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

Done!

Here are the last few in-progress pics:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Brocade sampler, fourth post

Not too much progress today -- I was busy with other things.

Both of these are from Roslein und Wecklein.  I think they're both 9-tablet wide patterns.  The photo is at a funky angle which is why it looks like the width of the band is changing.  The first one (on the left) shows 2 pattern repeats.  The one on the right shows 4 pattern repeats.  I like how the little lozenge-ish motifs are separated by little diamonds.

I'm getting faster and my tension is getting more consistent.  I'm still pretty close to novice level, of course!  I'll continue to do random brocade-related things until the warp runs out.  I might at some point try a different brocade thread and/or do two or more colors at a time.  Or I might not.

I'm not sure which motifs will be next.  There are so many interesting little patterns!  And so many things I can easily create myself!  I'm choosing based on whimsy, mostly.  What looks cute and fun?  I'm trying to sample different sources.  I'm also trying to do different kinds of motifs since they might require slightly different tensioning etc. techniques for the brocading, and might result in a slightly different appearance.

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.

Yet Another zigzag band (Staraja Ladoga zigzag variations)

This is yet another version of the Staraja Ladoga Fig 6/7 tablet-woven band.  I've done two of them already.  The first one was 12 tablets, all of which were threaded in all 4 holes.  The second was also 12 tablets, but the inner four tablets were threaded in only 2 holes.  This third one is like the second, except that there are only three inner tablets which are threaded in 2 holes, for a total of 11 tablets.  (For the second and third, there are four edge tablets per side that are threaded in all 4 holes.)

I used the basic charting from Aisling's website, adapting the chart and the turnings to match the zigzag pattern from the earlier two bands.  I used the same colors as my earlier bands, too -- red border, white background, purple zigzags.

To get the same zigzags, I ended up doing 7F7B, which seemed a trifle odd.  Most of the 2-hole patterns I've done so far seem to work in groups of two tablets and two turns.  But it worked out well enough.

I'm just about done with these vintage balls of thread.  I might have enough to eke out one more band of some sort.  Or I might throw the last few yards on an inkle loom.  Or they might go into the weft-thread pile.

I think I might be done exploring this pattern.  I don't know which of these versions is my favorite, though of course I'm not required to have a favorite.  They're all cute.  I do not care much about historical accuracy, but at least two people who do care seem to think that the original was a 2-hole pattern.

It bothers me a bit that I'm unable to get the weft spacing as tight as I'd like, to try to achieve something closer to 45 degree angles.  Dunno if it's the thickness of the weft, how snug I pull the weft, the tension I'm using, the material I'm using, or if I'm not able to beat hard enough with my current set-up.  The weft seems pretty firmly wedged into the shed when I end up needing to un-weave a mistake, so I'm really not sure exactly what's going on.  Double-face and similar techniques don't count, of course, since their nature is to be more elongated.

This is probably the last post of 2023 for this blog, though of course one never knows.  It's been a productive year.  I've learned a lot and made a fair number of narrow wares -- inkle, tablets, braiding, etc.  I've also done other things -- knitting, crocheting, spinning, dyeing, basket-weaving, sewing, leather-working, kitchen experiments, teaching, and no doubt other things I'm not remembering at the moment.

I don't have any particular plans for 2024 except to keep making narrow wares as well as all the other fun things I'm doing.  It'll be a few weeks before I have access to my weaving stuff again.

I've received Claudia Wollny's new book on Twill.  Yay!  It took a while to arrive.  The package was damaged somewhere along the line -- ripped up cardboard and rather damp, the address label half torn-off, wrapped in plastic with a sticker saying "damaged due to inclement weather".  Sigh.  But the pages are dry now with only a little bit of rippling, and the dinged-up corners would have happened after I dropped the book a few times.  Hopefully I got everything that was originally included in the package.

It's an interesting book, more of a "how-to" than a pattern book, though it does include a fair number of patterns in addition to the exercises Wollny developed.  I'll have to set up a warp and go through some of the exercises to understand how she thinks about 3/1 twill and its variations, along with how that compares to Peter Collingwood, Sarah Goslee, and others who have written about their theoretical understanding of the technique.

If one is only looking for patterns, one of Wollny's other pattern collections would be better.  But I like the way this book discusses more generally and theoretically how to approach, weave, and design in the twill technique.  I'm glad I bought it.

Noobish two-pack twill thoughts

 I'm mulling over Peter Collingwood's directions for weaving 3/1 twill using the two-pack method.  It's in his book The Techniques of Tablet Weaving, starting on about p.216.

For warping, he talks about position I and II as well as Pack A and Pack B.  Later he starts mentioning position III and IV, so apparently positions refer to which colors are in which hole positions.  Then we go on to tablet slant, turning directions, what to change to get various effects, and so on.  We're on our way!

In general, changes are done through tablet twisting rather than changing the turning direction.  I think the tablet-twisting or flipping is done around the vertical axis pretty much exclusively.

I don't know if any of the tablet-weaving programs out there account for tablet-twisting.  But I can do some playing around.  (My memory says that there is a program that does do tablet-twisting but I can't remember which one off the top of my head, sigh.)

And cool -- I found that by flipping every other tablet (when one is at the start of the 4-row turning sequence), one can automatically switch from S twill to Z twill or vice versa.  I suspect it can also be done before the 3rd turn, too.  It's kind of fun to play with the initial tablet orientation and see how it carries over into the weaving.  I could make Vs or Ws if I wanted to.  Or diamonds and Xs if I change in the middle of the weaving. 

Actually.....  Collingwoods says that when you're in the middle of the band, you change the direction of the pack that is in position II or IV.  In other words, twist the pack where the same color is along the AD or BC line, as opposed to the AB or CD line, so that you don't mess up the colors.

I looked at Claudia Wollny's twill charts to play around with changing colors on a horizontal line (zig-zag, of course).  So...  I can turn two more turns and then resume the twill turning sequence.  Or, I can use Collingwood's method of tablet-twisting one pack, doing a turn, then tablet-twisting the next pack.  He also mentions the same method Wollny uses -- turning the packs two more times (i.e. doing either row 1 or row 3 three times) to put all the cards in the opposite color orientation.

I wonder if I can do something like tablet-twist one pack around the vertical axis and the other around the horizontal axis to get it done in one move, or if that will look wrong in some way?  I guess that's something to test.

If I don't see a program that does tablet-twisting, I'll have to experiment with Collingwood's other methods as I weave.  I'm sure more of it will make sense when I do it.

My vague plan is to warp up something and keep it mostly monochrome on each side.  I might switch Z and S.  I might switch half of the cards so that the twill lines meet in the middle, as chevrons.  Or I can play with Collingwood's method of making diagonal color changes (i.e. in a diagonal line across the band, parallel to the direction of the twill) and make a two-toned band.  Or maybe these will all be different bands.

Collingwood's two-pack method looks like it'll be faster than the one-pack method.  It alternates two cards in S orientation with two cards in Z orientation (or vice-versa -- I don't think it matters).  One half of the cards (the odds) is threaded with the the first color in AB and the other color in CD.  The other half of the cards (the evens) is threaded with the first color in AD and the other color in BC.

Then one turns the odd cards in FFBB sequence, with the even cards turned in FBBF sequence.  This leads to a monochrome band with the first color on top and the second on the bottom.

If the first two cards are the same orientation (either // or \\) you get an S-twill, going diagonally up to the left.  If they are in a different orientation (so that the 2nd and 3rd are in the same orientation), you get a Z-twill, going diagonally up to the right.

After that, one flips/twists cards at various spots to get changes in direction and/or color, making motifs and what-not.  That's more advanced than I currently wish to play with, but no doubt I'll get curious enough about it to try doing that later.

I am not fond of tablet-twisting.  Hopefully the results will be worth it and/or will help me to like it better.  It'll be interesting to see under what conditions a two-pack method makes more sense and where a one-pack method will make more sense.

Dunno yet whether this will be a sampler or if it'll be a useful and reasonably aesthetically pleasing band.

I've ordered Claudia Wollny's new book on 3/1 twill.  I'm looking forward to seeing what's in it.  The patterned band I did used her charting and methods -- I wonder if she'll continue with that charting style and motif modularity, or if she'll change it up a bit?  I wonder if all of her methods can be done using the two-pack method or if some are best done with a one-pack method?

No doubt I'll roll my eyes at myself after I gain a bit more experience.  I fully acknowledge my noobiehood.

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.

A monochromatic sampler band (plus a few comments and speculations)

 

I was poking around the internet, re-visiting some of my favorite tablet-weaving sites.  One of them is this old (but still wonderful) page from Thora (Carolyn Priest-Dorman): https://www.cs.vassar.edu/~capriest/3recipes.html.  These are 14th-15th century tablet-woven braids found in London that were described by Grace Crowfoot.  The middle one (Braid 450) I recognized as the one Mervi Pasanen (I think it was Mervi) was weaving in a Facebook post (with video!) in the Lautaunat/Tablet Weaving page on Facebook on December 30, 2018.  She even credits it as a "medieval silk belt, 14th century London," so I'm pretty sure she's using the same instructions.  It's here: https://www.facebook.com/Lautanauhat/videos/2241382072561960

Hmm.  The belt is described by Grace Crowfoot in this reference: Crowfoot, Elisabeth; Pritchard, Frances; and Staniland, Kay. Textiles and Clothing c. 1150-c. 1450. Medieval Finds from Excavations in London, 4. London: HMSO, 1992.   Which, thanks to the miracle that is the Internet, I was able to find.

Crowfoot describes the braid thus (I'm including the photo that is Fig 100B, too):

In the text near the braids photographed as Fig. 100, she describes the braid as a "lozenge pattern," that was "possibly monochrome."  The braid next to it, Fig 100A, is also described as a lozenge pattern "with at least two colors."  That braid, Braid 143, is later described as a "double-faced weave with lozenge pattern" in the paragraph above Braid 450's description.

Staniland 1975, 167 is in the bibliography as this:

Which, amazingly enough, I also found online.  Here is the entirety of references to tablet weaving on p. 167 in the "excavated textiles" section:

I have not yet figured out if there are further references, nor how the numbers (e.g. 594) compare to the number Grace Crowfoot uses.  I haven't yet found the braid online in some Museum of London database, though I might still go deep-diving for more info.

Anyway.

The double-face surface appearance of braid 450 can be achieved much more easily than Crowfoot specifies.  If one just sets the tablets with alternating S and Z orientations, it is regular double-face -- FFBB.

Also, it looks similar to some of the two-hole brick-patterned bands I've been making.

So, I have questions.  Is this genuinely a four-hole pattern?  I suppose one can count the fringe ends and be fairly certain of it --16 vs 32 ends.   And, how did Crowfoot decide that it was made by alternating FFBB tablets with BBFF tablets instead of being straight double-face?  Elsewhere in the same section of the reference, as I quoted above, she actually calls out some double-face tablets, so she knows what double-face is, for sure.

I charted up both possibilities.   For Crowfoot's band, the FFBB threads are twisting around the weft in an ABCD order, while the BBFF ones are twisting in a DCBA order.  In a monochrome band where all the threads are the same, it makes no difference.  For a colorful band (or one with threads that have different textures), you can get the exact same order of threads by how you thread the tablets.  It would be rather a pain, but it's not hard.  Maybe doing it this way leads to subtle differences in the band's appearance?  Or is a way of balancing out irregularities in the threads while keeping the warping simple?

Obviously some real-world experimentation was called for.

I haven't really played around with double-face yet, so this was a good opportunity to do so.  Also, while I was being all monochromatic, I might as well see what the other two bands on Carolyn Priest-Dorman's page are like.  One of them (braid 449) has the same structure of the El Cigarralejo band I recently did, and I thought it would be fun to see what it looked like in a flat-colored smooth yarn instead of the heathery and slightly fuzzy wool.  The other one (braid 423) uses two staggered packs that alternate being turned and being idled.  Well, that's a new trick to play with, so sure, why not?  After that, I'd see what I felt like doing.

As far as I can tell, there is little or no difference in the appearance of these two methods of making a band with a double-face surface.  Setting the tablets in alternating SZ and doing FFBB looks identical or nearly identical to setting them all as Z (or S) and turning the odd tablets as FFBB and the evens as BBFF.  Any slight difference could be due to the hassle of either dealing with multiple packs of tablets, or, as I did in another experiment, manipulating each tablet individually, as opposed to turning everything as a single pack.  I really do not see a "diagonal twill effect" that is any different in any version I tried.

So that's interesting.  Why did Crowfoot determine that the band was made with this very laborious method vs the much easier method of turning the entire pack of cards the exact same way?  I will see if I can find out any more info online, and then maybe ask some of the more experienced tablet-weavers out there.

One more question -- Was the band all warped up at the same time, with all the tablets in the same orientation, and then half the tablets were flipped (and then rotated as necessary) to give alternating orientation before weaving?  It's not quite the same if the four threads are different colors, I don't think, but it is for two colors.  Maybe it is for four colors as well, but I'm not wrapping my brain around it properly and I'm not going to warp it up right now to double-check.  I will keep this possibility in mind as I look online, too.

While I was playing around with these two forms of creating a double-face type of appearance, I also experimenting with the effect of weft tension and a bit with warp tension.  As I expected, a looser tension enabled me to keep the weft threads closer together.  That made things a little closer to square, though consequently the weft bleps were a little more obvious.  So...  for future projects when I want to do double-face, I can control some of the technique's characteristic motif elongation to some extent, though I'll also want to consider how contrast-y the weft color is.

So that's braid 450, plus some exploration of double-face with alternating SZ tablets.  I forgot to do some regular FFBB double-face when I had the cards all in the same orientation, oops, but that's a fairly minor thing.

Then it was playtime.  Braid 423, with two packs, half of which idle per turn, was kind of fun.  It's a bit slow and fiddly, but not at all difficult.  So now I can confidently tackle the Cambridge Diamonds pattern if I ever want to do so, which I might very well because it's kind of cute.  Again, the appearance of this band is not dissimilar to the appearance of some of the two-hole brick patterns described by Karisto and Pasanen.  I did not mess around with weft tension, which could prove interesting.

While I was perusing Collingwood Chapter 10, on the subject of some tablets idling or getting extra turns, I tried out some of the ideas he presented about idling tablets.  That was OK.  I would have needed to do larger areas to bring out the textural differences and/or use a thread that was shinier and more tightly twisted to make the contrast more obvious.  It can also be a bit fiddly to do.  It's a fairly intriguing idea, though.  I do want to explore it again someday -- chapter 10 is full of crazy-complex stuff.

I later did a few sections where I'd change the directions of different tablets to make shapes that were defined by S or Z tablets.  That works, for sure.  A lot of people (such as Claudia Wollny) seem to use the term "structure weave" for this latter technique, which is mostly a diagonals-type technique in one color.

I also wove a bit of Braid 449 (monochromatic rather than two colors) just to complete the trifecta of braids on Priest-Dorman's website.  Yup, I like making this braid, and perhaps I should make it in two colors someday.

I had some space left, so it was time to do a bit of 3/1 twill since I haven't done that before, either.  To my delight, it's very straightforward whether the twill lines climb to the left or the right.  It, umm, works better if all the tablets are oriented the same rather than alternating SZ, at least for the charts and explanations I was using.  But to learn that was also educational.

I can't remember if I did much else.  The band itself is not particularly attractive, but that wasn't its purpose.  I learned a lot from doing it.  I now feel confident about doing double-face or 3/1 twill patterns whenever I want to, knowing that the underlying structure is something I have already done.  I'm ready to do the Cambridge diamonds pattern whenever I want, and also to play around with other ideas involving idling tablets.  And I have some questions about Braid 450 and thus some research to do.  Even so, I know I can make something that looks like that band whenever I want, whether or not my method is the one Crowfoot claims it is.

A couple of other cool things for the future:  There are several other cords in the Crowfoot article, with tubular tablet weaving, finger-looping, and plaiting.  Fun times!  She also describes tabby-woven narrow wares, an interesting decorative trim for garters, and of course other tablet-weaving techniques for the narrow wares (such as brocade).

The article from the Staniland reference shows some knots a few pages earlier!  They're all in leather, from the section on Medieval Leather by Jennifer Jones.

I'm not sure what I will be doing next.  More two-hole?  More samplers?  Something besides tablet-weaving?  We'll see...  The tablet-weaving area has been disassembled for the next week or so, requiring some improvisation if I want to do tablet-weaving.

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.

Small Estonian Style Band (2-hole)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My warping process went like this:

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

2. Untangle yarn.  Thread tablets.

3. Drop tablets.  Untangle yarn.

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

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

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

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

8. Start weaving.

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

10. Start weaving, take two.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Still Narrow-Minded (Egyptian Diagonals Band)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anyway!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cats are still less than helpful as warping assistants.

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

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