Explorations in monochrome tablet weaving

I have been continuing to work with the wool yarn this week, exploring some new patterns.

First, I decided to play with structural stuff, where the tablet orientation makes the pattern.  I considered the plain part of the belt of Philip of Swabia -- it's a monochrome checkerboard pattern, more or less.  Here is one version of that texture pattern.  Here is another.

I finally decided that the wool is too heathery to really show the details of the checkerboard.  However, this textural pattern, consisting of vertical stripes rather than checkboards, seemed like it might fit my yarn better.

I used 15 tablets, alternating threaded S and Z (or \ and /), 3 per orientation before switching to the other orientation.  All turns were forward, as I usually do, with no reversals.

Interestingly, and not surprisingly, the yarn was a bit stickier than with the two-hole patterns.  Nothing was felting or anything.  But the threads weren't always thrilled to slide smoothly past each other when opening the shed.  I had to help it along a little bit.

The pattern is subtle in this yarn but I still like it a lot.  This band is quite wide, 1.25-1.5", compared to the two-hole bands I've been doing.  It's also a bit shorter -- there was a bit more take-up, quite possibly because there are four threads per tablet.  I think this pattern would look really nice in a flat, non-heathery color, in a shinier yarn, maybe more tightly twisted.  So it was good for me to play with it and add this pattern concept to my idea bank for when I just want to crank out something simple.

Next up, I wanted to play around more with the idea of two adjacent empty holes per tablet, in the manner of Candace Crockett's Draft 14.  Peter Collingwood discusses this concept briefly in The Techniques of Tablet Weaving, on p.93-94 in my edition.  I charted up a simple chevron.

I was worried that the pattern wouldn't show up well in the heathery gray, so I tried it in some red vintage-store crochet cotton.  I like how it turned out, but I decided it was a bit too subtle for the heathery gray.  Also, the two sides are slightly different, in a more noticeable way than I wanted for the gray yarn.  I used the same red for weft as for warp, and I wonder what it would have looked like with a contrast color for the weft.  Another variation that mildly interests me is doing diagonal lines instead of chevrons -- doing a strip/stripe of the line going one way, alternating with strips/stripes of the line going the other way, with maybe a couple of tablets with 4 threads in between the stripes.  Hmm, someday.

Another interesting comment I found online about these patterns with two empty holes adjacent rather than diagonally opposite, from Phiala's venerable Stringpage site, in the section on two-hole tablet-weaving: "If the tablet is threaded through two adjacent holes, all possible sheds can be produced (both up, both down, one up and one down), making it possible to weave any structure possible with a four-harness loom!"

I'm going to have to think about that for a bit.  In addition, of course, there is Andean Pebble weaving done with tablets.  That uses two colors, but they are adjacent rather than diagonally opposite.  Linda Hendrickson has published some English-language stuff on this, Claudia Wollny discusses it in her book Tablets at Work, and I know there are other resources, in English and other languages, even though I'm not gonna list them all here right now.

Anyway!

Back to the monochrome brick patterns of Karisto and Pasanen!  This time I returned to Tablet Woven Treasures and chose the charming pattern on p.109.  I added a tablet to the left edge to make it symmetric.  Thus it uses 10 tablets.  The two tablets on each edge are threaded with four threads, and the six pattern tablets have two threads each.  The tablet slants alternate \ and /.  For the pattern tablets, the \ tablets are threaded in AC and the / tablets in BD.  The weft is the same as the warp.

I really like this one a lot!  The band turned out to be about 3/4" wide and about 62" long unblocked.  I will definitely make this one again.  As with the other brick patterns I've done, it could be expanded with more two-hole brick-pattern tablets, or by adding stripes and what-not (possibly in different colors) for the edges.

What did I learn?

Uhh....  I still like weaving with wool and no longer fear tablet-weaving with it.  I liked all of these new-to-me patterns and should do them again.  I'd like to explore more of the two-adjacent-hole patterns.  Doesn't the true pebble-weave structure done with tablet weaving use this technique, though of course that concentrates on the color patterns rather than subtle monochromatic structures.  Hmmm.

Cats are not particularly useful weaving assistants.  As always.  But they do like to keep an eye on what I'm doing even when they're not actively helping. I hope that the recipients (a few of these will be gifts) don't mind a bit of cat fur mixed into their bands.

It was slightly difficult to maintain even tension for a few of the bands.  I need to think about that for a bit.  Is it because I didn't put even weight on each card?  Is it because of the slight effort needed in making a shed?  Is it because some cards were \ and some /, some two-hole and some four-hole, and thus there was different take-up when combined with the ply of the yarn?  If so, would weighting individual tablets rather than the entire bundle make that better, worse, or no change?  Will most of it go away with blocking/steaming/ironing/weighting/using?

What's next?  I'm not sure!  I might re-do the wool bands using cotton.  Or I might resume multi-color tablet-weaving or even knock out a few inkle bands.  I'm still enamored with two-hole patterns, so that seems most likely.  But you never know.  Some braids are still calling my name -- that Whitehorse Hill cist burial braid (which seems to be a 13-strand plait which can be done freehand or using fingerlooping) and a 6-strand braid from the Hedeby apron, which has an online site showing it done freehand, but I suspect fingerlooping might have been involved in the original.

More two-hole brick-patterned belts/bands -- in wool!

 OK, I've now tablet-woven using wool.  It was nowhere near as dire as I'd been warned.  Whew!  I used wool yarn that was on cones, intended for weaving.  I believe that it is less elastic than knitting yarn and also probably has a coating/sizing on it to help it flow better.  Whatever the reason was, I had no trouble at all.  I think doing a two-hole band might have helped -- I noticed a bit more stickiness with the band where the threaded vs non-threaded holes were aligned compared to the band where the threaded vs non-threaded holes were diagonally opposite.  (In other words, more stickiness for the band where the threaded holes were all AC and empty all BD, as opposed to the band where some were AC and some were BD.

While weaving, the tension flattened out the pattern.  It showed up better once tension was released.  After the bands were finished, I gave them a long soak and then hung them to dry.  They shortened up and fluffed up a bit more.

The patterns are subtle but I like them.  I like weaving with wool, too.

The white (or natural) band (shown above) is done with some kind of old tapestry wool I found lurking in my stash, from who knows where.  I've been slowly using it for natural dyeing experiments.  It's a cabled construction -- three plies of yarn, with each ply being a two-ply strand.  The pattern is the one from Tablet-Woven Treasures, p.113, from an archeologic find that was used as a belt for a carrying a knife sheath.  I do like that pattern.

The gray wool is Harrisville Designs Highland in Oatmeal, a heathery light gray.  I did the same belt pattern from Tablet-Woven Treasures (see photo above).  Then I did another Medieval belt pattern, the same one I had done in tan acrylic a while back (see photo below).  I like this pattern a lot, too.  The wool doesn't show the ribbed pattern as clearly as the acrylic, but it's still very nice.  I haven't had a chance to soak it yet so maybe that'll help.

I wonder if I should try using less tension to see if I can do a tighter beat, and if that makes a major difference in what the finished belt/band will look like.  As it was, I didn't use a huge amount of weight, but it did stretch out the yarn a bit while I was weaving.

All of the belts are roughly 5 feet long (they were about 5.5 feet when straight off the loom -- they shrunk after soaking) and about 3/4" to 1" wide.  The pattern from Tablet-Woven Treasures uses 10 tablets, and the one from the Facebook page uses 12.

I'm glad that wool turned out to be reasonable to weave with.

I have my eye on a 12-strand braid pattern to make from this wool.  Someone showed me a video, though it's a pretty straightforward pattern.  The braid is from an armband, made from cattle hair and studded with little tin ornaments, from the Whitehorse Hill cist burial.  Sally Pointer used her locally-gathered bast-fiber cordage to braid a belt.  I'm just going to use wool.  It's interesting that the strands and braid have a lot of two-over and two-under moves -- it makes me thing of things like finger-looping and finger-weaving, and, I suppose, some kinds of basketry.  I do not plan to add tin ornaments even though they do look very charming on the original armband.

There are other interesting braided belts out there.  I also have my eye on the 12-strand (also with double strands, as with the Whitehorse Hill braid) Skjoldehamn belt.

For tablet-weaving, I'm still entirely enamored with two-hole tablet weaving.  There are so many possibilities that I've actually had to start a list.  I'm not sure which one I'll do next.  At some point, I do want to explore another technique.  But not just yet.