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.

Brocade planning and other useless ruminations

Next up is brocade.  It's time!  And my tablet-weaving area is open, no other commitments, no need to pack things away for a while, etc., for the first time in months.  OK, the cute band I just finished was a bit of a spontaneous distraction, but that doesn't count.  I seem to have been writing about brocade for most of 2025; time to actually do something about it.

First up will be a sampler.

I think I'll use the usual big-box-store #10 crochet cotton for the warp, as usual.  Weft will be one of the leftover doily cotton threads, with no real attempt made to match the weft color.

Supplementary/brocade weft will be something thicker, of course.  I think I'll mostly use the dull-gold cotton perle #3 that I used for the Falun-pattern gift band a while back.  But I might also use some of the oddball/synthetic knitting stash threads, too.  Or whatever else I find.

I think I'll warp up 13 tablets in alternating S Z orientation.  That should give me enough tablets for some of the early Saxon bands, a few Birka bands, some of the Coptic bands (in Aisling's book), motifs from Wollny's Roslein und Wecklein transcription, plus a few others, depending on how much space I have and what I feel like trying.  I might try the motifs in both positive and negative versions to see what they look like.  I might try a few isolated motifs or a bit of soumak.  I might try a few different colors and/or different brocade-weft materials.  Or I might not.  I'll see if there's a difference for me between carrying the brocade weft to the same place on the band vs only where the motif is.  Etc.

There's a lot to learn.  The basics seem very straightforward.  But there will be lessons in tension and also in brocade vs background and base-weft thread thicknesses.  I expect the first sampler band to be very sampler-ish.

And as always, there's a chance I'll get distracted by something else and brocade will end up getting delayed yet again.

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Because I'm dithering and blithering, I decided to list most of the major tablet-weaving techniques I know about, whether I've tried them, what I think, what future plans are, or whatever else I felt like writing about them.

I'll start with the techniques in Claudia Wollny's Tablets at Work (though I might miss a few minor ones she discusses within other chapters).

Threaded in patterns -- check!  These are popular with modern tablet-weaving designers.  There are a lot of fun things that can be done with threaded-in patterns and all-pack forward/reverse turning.  I still do a lot of bands that fall under this category.

Double face -- check, though I want to explore more soon.  In particular, I haven't done much yet with the blocky/repp version where the tablets are all in the same orientation as opposed to alternating orientation.  Also, I'm pretty sure Wollny does 2F2B double-face for both SZ and all-Z double-face, and I'm curious about the "rotate 180 to change colors" version that's in Shelagh's pdf on double-face repp effect.

Double cloth -- this is on my to-do list.  It's high up there, but I keep doing other things instead.  Maybe this will be after brocade.  It looks pretty straightforward but I'm sure there are nuances that will be learning opportunities when I get there.

3/1 twill -- check, though I'm only at the beginning of exploring this method.  I haven't explored all of the variations that Wollny discusses in Tablets at Work and her Twill 1+1 book.  I really like this technique and want to do a lot more than I've done so far.  I want to learn better how to chart my own patterns (I can do some, but maintaining the twill line and avoiding long floats are still things I'm working on.)  I also like the Collingwood method for doing one-color twill as a two-pack method (as opposed to handling each tablet) and need to explore color changes and other motif developments with this style of card manipulation.

Diagonals -- check!  This is such a big category of modern patterns.  Also, there are a couple of variations I've tried though not everyone makes a distinction between them.  The Egyptian-diagonals modern method usually changes cards in groups of two tablets and two turns.  Finnish diagonals are more carefree.

Kivrim -- check!  These are fun and also popular with modern tablet-weaving designers.

Sulawesi -- check!  I really like doing Sulawesi.  I definitely want to make more bands, both with traditional and modern and self-designed motifs.  I need to learn the tubular strap method that often accompanies bands that are woven by the original/traditional weavers.

Floatwork -- check!  I've done very little so far, though.

3-hole -- check!  I want to do more of this.  I like how one can combine the textures of 3-hole with a bit of floatwork.  I also like how there are historic bands that apparently combine this with brocade -- that too is on my eventual to-do list.

2-hole -- check!  I love doing 2-hole designs.  This might be my current favorite technique.  I've also done 2-hole where the holes are next to each other and those are interesting, too.

Pebble weave -- this is on my to-do list, but I haven't done it yet.

Cablework -- check, though only a teeny bit to make sure I understood.  Heck, I do cable knitting; this is pretty much the same thing.  I did see some nice-looking cablework bands not too long ago, which has piqued my interest a bit.

Structure weave -- check!  I don't think Wollny talks about the Gotland bands, which might be made through flipping tablets around a horizontal instead of a vertical axis.  I've tried the Gotland method as well as regular monochromatic textural weaving.

Relief structure -- I haven't tried this yet.

Brocade -- as I wrote at the top of this post, this is almost certainly up next.

There are plenty of other techniques that aren't covered by Tablets at Work.

Pack-idling -- check!  I like this method.  Collingwood talks about a lot of variations, but even just the style used for Cambridge Diamonds and Felixstowe is perfectly nice.

Cordage/tubular bands -- check!  I've only really done 4-threaded cordage so far.  The 2-hole methods are on my to-do list.

Tubular edges -- check!  (these are in the Finnish bands discussed in Tablet Woven Treasures)

Double-turns -- check!  (also from the Finnish bands)

Tie-downs -- check!  (from several places, but probably best known from Tablet Woven Treasures)

Laceby -- I haven't done this yet.  Shelagh discusses the method on her website.

Soumak -- I haven't done this yet.  Since this sort of overlaps with brocade, maybe I'll do a little bit in my brocade sampler.

Tablet weaving around a core thread -- I haven't done this yet.

Tablets with a different number of holes (3, 6, etc.) -- I haven't done this yet.

Adding or removing tablets during weaving -- I haven't done this yet (though I understand the basics)

Turning or bending the band during weaving -- ditto.

Adding extra or ornamental warp or weft threads (such as making fringe or attaching to a loom-warp) -- I haven't done this yet.

I'm sure there are more things casually mentioned in Collingwood that are entirely new categories of techniques, but which at my current knowledge completely zip over my head.

I'm also pretty sure there are things I've either done or that I'm aware of that aren't on this list.

So far, I've liked all the techniques I've tried.

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.

A quick little post

I may add more to this post later.

This is the same triangle braid I did a few days ago -- 5 loops, V-fell, unorthodox (ring finger on one hand goes through middle finger loop of other hand and picks up the index finger loop of the other hand, hooking over the top).  I used 3 loops of light purple and 2 loops of dark purple.  I made two braids, to be given as a gift.  The finished braids are each about 20" long (not including the knot and fringe, of course).  I'll tighten the knots and trim the fringe before they're given away.

The braiding seems a little loose, which is interesting.  Is it the cotton rug warp?  Is it how I'm tensioning the braid?  Is it always like this and I usually don't notice?

The pic shows both the top and bottom sides of the braids.

I'm probably going to do a few more braids for giving away, with a variety of braiding structures and color patterns.  If I get more done today I'll add them to this post.  Otherwise there will be a new post later this week.  Crickmore's website is full of great inspiration.

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I did finally warp up and start an Icelandic missed hole tablet woven band, yay!!!  I started by doing all the early exercises that Wollny includes in the first part of the chapter.

Background pattern, yup.  This is basically the Sulawesi background done in 3-hole.

Then a few patterns that are simple diagonals-type patterns where the holes are there but don't form the tabby-ish pattern.

Then we start with waffling, first with the holes, then with the color thread (which means floats), and with each of the background threads (before and after the holes, and yes, also floats).  Motifs are filled with different textures in the center -- various floats and double-face and background pattern, etc.

There's also a little tacking stitch, to pop up a thread from a different hole to tack down some of the long floats, or just to do it because it's ornamental.

Wollny recommends doing it by turning two tablets one-eighth turn, to bring up a lower thread and drop the higher thread.  I found this kind of messy when looking for the shed.

If it's only one tack, it's relatively straightforward to lift the lower threads and drop the higher threads for that one row.  For several tacks, it gets annoying.

These actually are very similar to the Finnish half-turns, and in the end, that's what I found to be the easiest.  Do another turn on the two tablets involved in each tack (either up or down), throw the weft, then bring them back to their original orientation before going on to the next move.

So that was all fun -- seeing how Wollny approaches this technique and some of the variations and constraints she considers when designing her own.

Now that I've done the sampler patterns, I'll choose random stuff from Wollny's charts for a while, and quite probably for the rest of the band.  If I get bored or run out of patterns I like before I run out of warp, I'll switch to 3-thread Sulawesi motifs or play around with diagonals charts or twill charts or other techniques that look good with 3 threads.

I like how this technique looks, and I like how it's both related to float work and combined with float work.  And now I've done a bit of float work, too.  Well, floats that are deliberate.

The waffling technique is often used in conjunction with brocading, but I won't be doing that for this band.

It's interesting to me how this feels different from 2-thread, at least the way it's presented in this book and possibly in archaeological/historical examples.  They each have a characteristic texture, which is a lot of it, I think.  Also, the tablets are relatively stable without much effort, unlike 2-hole tablets.

I'm using 12 pattern tablets along with two 4-threaded edge tablets per side, for 16 tablets total.  As usual, the motifs are a bit elongated, though I'm trying not to tighten up too much on the weft when I throw it while still trying to keep it firmly packed down into the shed both before and after I turn the cards.

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.

Sulawesi adventures

I was in the mood for something new, and Sulawesi caught my interest.

What people refer to as Sulawesi tablet weaving is an interesting 3-color variant on double-face.  People in that part of the world also do double-face tablet weaving, though I don't know if the people who do this also do the more typical 2-color double-face.  Oh, probably, along with doing threaded-in plain weaving for borders and such.

With Sulawesi-style, tablets work in pairs.  Two tablets always have the same orientation and turn the same (2 tablets that have / or \ orientation turn forward or backwards together twice.  This means that one can chart it out using a single box to represent 2 tablets and 2 turns.  Or not -- one can also chart out every single tablet and turn.  Being able to use the box methods means that ideas can quickly be sketched out and charted out.  (The same sketches can often be used for other tablet-weaving techniques, too.)

Also with Sulawesi-style, the colors have a particular pattern.  There is a main motif color, a background color (or anti-motif), and an accompanying color.  The accompanying color has two threads, one on each side of the others.  (i.e.  MABA).  The tablets are oriented / / \ \ / / \ \ etc., i.e., alternating the orientation of each pair.  The colors go up and down in little zigzags -- for the motif color, for example, it goes in hole C D D C C D D C etc., all across the band, while the background color goes in hole A B B A A B B A all across.  Obviously this would easily lend itself to continuous warping techniques.

There's also some fun stuff the weavers there do with tubular edges and finishing the ends, but I'm mostly concerned with the basic tablet-weaving technique for now.

I have no idea how old this technique is.  There's not a lot of info on old artifacts and ethnography only goes so far back and is limited in what it covers.  I found a few 19th century artifacts online in the Yale University Art Gallery museum website but so far that's about it.  I'll keep looking.  The 19th century bands were often woven in cotton, by the way.  And in addition to Sulawesi, terms like "mamasa" and "toraja"  and "pallawa" turn up more links.

I also found a video, where the cards are flipped to change colors (rather than turning the other direction): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4GSQu7dD0U.  It's not clear exactly what pattern the weaver is making in the video, but the band shown at the end is the same technique (though it looks like the background color is the same as the accompanying color and/or it's 3-threaded).

Sagawoolcraft.com is a blog and website with a lot of interesting Sulawesi-technique tablet weaving and charted motifs.  So that's where I started.  She charts slightly differently from how I do, but if I ignore her tablet labels and tablet set-up, it works out the same as with the Karisto/Pasanen charting conventions I prefer.  She likes having A at the top of the warping chart going down to D at the bottom, with D closest to the weaver and A towards the unwoven warp.  Karisto/Pasanen conventions have D at the top of the warping chart going down to A at the bottom, with A closest to the weaver and D closer to the unwoven warp.  Both start the pattern weaving chart from the bottom and both number the tablets from left to right across the band.

I recharted it (using one of the online charting websites) to be sure.  And then I made up some of my own motifs because it was fun and easy.  So...  I guess I'll be doing a mix of motifs from wherever I find them along with my own motifs.

There are examples online in other places on the Internet, of course.

Anyway...  I decided on a small band for my first effort.  It has 8 pairs of tablets (16 pattern tablets) with one extra tablet per edge (18 tablets total).  The edge tablets are threaded in colors A A B B, in colors different from the main band, to help me keep straight the direction the double-face turning needs to go in.  At this point, I prefer to turn cards forwards and backwards instead of flipping them, so of course that's what I did.

And.....  it's fun!  A little fiddly, but not horrible with so few pattern tablets, and it's pretty easy to see right away if you're doing it right.  My very first motif has been woven (and it's one of my own designs -- nothing fancy but I did it myself), and it's lovely!  I'm chuffed.  I'll probably do mix-and-match motifs rather than the same one(s) all the way down the band.  I do like a lot of the Saga Wool Craft motifs so why not add some of hers as well as my own designs?

These bands can be done with three or two threads per tablet, too.  If 3-threaded, then omit the background (anti-motif) color.  If 2-threaded, then omit the two accompanying threads.

I wasn't able to do any tablet-weaving for the last several weeks due to other obligations.  I'm glad I can resume tablet-weaving and other fun stuff again.

I'm probably going to be teaching people how to do 4-loop fingerloop braiding (for the near-universal square/round cord) in a few weeks.  I hope the class ends up being reasonably fun, easy, and useful.  I could do other 4-loop fingerloop braids as well, or other methods for making the same braid structure, but I probably will keep it simple and focused on only this one topic.  I'll probably show two ways to do it, though.  Or at least present two ways even if one of them is mostly left as an exercise for the braider to do some other time.  (I'll probably start with the Makusua maize blossom braid from L-MBRIC because it's easier for me to keep track of where I am in the braid.)

Now back to my band....  what motif shall I do next?  How many more shall I make up?  Do I care about pattern flow throughout the band or is this mostly a sampler of whatever I feel like doing next?

3/1 Twill Sampler Band -- done!

 It is finished, yay!  It's about 64" (160cm) long, 7/8" (22mm) wide.  If I'd really worked at it, I might have been able to eke out another inch or so, but that's OK.

I ended up doing 17 motifs total.  I started and ended with a little diamond, and then alternated swirl/S/leaf motifs with motifs that were blockier and more diamond-based.  I probably could have skipped the last diamond motif, but I was having fun, plus I didn't know how much more plain twill weaving I'd be doing to finish the band.

The motifs are all by Claudia Wollny, from Tablets at Work, Lily Grove, and Lily Grove 2.  The first swirl motif (second motif overall) is in the errata so of course I used that version of the chart.  The other charts were fine as printed.

There are some areas that look messier, where some motifs are a bit elongated compared to others.  I'm not totally sure why that happened.

Is it because these are areas where I was more likely to mess up and thus unweave/reweave?  Is it because these areas are after I've advanced the warp, untangled stuff, and re-tensioned everything, and thus there were slight differences in tension from thread to thread?  Did I relax or tense up?  Did the cotton stretch out differently?  Was I closer/farther from the cards and this affected things somehow?  Will it relax out now that the band is no longer under tension?  Is it an illusion, based on the motifs' different widths and lengths?

I am not sure, but it's something I'll pay attention to in the future.  I'm hoping it's one of those things that will straighten itself out through practice and experience.

I'm also not sure how much more square I want to try to make the motifs.  If I beat too hard then the band will be too stiff rather than flexible (yeah, get your mind out of the gutter).  I do loosen up a bit on weft tension since weft tension does interact with how close the picks are to affect the various angles and thus elongation of the motifs.  If that makes sense.  Also, if the weft tension is a little looser, I believe I can achieve closer-together picks and beat the weft down a little tighter.

I do like the natural elongation of the swirly motifs.  It's quite possible that this may well be a feature of the technique, similar to how it is in double-face.  Which makes some sense since 3/1 twill is so closely related to double-face.  Or maybe it's because I mostly use cotton.  Or I like a more flexible band thus don't weave too tightly.

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Here's the list of the motifs I used:

Little diamond separator motif (every odd motif from first to seventeenth): Lily Grove, p.130, V-1

First swirl (second motif): Tablets at Work, p.271 (from the errata)

First diamond (fourth motif): Tablets at Work, p.271, upper right

Second swirl (sixth motif): Lily Grove, p.28, II-7

Second diamond (eighth motif): Lily Grove, p.141, V-27

Third swirl (tenth motif): Lily Grove 2, p.44 II-12

Third diamond (twelfth motif): Tablets at Work, p.275, upper right

Fourth swirl (fourteenth motif): Tablets at Work, p.285, lower right

Fourth diamond (sixteenth motif): Lily Grove 2, p.221, V-4

I love all of these motifs and would be happy to use them again.  Some of the swirl/leaf motifs have repetition lines in case I want to make a much longer leafy tendril, for example.  Which I might!  There are many other motifs I'd like to play with.  It is very nice of Claudia Wollny to have provided such a rich set of charts, and to have made all of them quite modular so they can be plugged in wherever or whenever one wants.

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What did I learn?

I like 3/1 twill.  I can follow Wollny's charts and string together motifs in a pleasing way.  This band was a lot of fun to weave although of course it's slower than some of the other tablet weaving techniques.

The underlying logic of 3/1 twill makes sense, which means that I should try designing a few motifs to refine my understanding.

Un-weaving is tedious but I seem to be able to do it without too much fuss.  I'm comfortable doing what I need to do in order to fix my mistakes.

Lacis cards are perfectly reasonable to weave with.

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I'm not sure what I'll be doing next.  I'd like to try Collingwood's two-pack method for doing plain 3/1 twill to see if that is faster and/or flows well.  Dunno if I'd add motifs or not; I'll have to think about it and maybe do some charting to see what else would need to change in order to have the proper twill background structure.

I have some other ideas about what else I'd like to do in the near future, so I guess I'll see what I'm inspired to do first.

Twilling Along

Twill!  Fun!  I'm glad I decided to switch my warped-up band to a 3/1 twill structure instead of doing the lovely diagonal pattern that was not giving me joy.

As I half expected, after several inches of plain weaving, I decided it was time to add motifs.  Much dithering ensued.  There are so many possibilities!

I'm doing random motifs from Claudia Wollny's charts.  There are plenty to choose from even though I am using only 17 tablets.  I started with a small diamond motif, and each larger motif is separated by that same diamond motif.  There are three sets of plain twill between each motif.  So far, I'm trying to alternate swirly motifs (or leaves) with more blocky motifs.  The plan is to use different swirls and blocks as I go.  I'm having a lot of fun.  Once I get near the end, I'll switch back to plain twill.  I don't expect I'll achieve perfect symmetry but I don't care.

The photo shows the first few motifs.  They're a bit elongated but that's OK.

The motifs are from Tablets at Work, Lily Grove, and Lily Grove 2.  I like how the charts are all modular so I don't have to do a lot of re-charting.  I center the motif which means that I might need to add tablets on each side, but that's pretty minor.

After I finish this, I want to try Collingwood's two-pack method of doing plain twill.  Maybe I'll add a few motifs as I go.  We'll see, because I think he specifies tablet-flipping for changing the colors and making sure the background structure is twilling properly, and tablet-flipping does not usually bring me joy.  I'm mostly seeing how much faster/easier it is to use his method for plain twill vs the one-pack method I'm currently using.

Or maybe I'll do more two-hole patterns, or some double-face, or crank out some quick threaded-in patterns, or whatever else inspires me when I'm ready to make a new band.

This band is bringing me joy, both the plain part and the motifs.

And cats are still terrible weaving assistants.

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.

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.