:

For the first time, I needed to swap out an individual thread after continuous warping.  The thread had a knot in it.  Yikes!  Luckily, Linda Hendrickson shows how to deal with that in her video on continuous warping.  One waits until the warp is finished.  Then one threads in a new length into the proper hole in the card, threaded in the proper direction, and then pulls out the old thread with the knot.

I needed to be careful about keeping track of turning directions, since the pattern is so easy that one can fall into a mindless rhythm and forget where one was in the pattern.  For me, I needed to be sure I was weaving two picks before moving cards from the forward to the backward pack or vice versa.  I put something on one side of the band so I knew where the shuttle needed to be before changing cards around.  When that changed, I moved the item to the other side of  the band.  Yes, I know that is obvious to someone with more experience.  I am not that someone.

I really understood, for the first time, how to predict what color would next show up on the band for each card.  I mean, I kind of knew it, but it still seemed a bit mysterious to me.  It no longer seems mysterious.

For the first time, I paid no attention to the numbers or letters on the card.  I only looked at tablet orientation and the placement of the different threads.

Lots of unweaving has happened, so I gained more experience in that vital skill.

Cats are still less than helpful as warping assistants.

Egyptian/Finnish/Whatever diagonals are fun and, at least for this simple pattern, very straightforward to weave.  It would not be difficult to design my own patterns if I want something beyond the many wonderful patterns that are already out there.

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Hopefully I'll post again when the band is finished.  I want to try some double-weaving next.  Hopefully that'll happen soon and hopefully it'll be documented on this blog.  And yeah, that's true for other blogs, too.  Life happens, and taking photos or writing things down ends up not being a high priority.

Experiments with worsted weight acrylic

My stash of 5/2 cotton is getting low.  So, in desperation, I tried some of the cheap acrylic we have around the house.  What kind of band would it make?  I had used acrylic for some early tablet weaving experiments many years ago.  Those tended not to go well.  But whatever, because I wanted a tablet weaving fix.

It's not that bad.  In fact, it's pretty decent.  The band is of course very thick, but it feels and looks reasonable.  Whew.  I can weave even when the weaving-yarn stash is running low.  It's definitely a different feel from weaving with finer cotton yarn, though, and not necessarily in a good way.

I found the pattern on pinterest, no attribution or original source attached.  I re-graphed it in GTT to make sure I understood what was going on.  Yep.  I changed the direction of the border cards and that was about the only change I made.

This pattern slowly accumulates twist.  So it's not quite as fun as the one I did last time.  It was still pretty fun and also easy to weave.

I did find a place within 50 miles from me that had some cheap crochet cotton for sale.  I bought some so I can make the belts that I have been commissioned to make (well, requested to make by friends and family members, nothing professional in spite of using fancy words like commissioned).  I think I will need to do some mail order to replenish my supplies with better materials.  Either that, or take a road trip to some weaving supply stores that are around 100 miles away and do some serious shopping.

In other exciting news, a friend saw my bands and wanted to learn how to tablet weave.  I made some charming cereal-box tablets and a pizza-box shuttle and showed him the basics.  He has previous loom-weaving experience, so found it a fairly easy transition.  He has completed his first band!  I am so proud, even though all I did was point the way and he did the rest.  Now a few other friends want to learn.  They have their own cards, but haven't had the chance, or maybe the courage, to give it a try.

My friend did a basic zigzag using a pattern draft in Candace Crockett's book on Card Weaving.  Sigh.  Yet another drafting convention to learn.

For Candace Crockett, the left-facing arrow is S threaded (Z card orientation) and the right-facing arrow is Z-threaded (S card orientation).  She writes something about how things are threaded front-to-back or back-to-front when the cards face left.  We did that, and of course the pattern then appeared on the bottom of the band instead of the top.  No problem -- flip the deck and keep working.  Anyway, I'm not sure if her version of front-to-back, back-to-front is different from mine (as in, which end of the thread is supposed to be closest to the weaver?) or if I mis-read what she was writing.

But anyway, now I know how Crockett's pattern drafts are written (I think).  Cards face left, lettered clockwise, going from card 1 on the left with higher-number cards on the right, starting to weave with AD on top, and the arrows as mentioned above (left arrow is S-threaded, right arrow is Z-threaded).

For the teaching band, we cut warp threads and threaded each tablet individually.  I thought it would be good to do the most tedious warping method first, so that future warping would be easier.  With the pattern my friend chose, we could have done a continuous warp.  However, we would have had to rotate cards both horizontally and vertically to get everything in the right orientation before weaving.  I thought it would be easier to have everything in the weaving orientation, so that the pack of cards all looked the same.  It would make it easier to keep track of things and notice errors.

Cereal box cards work really well.  I was pleasantly surprised.  Given the dimensions of the box I used, we ended up with 12 cards that were 3" square.  We used a hole punch for holes that were about 1/2" from each side,  I didn't round the corners, punch a center hole, or anything else fancy.  Pizza-box shuttles work just fine, too.  As soon as we had another empty cereal box, I made another set of cards, just for fun.  I'll probably weave a band with them soon.  I left the original cereal-box tablets and pizza-box shuttle with my friend.

My friend weaves like the women seen in some of the old paintings.  I had brought over the PVC loom.  Instead of using it in a backstrap orientation, with the weaving side close to him and the far side away, he sat so he wove the band from left to right instead of from near to far.  It was interesting.  That might have been due to the space we had available to work, of course.  Again, it's something I am going to try just to see how it differs from the usual orientation I've been using.

I am not sure what I will weave next.  Probably one of the belts that I've been requested to do.  One requires a bit of charting before I start.  The other will be from a draft I found on pinterest.  It is great to have all these random GTT charts showing up on pinterest, but dang, I would love to know where they came from.  Someone is or was very prolific, and it would be cool to know who it is.

Two Decks (Running S Band)

Another band has been woven, with another bad photo to share.

I found the pattern draft on a Finnish website.  It's the second draft from the top.  The person uses \ and / to indicate S and Z threading direction.  The draft shows ABCD going from bottom to top.  I did it with cards facing left, numbered with 1 at the left and 10 at the right, and AD at the top when I began weaving.

I did this with a continuous warp.  It only has two colors, so I used both ends of each ball of thread.  That turned out to be a giant hassle.  The two ends of course wind around each other, and eventually this creates a tangle that has to be undone.  Ugh.

My cat was there to assist, as usual, and was less than helpful, again as usual.  He would pop a thread or two off the warping posts (i.e. clamps) every now and then.  He sat on the threads.  He batted around the cards.  And so on.

But I finally got it done.  After a lot of very careful checking and card-re-arranging, weaving finally commenced.

So far, when I've done a continuous warp, I've woven on the clamps that the warp is wrapped around.  I tried that, but things kept popping off the clamps.  Also, the tension wasn't quite as even as I liked.  Apparently, it's fairly easy for me to vary the tension while warping, which of course leads to uneven tension when weaving.  So I took the weaving off the clamps and draped it over my little loom.  After that, the weaving went smoothly.  I do like using weights on the warp instead of having the warp fixed (either on clamps or on an inkle loom).  (Hmm, I should re-try backstrap weaving at some point to see how that compares to having the warp tied to weights that are draped over something.)

The above photo (the second one for this post) shows the band after two motifs have been woven.  Isn't it cute?  I really like it!

I use the bamboo skewers at the beginning to make sure I've threaded and arranged all the cards properly.  It also gives me a good beginning to the band so that I can start it with a consistent and reasonable width.

This pattern seems related to the kivrim-style patterns and also to diagonal-type patterns in general.  It is easily done by splitting the deck into two packs that turn independently of each other.

The weaving was rhythmic, pleasant, and quite fast.  Each pack had an 8F-8B turning sequence, with one pack offset from the other by 4 rows.  I like how complex the band looks considering how very easy it is to set up and weave.  There's the purple spiral meandering through the center of the band, separating the orange into S and h motifs.  I don't really have a name for the band, but Running S seems as good a name as any.

The band width is fairly consistent throughout.  The weft spacing is less so, unfortunately.  I don't know how much is my frustration with the first few motifs while I was still weaving between the two clamps.

What have I learned with this band?

I really like this style of pattern.  It has a simple threading sequence.  It has two (or more) blocks that turn in different ways to generate a more-complex-looking result.  It is neutral in twist, with equal amounts of forward and backward turning.

I like using a weighted warp.

Continuous warping can be a pain to do under the wrong circumstances, no doubt due to operator error.  It seriously would have been faster to cut warps and then thread each tablet individually.  When I buy more thread, I should make sure I have multiples of the cone/skein/ball so I can use one cone/skein/ball per tablet hole if/when I next do continuous warping.

Mostly I learned that this band was a ton of fun and I want to do more patterns using these kinds of techniques.

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My other tablet-weaving trick this week is to finally download Guntram's Tablet-Weaving Thingy (GTT), a well-known tablet-weaving design software.  I wasn't sure it would work with Windows 7, but thought it was worth a try.  I've seen so many interesting patterns on the 'net that are shown in a gtt format.

It took a little while, but I'm now able to get the program to do stuff.  It turned out that the secrets of how to get it to work could be found in the manual.  Who knew?  For fun, I am using the program to re-draft the patterns I've been doing.  I'm also playing around with my own ideas.  We'll see if anything comes of it besides a bit of fun.

Soon I should start a collection of links for this blog, hopefully more comprehensive and better organized than I am finding elsewhere.  There's a lot out there, and I find more every time I search.  I like a lot of the non-English-language sites, too.  Maybe I should also add a list of tablet-weaving terms in various languages to aid in our searching.  And ditto for other narrow wares.  But not today.