Checks! (tablet woven band from Ristopello grave 86)

The pattern used for this pattern was found in a 12th-13th century grave from Ristonpello, Grave 86.  The original was woven tubularly but I chose to do it flat.

It is written about in a paper I found here: https://muinaistutkija.journal.fi/article/view/138060/91515 which is "Liedon Ristinpellon haudan 86 nauhat -- uusia havaintoja ja ennallistuksia" by Jenni Sahramaa, Krista Wright, Maikki Karisto & Mervi Pasanen.  I think this is the source: Muinaistutkija 4/2023: 39–62

The band (or rather, cord) is charted on p.49 (chart by Maikki Karisto) and the reproduction shown on p.54 (woven by Mervi Pasanen).  This particular pattern is not in Tablet Woven Treasures though it is very similar to some of the cords that are in that book.

There are several other very interesting braids and bands described in this article.  Hmmm....

Anyway, as I wrote above, I did this as a flat band instead of a tubular band.  A lot of that was because I'm using my usual big box store #10 cotton, and I thought it would end up too thick as a cord unless I wove it around a core.  If used as piping, it could be sewed shut (possibly around a core) as it was sewn to a piece of fabric.

Also, when I first saw this band (in the photo on p.54 of the article) I didn't immediately realize it was tubular.  I thought it was flat and I liked it that way.

In addition, I was testing out some new tablets for a friend, and I just wanted to do something quick and easy and relaxing, no fighting the band or anything.  I'm still not great at adjusting the weft and beating tension for a cord so that it has a good hand with the weft not showing in the gap between the left and right edges of the warp threads and the cord not ending up too loose.

It's very cute.  I should make this again in different color combinations.  And maybe even as a cord someday.

Twelve tablets, alternating \ and / orientations, 4-threaded, threaded-in pattern, always turned forward.  Yay.  Fresh off the cards, it's about 9/16" wide (13-14mm) and about 68" long (175cm).  Both sides look the same so it can be used as a belt or strap in addition to trim.

The article says that luteolin was found in one of the red threads in the band, so the original color might have been a bit more orange before it was buried.  I followed their color choices because those are effective colors and certainly plausible given the dyes likely to have been available.

As always, I have no idea what I'm going to do next. Another braid or band from Grave 86? Sprang or netting or spinning? More braiding? The band I mentioned a while back from Tablet Woven Treasures, that has half-turns and tie-downs and a diagonal tic-tac-toe/star-like motif? There are always so many appealing options.

More little pinwheels!

This is a commission.  The recipient supplied the fibers -- tencel 8/2, in a pale gray, medium blue, and wine red/purple, from Maurice Brassard and Cotton Clouds.  The pattern is the same 9-tablet pinwheel pattern I did not too long ago, because it's narrow, quick to weave, adorable, and doesn't have a strong/noticeable asymmetry.  The recipient wanted 3m, so that's what I did!  I warped up about 12 feet (somewhere around 144"-150") and the band ended up as 3.15m (125"), and 8mm (5/16") wide.  I used the blue tencel as weft.

This was my first time tablet weaving with tencel.  I was warned that it might get a bit fuzzy, and thus I was worried a bit that it might get shredded on the warp spreader of my betterley loom.  So I used my PVC weaverly loom since the PVC is, of course, smooth.

The band was kind of slippery at times, hard to keep secured while I was weaving.  That was partly because it was narrow so there's not much area for the clamps to clamp.  But the two spring clamps plus two chip clips usually kept things from slipping, along with wrapping the already-finished band a few times around the front PVC area before clamping.  I wasn't very aggressive with the weights, either, though really, I don't pay too much attention to the overall weight as long as the weaving more or less behaves.

Tencel is surprisingly nice to work with and I like the results.  The smooth slipperiness meant that the threads mostly behaved themselves.  Even though the thread is 2-ply, I didn't get a lot of elongation or shortening due to accumulation (or removal) of twist.  There was a bit of lint or poofies, but I think most of that was cat fur, actually.  (The feline weaving assistants were On The Job!)

The tencel 8/2 is a bit thinner than the cheap big-box-store #10 crochet cotton I often use.  I had worried that the weaving would take a lot longer, but I don't think it made a huge difference, not that I kept track all that closely.  Ditto for the width.  I did end up with 8mm wide for the tencel vs 10mm-ish for cotton, which is fine, since the recipient wanted a narrow band.  Warping for a 3m band takes a bit more effort and planning than my usual lengths.  (I have easy set-ups for my usual lengths.)  But it wasn't that bad, and the slipperiness of the tencel meant that the threads weren't able to get too tangled compared to cotton and wool, even with my weaving assistants' best efforts.

Hopefully the recipient likes it.  

A slightly wider tablet woven band in blue, red, and yellow

It's done!

It's about 1.5cm wide, between 235 and 240cm long.  The backside is cute, too.

Narrow two-hole brick patterned band in red, yellow, and blue

I showed a pic of this band shortly after I started it.  Here it is after I finished, though before soaking/blocking.

I included an American quarter and an American dime in this pic, for scale, to help the recipient visualize the actual dimensions.  The band is 7mm wide and roughly 2.4m long (a bit more then 1/4" wide and 95-ish" long).

It's pretty adorable!  As always, I love the texture of the 2-hole brick patterning.

I've started a companion band for the same recipient, in the same colors but a different pattern.  It'll be a threaded-in design, 4-threaded rather than 2-threaded.  The design will be simple, paying homage to some specific existing historic patterns.

Both bands are meant to be plausible for Anglo-Saxon cultures that are post-Roman but pre-Conquest.  Sure, they're cotton rather than wool, silk, or bast fiber (linen/hemp/nettle), but I wanted the dimensions and patterns/techniques to be consistent with the actual evidence.

The one I started takes some ideas that are consistent with the Coppergate/York band, as well as having motifs that are found in other western and northern European cultures of that approximate time.  Well, OK, that approximate time includes a good many centuries and a good many cultures, but I don't need to be too precise here.

The one in the pic above uses a structure and motif from the Finnish Iron Age finds.  There are Anglo-Saxon bands from various cemetery and other archaeological finds that do use this two-hole tablet-weaving technique even though color has not remained and/or wasn't analyzed.

An interesting variety of tablet-weaving techniques were used by the Anglo-Saxons, and they weren't too picky about the material they used, either.  Chances are that people in general just used what was easily available/affordable to them, but given how rare it is to find well-preserved textiles, very little evidence remains, and it is skewed by various preservation biases.

Anyway, given that two-hole tablet-weaving has been documented in Anglo-Saxon tablet-weaving, and given the dyes known and available to people at that time, my little dotted band seems plausible to me.

Brocaded bands, which are fairly well represented in surviving artifacts from that time, show fairly simple motifs ("steps, crosses, and chevrons" according to Nancy Spies).  Also, the Anglo-Saxon metal-brocaded bands tended to be very narrow bands that were either used as headbands or to edge veils, according to how the evidence has been interpreted.  The band I'm starting is not brocaded, but the brocade patterns do give a sense of the kinds of motifs that were popular at the time.

A few of the non-brocaded bands that have remnants of color (shades of mostly decomposed dark brown and darker brown, mostly, with some exceptions) show chevrons or diamonds or blocks, maybe.  The York band clearly had some kind of threaded-in color pattern in a design that was probably fairly simple, whether it was stripes or diamonds or chevrons or zigzags.

Sure, more complicated techniques were known, and wider bands were made, but I'm not trying to re-create something that would have been worn by the wealthiest or highest status people.  (I finally found the papers I'd been looking for by Grace Crowfoot and Penelope Walton Rogers, yay!)

I also looked at a few illuminations.  They show that clothing probably did have patterned borders.  But the designs aren't necessarily ones that are easy to make with tablet-weaving.  So it's either artistic license (since the motifs match motifs on other items in the illumination) or a variety of techniques were used to decorate the clothing borders (such as embroidery or some other kind of weaving or fabric stamping/painting, or maybe these are meant to be tablet woven brocade).  Or both or something else entirely.

The motifs on the illustrations I saw included circles (with a dot inside) and spiral motifs (which would look something like the S on the famous Finnish Iron Age bands, or would look like Kivrim patterns even though those are mostly documented from a much different place and time).  They also showed (in general, not necessarily the clothing) lots of fun interlacements and other ornamental doodlings.  I need to double-check to see what centuries these are from, because it might be from later centuries rather than earlier.  Also, I'm still quite ignorant about all this, so all of the above might be hogwash.

There's also the embroidery evidence, especially in the later centuries.  I don't remember the exact reference but there's some stuff about going towards more flowing and botanic motifs in the later years.  I don't know if that would carry over to the simple bands that edged clothing.  Those motifs would be achievable with 3/1 twill, double-face, Sulawesi, brocade, and some other techniques.  All except Sulawesi are techniques that were known to the Anglo-Saxon tablet-weavers, and there is one band that actually has a Sulawesi-compatible tablet orientation (/ / \ \ / / \ \ etc.) so it's not completely impossible.

I don't want to do anything too time-consuming for this band and I don't want it to be monochrome, so I'm going with a threaded-in 4-holed pattern that uses the 3-and-1 color scheme that the York band does (the York band has several tablets with 3 red and 1 probably-unbleached-linen thread along with tablets that had other color mixes) and is consistent with the kinds of simple threaded-in geometric patterns found throughout that part of the world.

Anyway.

I'm not really trying for true authenticity.  But hopefully the band will be reasonable attractive and will be at least somewhat consistent and/or compatible with  Anglo-Saxon aesthetic mores even though neither of the bands will exactly match a known historic/archaeologic specimen.

And I seem to use lots of parentheses in my bloviating.

Early May Progress Report

I finished the 9-strand braid I mentioned in the last post.  It turned out well.  I will add it to my braid-teaching repertoire.  I might make a few more and/or experiment with other possible numbers of strands and braiding patterns.  I really like these braids where one just needs to know one easy-to-determine move that repeats over and over without any hassle.

I also started a new tablet woven band.  It's the basic two-hole brick pattern with a dot in the middle that I'm very fond of weaving.  It's based on the similar patterns in Tablet Woven Treasures, though I've modified it slightly, mostly by not doing tubular selvedges.  It's also similar to the one in the Lautanauhat book that I initially found the pattern in (p. 101 band 3, and yes, I have that memorized, apparently).  It's about 7mm wide, something like 8 tablets and the usual big-box-store #10 crochet cotton for both warp and weft.

This is destined to be a gift.

That's it for this post!

The two-hole band from the Brooklyn Museum

Hmm, I forgot to post a follow-up when I finished the two-hole band from the Brooklyn Museum.

I finished it in about a week, definitely before starting the next band.  It's about 7/8" wide, about 67" long.  As a reminder, it's a 32-card band, two 4-threaded edge tablets (one on each side), and 30 2-threaded pattern tablets.  I think it's a little bit wider than the original, not that I care about that.  The pic above is unblocked and shows both sides.

I didn't change the weft tightness at the other end to match my experiments at the beginning, mostly because I was tired of the band and just wanted to get it done.  Also, with a band this long, it's not hugely noticeable.

I am totally fine with turning edge tablets every other time rather than every time.  I think it might make a little bit of difference in how firmly I can beat the weft, though I don't think it's a huge overall impact.  It did mean that I didn't have to work out excess twist all that often.  The pattern area is twist neutral, so twist only accumulates in the edge tablets.  With turning each edge every other time, twist accumulated half as much.

The band is cute enough.  I rather like the little one I did better, though (the one from the bands in the Louvre).

Other than that, I don't have much to say about it!

Next up -- I don't know.  As usual.  Maybe I'll chart out several possible Coppergate bands (i.e. make charts that are consistent with the evidence I have, which may not be fully accurate).  Or maybe I'll do something entirely different.

I am doing more reading about pre-medieval Anglo-Saxon tablet weaving -- there are a few other papers written by Penelope Walton (Rogers) about cemetery finds.  There's quite a lot of variety in the techniques that were used.  Interesting...  I'm still trying to match some of her terminology to my understanding of what those terms refer to.  But it's all very cool, and I hate that it's so hard to do good internet searching these days to find out more.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hrafna interprets the cords as follows:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All of these are lovely.

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

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

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

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

Another colorful Oseberg band

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

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

Some of my tablet-weaving tablets

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lots of little pinwheels

That went fast!

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

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

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

Time for some little pinwheels

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I like zig-zags

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Flash (in a flash)

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

The photo above is unblocked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Space! and a bit of Time!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some idle thoughts

No tablet weaving is currently happening, alas.  My tablet weaving space is not currently available.  I've been doing other things but not tablet weaving.

I am thinking about a Next Project, though.  I'm thinking it's going to be the practice band for the tie-down technique, #50 in Tablet Woven Treasures.  Not because I specifically want practice, but because I rather like the motif.  Mervi Pasanen posted a pic of it done in different colors and that sent me looking...

Here's an instagram pic of it:  https://www.instagram.com/p/DMUzit3t7Kj

I do not plan on doing tubular selvedges at this point though it's possible I could change my mind.  I might do the wrapped/braided tassels, though.

I'm also considering some other potential tablet weaving projects.  Nothing I can remember offhand, but I do remember that they're all less fiddly techniques.  Eh, we'll see what happens once the tablet-weaving area is available again.

Speaking of Finnish Iron Age bands, Applesies and Fox Noses has been reprinted, yay!  It's available through a couple of different sources.

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I was going to be teaching some fingerloop braiding this weekend, but a conflict came up so that won't be happening.

I did do some impromptu teaching/demos a few weeks ago.  I showed/taught the 2-loop loop-exchange braid, the 4-loop loop exchange braid (in two colors, for a spiral), and then the 4-loop sinnet (the Skjoldehamn 4-loop braid), also in a two-color spiral.

Although I haven't done much other braiding recently, I was having fun going through some online museum archives and spotting the braids, whether or not I could get enough resolution to see what was going on or not.

One of them is the International Dunhuang Programme.  Here are a couple of links to braids in the collection, including a couple of slings!

https://idp.bl.uk/collection/D244E5464D954BE2855CEDF81EF4077D/

https://idp.bl.uk/collection/EE55C581E46942499DD8DAB5455B588A/

https://idp.bl.uk/collection/1B110B210B104CBC9AAE6E407CE0A7A2/

https://idp.bl.uk/collection/B7289C7590C441ABAA857511168C12A9/

https://idp.bl.uk/collection/48FF9807471C4CD896A5796DB6694AA9/ is a cute little purse that does have some cordage.  I can't quite tell from the photo if it's a twisted cord or a small braid, though my first impression is twisted cord.

The collection has some cool shoes and sandals, too, made from cordage and weaving/interlacing techniques.  There are a bunch of "strings" in the collection as well, most of which appear to be simple bast-fiber cordage.

Ack, there was some other site I'd been wandering through recently with either bands or braids or both, but it's slipped my mind for the moment.  What a reminder to me to keep good notes, perhaps even in this here blog!

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For some reason, I recently watched a few Youtube videos on World War I archaeology, which included a project where the bones of unknown soldiers were recovered.  What was interesting to me (in addition to everything else in the videos) is how badly preserved any textiles are.  It's only been a century (less than a century when some of the digs happened) and not much is left, and what is left is usually fragmentary and filthy.  That gives me a bit of perspective on the much older sites where textiles or textile fragments have been preserved, both the ones where anything left is in bad shape and ones where the preservation is excellent (such as the Dunhuang textiles in the above paragraph).  It also gives me a bit of perspective on the effectiveness of Our Microscopic Friends and how efficiently and effectively they go about their recycling work, and ditto for natural chemical processes.

Leather tended to be better preserved than cloth, or rather, boots often at least partially survived their long decades underground.  Some metal was preserved with a lot being very corroded.  No soft body tissues seemed to be present but bones were still in pretty good shape, some showing terrible injuries that no doubt contributed to the deaths of the people whose bones they were.

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I don't remember if there was anything else I wanted to write down.  I can always add to this post later.  Or write another.

Rib weave tablet woven band from Maksu, Humikkala (a 2-hole pattern from Tablet-Woven Treasures)

This one has appealed to me for a while.  I'm not sure why I decided to do it now, but that's fine.  It was a pretty straightforward project.

The band is in Tablet Woven Treasures by Maikki Karisto and Mervi Pasanen.  It's on p.131, 15. Maksu, Humikkala (KM 8656:H30:1).  They call it a rib-weave pattern.  It's a two-threaded pattern with all the threads in holes A and C, not offset like a lot of other 2-hole patterns.  There are 7 pattern tablets.  Each side has 3 four-threaded edge tablets which are tubular-woven.  (In other words, both sides have tubular edges and all 3 edge cards on each side are part of the tubular edge.)  That makes 13 tablets total, 6 edge and 7 pattern tablets.

It's pretty adorable!  Unblocked, it's about 7/16" wide and about 65" long.

A warp thread snapped in the middle, yikes!  I have no idea whether to blame the cats, the thread quality, or happenstance.  I'm glad I already have experience with this, and indeed, it was not an issue to attach a new warp thread and keep going.  There's one spot where apparently I forgot to do the tubular edge on one of the sides.  I tried to fix that, too, a bit less successfully.  It looks fine on the top but is slightly visible on the bottom if one knows it's there and looks at the right spot.  Or if one runs fingers along the band -- the repair spot feels a bit different, but that's also true of the unrepaired area before I tried to fix it.

The width varies slightly.  I really wanted the red on the edge tablet to show.  But I had to balance that against pulling the weft tight enough for the pattern to look right.  I'm a trifle disappointed that the red edge is not too visible most of the time.  Oh, well, it can be a secret, I guess.  Or I can use this as a strap since both sides of the band are very cute.  Or attach it at the very edge of something and/or attach it loosely so the red can be glimpsed.

I'm glad I did this band, but I think I'm tired of tubular edges for a while.

I have no idea what I'll do next.  Something, I'm sure!

Brocade Sampler, 8th and maybe the last post -- it's finished!

Done!

Here are the last few in-progress pics:

The top photo is a 13-tablet pattern taken from Ecclesiastical Pomp & Aristocratic Circumstances, p.120.  It's the border from band "2. Band on the chasuble attributed to St. Wolfgang, Bishop of Regensburg, 11th/12th century".  I did two repeats.

The middle photo has two motifs.  The one on the left is a 9-tablet pattern from the Saxon Rabbit handout, from Grave 44 mid 6th century, Lyminge, Kent, pattern 10 in the Crowfoot paper.  I did 4 pattern repeats.  The longer one on the right is a 13-tablet pattern from Anna Neuper's Modelbuch, No. 76 (fol 79v), p.56.  I did 4 pattern repeats.

I ran out of background weft at this point.  The new stuff is the same color but maybe a bit thicker and softer.  It doesn't matter.

The bottom photo has the last two motifs.  The motif on the left is a 9-tablet pattern from Roslein und Wecklein, #214, p.179.  I did 2 repeats.  (Hmm, it would look nice with a pearl or pretty bead in the spot between motifs.)  The motif on the right, the last one, is a 13-tablet pattern, a motif adapted from EC&AC, p. 134, pattern "17. Bands on a pontifical skull cap, 11th/12th century".  I did the little diamond motif on the upper left part of the chart, 2 diamonds and then one more row to close up the upper diamond.

I maybe could have gotten one more small motif in, but I decided that was enough, and so endeth my first brocade sampler band.

Fresh off the tablets, unblocked, the band is about 5/8" wide and about 63" long.

There are 25 different motifs.  Wow.  I didn't even get to all of the charts I'd printed out, and also didn't end up making up more of my own patterns.

Many of the motifs look better in person.  The brocade weft is shiny enough that it affects how the pics look.  Not surprisingly, the later motifs tend to look better than the earlier ones I did.

I'm still working on consistency though I'm getting better.  Adding a brocade border stripe, as many of the historic patterns did, probably helps with that since then the slight angle difference at the turning points will be in the edge stripe rather than in the main motif.

I really like the interplay of positive and negative space -- both the brocade and the tiedowns (in the background warp) make interesting patterns.

I'm pretty sure I managed to not accidentally weave any swastikas.

Brocade is pretty easy as tablet-weaving techniques go, at least for the basics, and really about the same, time-wise, as other fiddly tablet-weaving techniques.

I'll definitely do brocade again!  It'll be interesting to do it with silk and/or metallic threads, similar to the materials used for many of the historic bands.

Now to decide what project I feel like doing next.  So many possibilities but nothing is screaming at me.  So I'll do some thinking and browsing of books and websites and what-not to see what appeals.

Brocade sampler, 7th post (and still going....)

Another three samples in my brocade sampler are in this pic.

The left one is  a 13-tablet pattern from Roslein und Wecklein, #169 on p.151.  I did 4 pattern repeats.  The middle one is a 13-tablet pattern from Anna Neuper's Modelbuch, pattern No. 74 (fol 78v), p,54.  I did 3 pattern repeats.  Since the left is 12 rows long and the middle 16, each one is 48 rows long.

The one on the right is a 13-tablet motif from Roslein und Wecklein, #164 on p.147.  I did one repeat because I didn't feel like doing two.  I assume this little motif is a standalone star rather than a repeating motif.  And of course I could have added pearls!

I like all of these.  I'm also able to unweave fairly quickly when I notice a problem, assuming the problem isn't so far back that I prefer to ignore it.  I feel fairly comfortable doing brocade, so this band achieved its hoped-for purpose.  I can add brocade to the list of techniques I have experience with.  I'll do it again, for sure.

What next for this sampler?  Possibly a few more 13-tablet patterns from R+W and ANM.  Maybe another coptic.  Maybe some free-association stuff, or another Birka (if there are others that fit into my band's number of tablets).  I'm also going to see if anything from Ecclesiastical Pomp is narrow enough.

I probably won't bother switching brocade thread since I still have plenty of this stuff left.  But you never know.  And if nothing else appeals, I can plain-weave until the end, or play around with texture patterns on the monochrome warp

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Brocade sampler, sixth post

Wow, I'm really spamming my own blog with every little bit of progress on this sampler brocade band!

This is the brocade motif from the 10th-century Chernigov, Ukraine band.  I used the chart from Aisling's website.  Here is where she discusses it (with a link to the chart): https://aisling.biz/index.php/galerie/historisch/fruehmittelalter/262-chernigov-ukraine and here is the chart: https://aisling.biz/images/brettchenweben/Anleitung/Chernigov.pdf

This is a fairly popular band -- I found a good half-dozen or so examples of it that people have woven.  What is interesting to me is that most of the ones other people have done use a thinner brocade weft that lies flatter, so that the background-warp tiedowns are more prominent and noticeable.

Hmmm.  That is something to ponder for future bands.  I know that the interaction of background warp and brocade weft threads are one of the issues people deal with when weaving brocade.  I might not be doing those kinds of experiments with this sampler band since I don't have thin metallic thread lying around.  But I wanted to note this specifically so that I am reminded on future tablet-woven brocade projects.

The ones I see online also have the extra strip of brocade as part of the edge pattern (19 tablets total rather than the 11 needed for the center motif).  I have no idea if or how that affects things.

There are three repeats above, each 26 rows, and it's an 11-tablet pattern.  I messed up a bit on the first repeat, oops, but it's not too noticeable.  It's a cute pattern.  I like it, though I do prefer other people's versions, where the background tiedowns really stand out against the gold and silver bling.

This was another chart where the tick marks referred to the tiedown and blanks were brocaded squares.  This means I'll be confused for a few rows on the next motif if it's charted in the opposite way!  But again, it's interesting to think about positive vs negative space and how brocading can emphasize either the pattern of the brocade weft or the pattern of the background-warp tiedowns.

I'm probably more than half down with my sampler band.  It's not going to be particularly long or anything.  Most of these little snippets of motifs are a mere few inches long.  I believe all of them are fewer than 100 row, each with 2-4 rows of plain tablet-weaving between them.

Dunno if I'll do any more brocading today.  If not, then there will be another post after the next few motifs are done!  (or if there's something I particularly want to mention, as I did today)