Fingerloop braiding in public

Yesterday I did another little fingerlooping class.  This was a freeform drop-in thing.

I taught some braids, yay!  The ones in the photo are a 4-loop Makusua braid, done as a Z-spiral.  The other is a medley of A-fell 5-loop braids (unorthodox, split, round/square, flat, and pigtail/plait).

The people I taught had not done much fingerloop braiding, though one said it reminded her of something she did in elementary school, so maybe she had learned how to fingerloop braid when she was younger.

The braid they found easiest was the last one -- the 5-loop pigtail/plait, where the loops do not go through each other.  Basic directions -- put 3 loops on one hand, fingers abc, and 2 loops on the other, fingers bc.  The a finger (aka index finger) picks up the c finger (aka ring finger) on the other hand.  Walk loops and repeat.  Generalize to other numbers of strands as desired, and ditto for using the littler finger as the traveling finger rather than the bigger finger.

So, hmm, in the future, if/when I teach new braiders, maybe I should start them off with plaiting.  Or don't be too ambitious, and just teach one braid instead of a bunch!  I do get carried away with enthusiasm and wanting to show people cool stuff.  But with plaiting, people can get used to moving loops around and transferring them from finger to finger.  Then one can add the idea of pulling one loop through another loop, then pulling one loop through two or more other loops, and after that, reversed vs unreversed taking of the loops.

The event had various things going on.  I saw some lovely tablet-weaving, some spinning, some knitting and crocheting, lucet-ing, inkle weaving, sewing/embroidering, nalbinding, a bit of macrame, and so on.  I'm not sure if anyone was braiding besides me, though I did see some finished braids (done by several different methods) and also a marudai (though it was was bare, no braid on it).

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Currently I'm finishing up a knitted doily so I haven't set up a new band yet.  But I'm thinking about it.  So many possibilities!  The things that appeal today are tablet-woven cords, two-hole, 3/1 twill, and "something new" whether it's double-cloth or brocade or pebble weave or some other technique I've not yet officially explored.  But my ideas change often so who knows what I'll actually do?

It's kind of amazing to look back and see the techniques I've played with in the past several years.  For many, I've only done a little taste, but at least I've tried and experienced some of what's involved.  I hope I get to continue my tablet-weaving self-education for a good long time.

And ditto for braiding, of course!

Plans and reminders

I taught some fingerloop braiding last weekend, and as a result of that, will be doing it again at a different venue in a few weeks.  It'll be a mix of fingerloop braiding and the 7-strand Fill the Gap disk braid.  Hmm, what braids do I want to have available to teach?  I'll want to have a few things in mind that will be suitable for the skill levels and experience of the people I'll be working with.  Heck, maybe some of them will be able to show me new things, too.

The teaching I did last weekend (and will be doing at the end of the month) was informal, a kind of choose-your-own-adventure, drop-in, make-and-take, demo kind of thing.  I was braiding more of the little chevron 5-loop D-shaped fingerloop braids (https://loopbraider.com/2017/08/30/uo5-11-triangle-patt/, the single-color variation of the bicolor chevrons) and people wandered over to join me.  The friend with whom I was doing those 6-loop unorthodox Sion braids came over, too.  So... we showed someone how to braid those.

Someone else had never braided before, so I started them off with a basic 3-loop orthodox fingerloop braid, done V-fell, with its three common variations (split/doubled, square, and flat).  After that, I showed them the 4-loop braid that is the same as the Skjoldehamn hood ties, from the class I taught about a month ago, using the method of the Wayuu people.  The person I showed said it looked a lot like the braids used on Karaite prayer shawls.  And wow, it actually is the same braid (though I think Karaites typically use freehand braiding techniques rather than fingerloop braiding).  So that was kind of cool.  As far as I know, other strains of Judaism use different cord structures for the fringes/braids/knots.  Plus there's a cool discussion to be found about what blue dye is or was originally used and what is now permissible -- indigo (woad or another indigo), murex purple, something else entirely, etc.

I'm pretty sure I demonstrated/taught a few more braids but I can't remember who or what.  And I forgot to take pics of the braids I made before giving them away.

I'll probably do the same kind of drop-in braiding thing rather than a formal class for the next go-round.  The disk braiding will also be pretty straightforward.  A friend gave me some foam disks to share, so I'll have those available.  I need to make more cardboard disks to hand out since I'm low on those.  My friend also gave me some foam disks with more than 8 slots, should I someday want to teach some of the other braids that can be done on a disk.  I probably won't do that this time.

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The other thing I'm doing that is narrow-wares-related is planning my next tablet-woven band, yay.  It'll be for a friend, who has asked for something longer than I usually do.  So I'll have to rig up something to measure out the warp, and hopefully keep it under control as I get going.  I expect that the cats will be their usual non-helpful weaving assistants.

I think I'll be doing a two-hole band that is very similar to the Antinoe E28288 band I did (and loved making) last year.  It's actually one of the Siksälä bands, one of the remaining fragments of Matus CC : 14.  And to claim that's my inspiration is a bit of a lie -- I saw a pic on Aisling's instagram page and thought it would work well for my purposes.  She said that she got the pattern on etsy and that it's a Siksälä pattern.  I looked at Aisling's pic and charted it out myself and then tracked down the historical reference to double-check my charting.

This is from the Siksälä II pdf publication, p. 203 --  Siksälä Kalme II Matuste ja leidude kataloog, by Heiki Valk, Jaana Ratas, and Silvia Laul, 2014.  There's all kinds of cool stuff in the pdf that is of interest to the narrow minded.

The colors of the original may or may not be discernible, and may or may not match the colors in Aisling's version, but I'm choosing colors to match my friend's preference so it doesn't matter.  My color arrangement is very much influenced by Aisling's.

These little 2-hole X-O patterns are pretty common -- various versions of this motif are also in Eva Sandermann Olsen's section on Latvian-style 2-hole tablet weaving, and in the Celaines book, and in general, are pretty easy to come up with just by fiddling around.  I'm not even sure which etsy pattern Aisling is referring to, though I think it might be the yellow and green one offered by Hrafna Norse Crafts.

(The above pic is the example from Olsen's wonderful free Tablet Weaving pdf.)

Anyway, I love two-hole patterns, I think this will look good in my friend's chosen colors and for the intended application, and it is a straightforward pattern that won't require excessive concentration to weave.

I also want to do a few more 2-hole brick-type patterns.  There are some colorful ones in the Celaines book that appeal to me in addition to various Karisto/Pasanen and general social media (as in, I don't remember their names) 2-hole patterns.  I saw someone else last weekend who was making tablet-woven cords (from one of the patterns in Tablet Woven Treasures) and now I too want to make more tablet-woven cords.  And everything else -- there are so many fun things I want to make, and not enough time/energy to do it all at once.  I like to savor what I'm doing and that means it takes a while to get to everything I want to do.  There are things I may never get to, alas.  But I am enjoying both the process and the finished creations, and I always have a long list of things I'd like to make and do.

Hopefully I'll have some more interesting pics next time I post.  Mostly I wanted to get my thoughts and ideas down, to help me plan and also to help me remember.

Colorful Oseberg tablet woven band (and a little bit about the Sion 269 purse braids)

 Hmm, I guess my "next band" wasn't in the Icelandic Missed Hole technique.  I saw a Sally Pointer pic of a colorful Oseberg-pattern band and decided that I needed one, too.  Luckily Oseberg is easy to chart up, especially with the fairly clear photo that was posted.  This version is symmetric and has 11 tablets.

Hers is probably in wool.  Mine is the usual big-box store cotton.  She used black, light green, yellow, and a pinkish red.  I don't have enough black cotton left, so I changed it out for purple.  And the reds I have are a little too bright, or something.  I switched to orange.  What the heck, let's make sure we cover all the secondary colors, right?

The backside is not quite the same as the front side.  I have a small length of the reverse side along the bottom of the above pic, and you can see the blip of orange between the parallelograms, while of course the orange is in the middle of the parallelograms on the front side.

You may not be able to make out the colors in the above pic, so here's a close-up.  The colors are still a little washed out compared to the actual band.

The weaving went as quickly as one might imagine.  I like it a lot.  It's very cheerful and colorful!  It's destined for a gift.  It's the usual 66"-ish long and about 1/2" wide (12mm/167cm).

You can see how the twist of the thread ply interacts with the twist of the tablet-weaving.

Maybe I should make a few more of these in various bright colors, just for fun.  Or in between other, more complicated projects.

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Yesterday I nerded out about the Sion 269 purse braids with a friend.  Now someone else knows how to make them!  The friend might be a little more concerned about the reversed vs unreversed version than is necessary, but it's still a cool little detail that not everyone would have noticed let alone cared about.  And it does say something about the group of purses -- even with apparently the same yarn, different knitters and different braiders were probably involved, given these small differences in braiding technique and also the differences in knitted gauge.  I'm not sure the yarn is the same -- it's hard to compare the exact color shades and thus the dyelots from one photo to the next.

My friend randomly arranged the loop colors in a pleasing order and instantly re-created one of the color sequences of the actual purse braid.  Boutrup/Speiser speculated that the braids were made by the same person or at the same time since a lot of these 6-loop unorthodox braids have the same or similar color sequences, and that seemed statistically unlikely if multiple people were making braids.  It might just be something about how the human mind works instead.

I've changed my mind a bit on how the appearance of the 6-loop A-fell unorthodox Sion 269 purse braid changes based on whether the loops are taken reversed or unreversed.  There really is little or no consistent difference, and my current theory says it's as much or more about how we do the moves and tighten the braid as it is about the exact path the loops take.  So, unless one is doing bi-color loops, the braids come out looking pretty much the same either way.  At least with the acrylic yarn I use for experiments.

I should do some Slentre style braiding experiments.  Those Skjoldehamn wide braids (and the Hedeby apron braid) -- how easy are they using the Slentre technique?  They're easy enough to do freehand, especially for long braids.  But I have a small speculation that might need a bit of experimental data; perhaps the Slentre fingerloop braiding method, first recorded in the Faroe Islands, is the last stronghold of a much wider braiding tradition?  Testing this idea with some of the archaeologic braids could be interesting.  Probably not, but you never know.  Many can probably be done with other fingerloop methods, with loops used to hold the tension even if loops are treated as single elements, as with the pigtail braids.

More 4-strand braiding silliness

The rightmost braid is the one mentioned in the previous post.  The leftmost braid is a repeat of the fingerlooping methods.  Again, I tried both methods -- move the index finger to the middle finger vs move the ring finger to the middle finger.

They're pretty much identical from a braid structure standpoint -- the index and ring finger on one hand switch clockwise, and the index and ring finger on the other hand switch counterclockwise.  With one, the index finger loop goes over the ring finger loop; with the other, the ring finger loop goes over the index finger loop.

Either one can spiral S or Z; it depends on the arrangement of the colors vs how the loops switch.  Do I remember which is which?  Umm, no.  But it was obvious when I'd mess up by switching the twist directions by accident, and then switching back.  I got both S and Z spirals with each of the methods.

Too bad the contrast on the left two braids is so low, because they were very informative.  Both are in green and blue, with the fatter braid being fingerlooped and the thinner one single-strand freehand braided.

The middle one happened after I poked around on the 'net and my own books and stuff.  It's a different method than the other freehand methods I wrote about earlier, though of course they're all kind of the same and it's mostly about the way my brain understands what is going on.

For the middle one -- think of these four elements being arranged in a circle instead of flat.  Instead of 1 2 3 4, we have NW SW SE NE.   As with fingerlooping and disk braiding, we're going to swap NW and SE in one direction, and then swap NE and SW in the other.

So... cross NW over SE, then cross NE over SW.  Twist your wrists and move your fingers (and strands) as appropriate to make sure that the pairs of elements crossing each other don't interfere with the currently-passive elements or vice versa.  As with the other braids, the spiral direction (and color pattern in general) depends on the arrangement of the colors vs the direction of the crossing twists.  One can, of course, cross under rather than over, but for me, the cross-over twist of my fingers felt more natural than the cross-under.

Here's a paracord video that shows it, though with the color arrangement that leads to vertical stripes rather than a spiral: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtWWA6MQXGE and it can also be seen fairly well on Sally Pointer's video (the second braid, starting about halfway through the video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwVXwH_w2ng

Am I done?  Maybe.  I'm probably not going to explore disk/stand braiding or whipcording because the how-to for those is pretty straightforward.  I am going to try to pay attention to figure out which color arrangements lead to which spiral direction.  It should be pretty obvious pretty quickly.

Whipcording (aka Viking whipcord or interlocking or slinging) -- as far as I know, there's no unambiguous evidence of this method being used before the 17th century.  Honestly, though, whipcording just seems to be doing this braid with wooden bobbins to hold the excess length of unbraided yarn, plus hanging it from something high so it can be worked downwards vertically, plus adding a second person if so desired to make it a game (by tossing pairs of bobbins back and forth).  It would be useful if making long lengths of cord.  But for something that's roughly 8" long, like the Skjoldehamn hood ties?  I'm thinking freehand or fingerloop since either can be done pretty spontaneously.

Dunno if and when I'll explore more 4-strand braiding stuff, such as other braid structures.  I'm also not going to track the history of these braids, because they tend to be pretty universal over time and space, going way way back.  People are clever.

So one possibility for a class is this braid, period.  I could do the fingerloop method and only that.  Or I could do fingerloop and freehand.  Or even fingerloop, freehand, and disk.  It would be in the context of the Skjoldehamn hood ties, with a general discussion of this braid throughout history.

If I did a second class, it would be the 6 strand pigtail-type braid used decoratively on the cuffs, necklines, etc., in the Skjoldehamn outfit, both freehand and fingerlooped.

So ends today's ramblings on this particular 4-strand braid structure.  Maybe.  There might well be an upcoming post on the 6 strand braid and maybe an example of the 4-strand braid showing which color placements lead to which patterns, so my poor little goldfish brain has something to return to later.

The Skjoldehamn hood braid (some experiments)

I'm still playing around with the braids that were used as ties on the Skjoldehamn outfit.  Today I tried a few things with the 4-element cords that are part of the hood.

Here is a small pic of the hood, screen-shotted from archive.org's copy of the thesis pdf.

And here is a small pic of the ties along with a diagram that traces the path of each element in the braid.

These are both from https://web.archive.org/web/20220225172743/https://kaupafar.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Nye-tanker-om-Skjoldehamnfunnet.pdf with the cords being discussed on p.47-48.

Google translation from the Norwegian text gives the thesis description of these cords as such (somewhat edited): 

"The braid here measures 19 cm including one tassel of 2.5 cm, and is approx. 0.4 cm thick. It is braided from two pairs of S threads in olive green yarn and two pair of S threads in brown-red yarn. The colors wind in spirals (clockwise) down the braid...

"The green tassel is a highly felted/felted weave fabric (of unknown bond) enveloping the outermost part of it. The tassel is sewn on irregular stitches in green Z2S yarn. The round braids are sewn to the hood with both golden and dark grey-brown yarn in Z2S. Since the right side braid is not preserved in its entirety (only 6 cm is preserved) it is uncertain how long this originally was..."

Løvlid seems to think that the ties went under the chin. Other people think that they tied in the back, to adjust the way the hood fit at the back of the head and to keep the top of the hood from flopping forward onto the face.

My first braid (shown in the previous post and also the rightmost braid in the above photo) was done using the above diagram -- outermost thread goes under 2 elements and around 1, first the left than the right.

I did that again today.  (it's the second braid from the right, above)  It's nice but still slightly awkward (though less awkward than the first time).  Then I went poking around on the internet and my books.

It's possible to do this using a disk -- I think it's the very first braid in Rodrick Owens' 250 Braids book.

It's also possible to do this in the opposite way.  Instead of going under 2 elements then around and over, you can go over 2 and around and under.  It didn't seem to be all that much faster than the first method.

But I also found Laverne Waddington's description, which gave me yet another method for making this cord.

Her freehand method  (for 4 cords lined up as 1 2 3 4) is for 2 to cross over 3 and 4, 1 crosses over the cord that is now in the 2 position.   Then, 3 crosses over 2 and 1, with 4 then crossing over the cord that is now in the 3 position.  This is the middle braid in the above photo.  It's a little looser than the previous method, but a lot of that might be because it's the first time I tried it.  There's a nice rhythm to it.

She also showed a fingerlooping method, yay!  She learned it from Hilda in Potosi and Julia, (the post doesn't give further details beyond identifying them as her weaving teachers).  Since the cords on the Skjoldehamn hood are made with 2 strands per element, it is not at all impossible that they were made from fingerlooping.

Here is Waddington's tutorial on both the freehand and fingerloop methods: https://backstrapweaving.wordpress.com/tutorials/tutorial-4-strand-braid/

I first tried the method for spiral-4 braids from Ingrid Crickmore's website, which is a braid that is well known in historic (and modern) fingerloop sources.  Hmmm, close.  That's the second photo from the left.  I'm pretty sure I twisted the loops as I picked them up with the traveling finger.  The braid is pretty loose, which is partly due to using loops instead of single strands of yarn.  Crickmore says that this one needs careful tightening, so I'm sure a lot of it was just me braiding quickly without paying too much attention.

Here are Crickmore's descriptions of the spiral braids: https://loopbraider.com/2019/12/28/spirals-and-2-loops/ and https://loopbraider.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/part-2_4-loop_spiralbraid.pdf

Then I tried Waddington's method, which doesn't take any loops through any other loops.  That's it!  I tried a few variations, too, to compare.  This is shown in the leftmost braid.

The fingerloop method that seems to be equivalent to the Skjoldehamn braid is as follows.

Put loops on index fingers and ring fingers.  Have both of Color A on the left hand and both of Color B on the right hand.  (One can get different color patterns by making different choices, of course.)

Shift the loop on the right ring finger to the right middle finger.  Put the loop on the left index finger onto the right ring finger.  Use that left index finger to pick up the loop on the right middle finger.

Then do the other hand.  Shift the loop on the left ring finger to the left middle finger.  Put the loop on the right index finger onto the left ring finger, then use that right index finger to pick up the loop on the left middle finger.

Repeat.

I also tried putting the index finger loop onto the middle finger, then moving the ring finger loop to the other hand, then shifting the middle finger down.  This braid, while perfectly charming, does not give the same pattern.  You can see that in the middle of the braid pictured above.  I also did a little bit of the regular spiral loop (one loop through the other) without twisting the loop, just to double check.

When I was doing it according to the instructions from Hilda and Julia, the braid looks right and is reasonably well-tensioned.

(And now that I'm re-watching the video.....   They walk the loop from the index finger to the middle finger, place the other-hand ring finger loop on the index finger, then put the middle-finger loop on the other-hand ring finger. WELL!  Something new to try, and to see how it compares to what I've been doing.)

All of my braids were relatively short, with pretty much no obvious tension change from start to finish.  Dunno how much of that is because I've been doing this for a while, vs the shortness of the braids, vs the braid structure.

But it seems entirely reasonable that the Skjoldehamn hood ties were made using fingerlooping, with freehand braiding also being a reasonable choice.

A few questions -- the description says that the braids were done from two pairs of S threads.  Were these two single-ply yarns?  Or one plied yarn?  Or two 2-plied yarns?  The picture is fuzzy enough that I can't tell.

I wonder what color these were originally?  Brown-red and olive green could be red and yellow, orange and blue, etc.  Or brown-red and olive green, of course!

What I learned:

There are indeed several ways to do 4 loop fingerloop braids, depending on how one transfers loops from hand to hand.  I knew that about other fingerloop braids I've done, and also about other 4-loop fingerloop braids, but I don't know if I had explored ways to do this kind of braid where loops are only exchanged between two fingers rather than traveling around the entire hand.  I wonder how this will generalize to braids with more elements?  Maybe the Potosi method (on 6 strands) would work for the Hedeby braid?  Hmmm.

There are a lot of ways to make this simple 4-element braid (which I already knew -- this is a very ubiquitous world-wide braid, used in several different textile and textile-related crafts).

There are at least 3 ways to make the braid freehand, and probably several others I haven't explored yet.

Since it is possible, quick, and efficient to make this braid using fingerloop methods, it raises the odds of some or all of the other 2-strand multi-element braids on the outfit being fingerlooped, too.  Of course, they might all have been done freehand.  Or some of each.

Some blog commenters are awfully demanding.  Though tone doesn't come through in writing and some of the commenters write as if English wasn't their first language.  I'll try to be charitable.  Waddington and Crickmore are both unfailingly polite, friendly, and helpful.

I will continue to explore the Potosi and Potosi-inspired fingerloop methods to make sure they give the same structure as well as exploring other variations I might accidentally create.  I should try the disk method (I'd use a marudai if it was me, but if this is a class, they'll probably use disks.  I'll see how much of a pain it is to use an 8-slot disk.).  I'll look through my books and the 'net to see what else I can find.  And I'll make sure the fingerloop method works for the 6-strand Skjoldehamn braids.  I'm nearly positive it does, but heck, I'm nearly positive about a lot of things that turn out to be totally wrong.  

I have plenty of ideas for teaching a class or two.  Or more.

Edited to add -- photo will go in later.  But I tried the Potosi fingerloop method again, both the video version (move index finger loop to middle finger) and my version (move ring finger loop to middle finger).  They have the same kind of structure.  My version is a little tighter.  The video version is a little easier to keep track of in terms of what move needs to happen next.  And the video version spirals Z while my version spirals S.  I'll confirm that tomorrow in case I did something else like mix up the thread color placement.

A few easy braids from the Skjoldehamn outfit

I'm probably teaching a class next month.  There are several in my rotation already, but maybe I feel like doing something new.

I've seen some interesting six-element braids in the past few months, shown to me by friends.  One is from one of the Sion knitted relic purses.  The purse my friend is knitting has what looks to be a six element square fingerlooped braid.  (I tried making it a few months ago and it seems to look like the pics, so hey, probably a good first approximation.)

Another six-element braid was shown to me by a different friend who is using braids sewn down over seams as a decorative statement, very common in certain times and places.  That friend was using ideas from the Skjoldehamn find and other similar-era finds.

I found a thesis that discussed the textiles of the Skjoldehamn find, including semi-decent pictures and also diagrams of the braids.

And off I go...

Braids are used in several places on this outfit.  The Skjoldehamn hood has a couple of 4-element braided cords used as ties.  Six-element braids are used decoratively around the cuffs and neckline.  A twelve-element braid is used as a belt and something similar is used as a drawstring for the trousers.  Plus ends of other bands are also braided, and possibly more I'm forgetting.

Most of the braids are made using doubled or tripled strands of yarn.  Doubled strands always make me suspect fingerlooping, but there's no obvious evidence (such as braid tightness being different from one end to the other).  So it's possible, but it's also possible the braids are all made in the hand, or by using disks or bobbins/whipcords or something else entirely.

I think the four element and six element braids would be reasonably easy to teach.  So I found my acrylic stash and tried them out.  I used one strand, not double stranded like I believe the originals were.  Also, the originals are made from thin wool yarn and I'm using worsted-weight acrylic.  Plus nevermind about natural dyes vs modern industrial dyes.

The bottom braid in this pic is from the hood.  It's a four-element braid.  I think it's either the same as or very similar to the ones one always sees around the world.

If the four elements are laid out as 1 2 3 4 --  element 1 goes under 2 and 3, then over 3 (to assume the new position 2); then element 4 goes under 3 and 2, and over 2 to become the new position 3.

It's a little awkward to do, so I might try going over-around-under instead of under-around-over to see if that flows better while still looking the same.

The photo of the hood tie in the thesis looks pretty much like my cords, with one end in an overhand knot and the other having loops (or maybe just ends) that are hid by a tassel cover.  Was it fingerlooped?  I'm not sure -- I'll have to see if the structure matches any of the four-element fingerloop braids I know, and then see what it looks like and how easy it is to braid compared to banging it out freehand.

The other two braids have the same structure.  One is more tightly braided and monochrome than the other, but they're identical other than that.  There are six elements.   The right hand outermost element goes over two elements into the middle.  The left hand outermost element goes over three elements (to cross the previous element) into the middle.  Repeat.  I think this type of braid is referred to as a plait, but honestly, I don't really know the current braiding terminology.  I know this one can be done as a fingerloop, but it's plenty fast as a freehand braid.

I also looked at the Hedeby apron braid, mostly because it too is a 6 element braid of a similar time and place.  That one is not fingerlooped, I don't think, since it consists of single stranded elements (of 2-ply wool), not double/triple.  This one has the rightmost element go over 2, and then the left goes under 2 and over the just-moved strand.  It has a more W like appearance (the 6 element plait above has a V like appearance).  I could do the Hedeby 6 element plait in a different class.  It's not much more complicated than the Skjoldehamn 6 element plait.

Here are the references I'm finding useful so far, more or less.  I was given links to youtube videos from my friend using braids as decorative elements over seam lines.   Videos are slow but they can help me confirm that I understand what's going on.  Or at least the video person has the same understanding or misunderstanding that I do.

2009 master's thesis: https://web.archive.org/web/20220225172743/https://kaupafar.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Nye-tanker-om-Skjoldehamnfunnet.pdf

also see https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/11552101/skjoldehamn-find-pennsic-expo-conv-svcscom and https://www.medieval-baltic.us/skjold.html (this second link is more for how to make the hood, since it seems a bit different from how most of my friends make it)

Hedeby: https://clothofstars.blogspot.com/2023/08/sca-6-strand-hedeby-braid.html and https://urd.priv.no/viking/smokkr.html#ev-haithabu and of course https://blog.eibeck.de/2014/plait-from-the-hedeby-apron-dress-fragment.html

The videos are from Wyrd Kindred https://www.youtube.com/@WyrdKindred

I think there are more links out there that I've found in the past, and also more links in general.  But the above were of some use today.

Sion purse pic here: https://www.kornbluthphoto.com/SionPurse269.html  The braid really looks like a square 6, which means a square 5 on one hand and a square 7 on the other.  But I'll do more experiments later.  My friend mostly cared about the knitted motifs, which are cute, but which are more well known and studied than the cords.

I hope the above kind of makes sense and helps me figure out what I was thinking about when I went exploring and experimenting today.

One more note to myself -- my friends and I should try making a Skjoldehamn hood according to the methods in the thesis to see how it works compared to the methods my friends currently use.

It's nice to be back creating -- I've been busy these last few months.  What time and ambition I've had for creativity has mostly gone to playing in the kitchen, spinning, knitting, and gardening.

My braiding/weaving area is mostly off limits still, so I might not be able to start a new tablet woven band for another few weeks minimum.

Monotonous Monochrome tablet weaving (the Thin Blue Band)

Well, it's done.  Yay!  By the end, I was very tired of it.  I started with roughly 3 yards of warp and ended up with about 83" of band.  I could have eked out another few inches, but Yet Another warp thread had frayed and broke, and I was tired of replacing them.

The band's width varies from about 7/8" to about 15/16", which is a bit more than I like to see.  Hopefully some of that will go away when I block it.  Ditto for the wavy lines which are a result of how I tensioned it and advanced the warp.

As I wrote in the previous post, this is the pattern seen in the Museum of London band 449 (according to Grace Crowfoot) and also in the pre-Roman El Cigarralejo pattern (according to Aisling).  It consists of 4-threaded tablets that alternate orientations -- 3Z and then 3S (or vice versa).  I used 30 tablets.  My aim was to get it to be >1" but obviously that didn't happen.  It's a nice looking band anyway.

I used my Robin & Russ Handweaver tablets since I didn't know how many tablets I'd thread up when I started.  The thread is the same teal thin cotton 2-ply I've been using, as gifts for a friend.  The combination of large tablets and thin loosely-plied yarn was not a great one.  It was hard to turn the tablets and clear the shed, and eventually the thread started to fray and pill.  My weaving area has a thin layer of blue lint and cotton-plus-cat-fur pills under where the band was being woven.

I think the R&R tablets are going to be retired unless I'm doing a project where I don't have enough tablets of a smaller size.  Some are getting worn out, but the real reason is that I do truly prefer the smaller tablets.  I probably have a few Linda Hendrickson tablets around that have extra holes for Andean pebble weave, but those are special purpose tablets that aren't going to be in general use.  Plus I bought them to support one of the wonderful people who publicize and teach the various techniques of tablet-weaving.

I'm not sure what I'll do next.  The Mammen 3/1 twill band is calling to me (Aisling's chart, probably).  Or maybe I need to do more cords or the double-face Durham seal tag patterns.  Or play with the little 3D-printed rigid heddle someone gave me.  Or do more inkle weaving or backstrap weaving.  Etc.  I'm also gonna be doing a bit more spinning and knitting as the weather cools.

I might try to make more stuff from the teal and gold my friend supplied.  We'll see.  Right now I'm irritated at it, so it's all gonna be in timeout for a while.

I taught another class recently.  I wasn't sure what to teach so I took my cue from the attendees.  It ended up being twisted cords and the 7-strand Fill the Gap braid.  They had fun and so did I.

Not quite done with easy zigzag tablet woven bands...

 And another.  This one is taken from the Lautanauhat Facebook page, obviously a continuing source of inspiration for me.  I saw the photo, which, in translation, was described as "ancient Karelian ribbon the old way".  This is a bit ambiguous, since the purpose of the post was to show the author's progress as a weaver, often re-interpreting the structure of an archaeologic band in a more complex way as well as currently weaving the same patterns with finer materials, more tightly woven.  So, is this a genuine Karelian pattern?  Another riff on the Ladoga fragments?  Who cares?  It was fun, quick, etc., a nice band to knock off after being able to re-assemble my weaving corner.

I re-charted the band based on the Facebook photo.  It's as simple as it looks.  There are 10 tablets total (6 pattern tablets and 2 edge tablets per side), 4 holes per tablet.  The edge tablets are aqua for the outermost (1 and 10) and white for the inner (2 and 9), with alternating tablet orientation.  The pattern tablets start with AB in aqua and CD in white, staggering them across the 6 pattern tablets to make diagonal lines, all with the same tablet orientation.  Then it's a nice simple 17F 17B rotation sequence, with the edges always turning forward.

Am I done with zigzags?  I'm not sure yet...

I'm not sure what band I'll do next.  I'm dithering as usual.  Double face?  Two hole?  3/1 twill?  Another fast-and-easy band?  (I told someone I might make them a band that would be suitable to make into an instrument strap.)  If I make the instrument strap, then ideally it should look good on both sides.

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I also taught a couple of classes on making simple cords this month and will teach another one next month.  I did a class on twisted cords (two different methods) and another on the two-loop fingerlooped braid (with a quick demo of the basic 3-loop braid).  Next month I'll do one on fingercrochet (aka two-strand chain sinnet).  I should probably do a class someday on making cordage using the reverse twist/warp method since it's yet another classic/simple technique.

So I guess that's 4 cord-making techniques so far.  I still want to teach a class on pigtail braids, particularly the 5-strand pigtail.  Then I can tell myself I've done the "Five Easy Pieces" series.  Each one uses a different technique -- twisted cord, finger-loop braid, fill-the-gap disk braid, finger-crochet,, and free-end pigtail braid.

For the finger-looping class, I used the instructions from Ingrid Crickmore on her loopbraider.com website.  She initially wrote the instructions and created the videos for a class she taught on the Braids and Bands mailing list, giving permission to pass them along if she was credited, which of course I did.  (And of course I didn't charge anything; this was a completely free thing.)

For the twisted cord class, I wrote my own instructions.  However, I found a video and a non-video instruction site for each of the methods I taught or mentioned (simple twisting of one strand or bundle of strands, folded back on itself; twisting or two or more strands separately, then tying them together; the inch-at-a-time twist and fold/wrap method).  I also linked a couple of fun things -- a technical article on finding ancient cordage on a worked piece of stone that dates to Neanderthal times, a short video on building Inca-style bridges in Peru, and a website showing photos of archaeologic/historic twisted cords used on clothing as ties, drawstrings, and for decorative purposes.

Today just for funsies I decided to crank out a 4-loop fingerloop braid that builds on the principles of the 2-loop one.  That's another fun and quick braid. 

I need to warp up a borrowed inkle loom to weave a long band.  The loom needs to go back to its owner soon.  It does 5 yards of warp, whereas my own inkle loom tops out at 3 yards of warp.  It will be plain inkle-weaving (i.e. a warp-faced band/tape), no pick-up or anything fancy.

Twined baskets and bags in the Columbia Plateau style are also consuming my time and brainspace.  Happy sigh.  Plus knitting and spinning and sewing and all the usual non-narrow-wares stuff.

Continuing the theme of two-hole tablet-weaving

 Here are the most recent bands.

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

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

For an acrylic band, it's not bad.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vague ruminations on easy-to-make cords

I've been thinking of doing a class on easy ways to make cords.  It's not so much a follow-up on the class I did for the Fill-the-Gap braid, but more of "one in a series of".  I like cords.  Narrow wares.  Etc. I'm not wedded to any particular technique, either.

So...  if I were to do a class on something like "Three Easy Cords"  (or four, or five, and yes, that's a slight riff on Five Easy Pieces), what would I include?  Some of it would depend on the length of the class.  Too many things would cause people's brains to shut down.  But all of these are easy, so might not be enough for one class per cord.  Though I did the Fill-the-Gap braid as a single (30-minute) class, and it requires less than 5 minutes to teach/learn.

The criteria to be included in this imaginary class or series of classes would be something easy with few or no tools needed.  Here are some ideas.

1.  Twisted cord.  This is so dead easy I'd hesitate to include it.  Except that some people truly haven't learned it, or at least it doesn't occur to them to use it when they need some cordage.  It's an easy way to make something useful and fun, and of course is the basis for things like making rope.  And heck, cordage, since this is basically making a 2-ply from some kind of single ply.

There's a second way to make it, which I see in basketry videos -- twist the cords, then kind of do a weird flip to wrap them around and equalize the twist somehow.  I'll have to go back through the videos and see exactly what it is and how to do it.  It seems useful for doing the twisted cord for a short segment at a time rather than the entire length of the cord.

Showing how to do this for the fringe ends after weaving/braiding/etc. could be useful, too.

2.  Two-loop fingerloop.  This is crazy fast and fun to make.  I still haven't quite mastered keeping the tension even, however.  It helps to have a second person, but there ought to be some other things I can do to keep things semi-even when a second person isn't handy.  Also, This cord tends to spiral, which some people might find slightly distressing.

There are a lot of other ways to make this particular structure.  Some of those would be preferable, especially when you want to keep your options open about how long the cord needs to be.  The fingerloop method is a lot of fun, though.

The 2-loop fingerloop braid is well-illustrated here: https://loopbraider.com/2019/12/28/spirals-and-2-loops/

It's also in one of the little booklets I have on Friendship Bracelets, though done freehand rather than with finger-looping.  And I'm pretty sure it's the same structure as one of the first braids in Rodrick Owen's book on Braids -- 250 patterns from Japan, Peru & Beyond.  The simple "worldwide" braids in his book can be made in the hand as well as on a disk or marudai.

3.  Finger crochet.  This is something in Montse Stanley's knitting book.  She calls it finger crochet, but I'm not sure exactly what other names it's known by.  It makes a nice cord that is somewhat square in appearance. 

After checking the Ashley Book of Knots, I believe that this might be a version of what he calls Idiot's Delight, knot 2896, p.477 -- also check out his other sinnets on nearby pages.  Also, after doing a bit of searching online, this seems to be known as a Zipper Sinnet in the paracording community.

4. Finger knitting.  Who needs a lucet or chain fork or knitting spool when you have fingers?  There are a lot of instructions out there for anywhere from 1 finger (which looks mostly like crochet chains) to at least 4.  Two fingers is pretty easy.  The structure is kind of loose if you don't pay attention to tightening the loop at each step.

5.  Three and four loop fingerloop braids, also found on the loopbraider.com website.  See this one as well as the one above: https://loopbraider.com/2012/08/02/easy-3-loop-braids/

6. Macrame.  Take two cords.  One makes half-hitches over the second, maybe alternating which one does the half-hitch and which is the holding cord.  Booklets and websites on friendship bracelets have many variations on this kind of theme.

7. Those scoobie-braids, the type kids make lanyards from in summer camp.

8. Paracord braids, some of which are fairly straightforward.

9. Plaiting and other braids.  The three-strand braid is known by just about everyone and is very historic.  I happen to love 5 strand plaits (aka rope braids), partly because they too are very historic.  Of course there are zillions of braids out there.

For some of the above,  you need some way to keep tension on the cord as you make it, and that may well require tying it or pinning it to something.  Others just need your hands/fingers.  Some need just one strand (or bundle of strands), while others use two or more strands or loops.  All would make smallish cords that would then be used for something else -- ropes, shoelace, tying packages, running through eyelets, simple bracelets, fringes, and so on.

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I'm still dithering about what tablet-weaving pattern to do next.  Something tubular?  I have enough wool yarn left for 16 strands.  So I could do a monochrome tubular braid from Tablet-Woven Treasures, with 8 tablets having 2 threads each.  Or I could do a 4-tablet tubular braid with all the holes threaded with alternating \ and / tablet orientation.  Or I could add another color.  Or I could try to do some kind of braid with the yarn instead of tablet weaving.  I'm kind of inclined towards the monochrome tubular 2-hole braid as what I'd like to tablet-weave with the yarn, but I haven't decided for sure yet.

Or, I could go back to cotton and/or colors and/or some other wool I have and do something else.  Another El Cigarralejo braid?  More brick-patterned bands?  Vestrum or Snartemo II?  The little 2-hole Antinoe grave band or another 2-hole that is mostly Xs and diamonds?  A checkerboard, either threaded-in or double-face?  The monochrome-ish 2-hole/diagonals Hochdorf wallhanging?  Some of the 8-tablet 2-hole patterns from Eva Sandermann Olsen's Tablet Weaving pdf?  Something else from Randi Stoltz?  Or something else entirely?  There are so many possibilities.

I may need to put away the tablet-weaving work area for a few days, so if I don't decide soon, the decision will be made for me -- i.e. no tablet weaving for at least a few days.

But while I'm dithering, I think I'll crank out some more cords and think about how to organize classes to show them to others.

Fill the Gap! (a 7-strand braid on a disk)

I don't remember who taught this to me or exactly when, but it was at least 20 and maybe up to 25 years ago, and the person was an internet correspondent who was in the UK.  I have no idea who she learned it from.  Since it's an example of one of the types of narrow wares I'm enthralled with, and since I recently taught a class about how to make it, I am putting this on my blog.

It's known as the Fill The Gap braid, which is an appropriate description of how it's made.  One uses some kind of disk (circular, square, etc.) with 8 slots and only 7 strands.  The braid is made by jumping a strand over 2 strands to fill the gap, i.e., the empty slot.  Repeat that same move (one strand jumps over two strands into the empty slot) until the braid is finished.  The braid can be done in either a clockwise or counterclockwise direction.  It's probably possible to switch directions mid-braid but I haven't worked out how to do it.

The Braid Society, a very worthy organization in general, has an elegant handout about this braid -- how to set it up, how to do it, ideas for future experiments.  The downloadable pdf file is here.  The pdf claims that it is based on a straw-plaiting pattern from the 1700s, but honestly, I have no idea what the real provenance is or what other variations of this braid exist from other cultures or times.  It can no doubt be made in the hand.  The disk version is nice because it clarifies the next move, the slots hold the tension, it can be put down and picked up easily, and it's very portable.

The Fill the Gap braid can be done by just about anyone who can follow directions, has sufficient hand-eye coordination, and can count to three (or even just two).  It can be taught or learned in less than 5 minute for most people.  It's kind of addictive because it's so simple and repetitive.  The resulting braid is attractive and useful.

Just about any kind of yarn/thread/etc. can be used for the strands.  Colors and textures can be mixed.  Just about anything can be used for the disk, though I tend to use mid-weight cardboard (i.e. a bit thicker than a cereal box).  When it wears out, I simply discard the disk and make another.  The disk can be wonky and it can be any size that works for your hands and eyes and braiding material.

Anyway, I taught some people how to make this a few months ago.  It has rippled outward, with my students teaching others and so on.  This makes me happy.

The photo show a few disks from the class.  Two of the disks have braids on them.  I'm pretty sure one is clockwise and one counterclockwise.  One is crochet cotton (sparkly!) and the other is generic worsted-weight acrylic yarn.  The two finished braids that are in the photo are older.  One is done from some old needlepoint wool tapestry yarn.  The other is mixed yarns, probably all synthetics, including yarns of different weights and at least one of which is some kind of novelty/fuzzy yarn.

Experiments with worsted weight acrylic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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