Tablet weaving explorations (two quick bands)

I haven't yet started the next two-hole tablet weaving band.

But!  I have been tablet-weaving.  And learning.

First -- I was invited to attend a class for beginning tablet weavers.  The band was the famous (and very suitable for beginners) Oseberg band, 12L1.  I've done that one before.  It's a great pattern and I certainly don't mind weaving it again.

The teacher provided some charming 2" 3D-printed tablets.  I love those tablets.  Mine are purple, but she had them in a lot of different colors.  I begged her for more -- any quantity, any color, and I'd be happy to reimburse her.  We'll see what happens.  But maybe I can get access to a 3D printer from a friend or the local library, and print my own.

The other new-to-me thing about the class was that it was done backstrap-style.  I haven't done backstrap-style tablet weaving in a long time, so it was a nice re-introduction.  This time, since I'm fairly experienced at tablet weaving, it gave me no trouble.  I'm still working on how to work out excess twist when it's time to advance the band and re-tie the warp.  I can do it, but it's not terribly efficient yet.

I don't have a photo of the band or the tablets or the set-up yet.

Second -- I liked the colors I used on the Fine Crooked Knees with Small Applesies band from the book Applesies and Fox Noses.  So I used the same colors on another band from the book, United Chicken Runs.

I have to give it a big eh.  The pattern is cute enough -- spiders and diamonds.  But the colors aren't as effective as they were in the previous band.  It looks kind of southwestern or central-American with the turquoise-and-black juxtaposition.  Or maybe something from 1950s suburban home decor colors.

The band is nicer than it looks in the photo.  I mostly take these pics to jog my memory and to show the motifs clearly rather than artistically.

It's another diagonals-type pattern, balanced (except for the edges), with tablets changing direction in groups of two, with at least two picks after each change.  The colors are two dark, two light, offset diagonally across the warp, very typical diagonals-type warping.

However, I did try a few new things.  I did continuous warping.  Again, it's not completely new.  I've done it before.  But I'm a lot better at keeping things from tangling, so it was a lot more successful.  Also, I managed to keep the clamps steady so that they didn't bend or rotate or otherwise mess with the tension as I went along.  I carefully rotated and stacked the cards before threading them so that I could keep the ABCD markings to use as a guide for weaving.  This wasn't perfect since I still had to do one or two threads separately for the edge cards since I only had two balls of some of the colors.  I didn't want to make mini-skeins, at least not yet.

I also wanted to try linking cards with opposite twist, so that as twist accumulated, it could be pushed to the end of the warp, and the excess twist would get canceled out.  That would be a useful thing to do.  Alas, for whatever reason, this was kind of a dismal failure.  I'm going to have to think about this and try again someday.  For now, I'll just cut the ends of the loops and work the twist out as I usually do.  Harumph.

So....  this post doesn't have exciting photos, but it does describe two bands as well as several things I either learned and/or gained more experience with.

* 2" plastic tablets -- a big yes.  I'd wanted to try colorful tablets with the goal of using them to help me keep track of card numbers  (i.e. put a different color every 5th tablet, or use different colors for edges or the center tablets or different parts of the design, etc.).  I was also curious to see how small of a tablet I'd enjoy weaving with.  So yes to all of this -- small, plastic, colorful, 3D printing.

* Backstrap weaving -- once I do better at advancing the warp and getting everything properly secured and anchored, this will be a good way to increase the portability of my tablet weaving.  Or band weaving in general.

* Continuous warp -- yes, even though I haven't totally perfected my warping skills (i.e. things not getting too tangled), I'm a lot better than I used to be.  It'll be even better if/when I can do the entire warp with this, but it's OK that some cards get a few extra threads added afterwards.  It's even better when I can stack the cards before I warp them so that the tablet markings (ABCD) end up where I want them to be.  Not that I need the ABCD, but it does make keeping track of stuff a little bit easier during the weaving.

* Neutralizing twist in oppositely-slanted tablets -- it's a fine idea, but it didn't work well in my first attempt.  Try this again sometime in the future.

It was also fun to do another pattern from Applesies and Fox Noses.  I'm not sure which pattern from this book I might do next.  Maybe 21 Applesies in a Grand Sieve?  It reminds me of turtles,  Or maybe some kind of lizard.  24.  Reversed Corners is also kind of cute.  It reminds me of a moon and stars.  There are lots of other patterns calling my name, so it could be a while.  Yes, I can and do design my own patterns, but there are a lot of great ones already out there that I find appealing.

Next up will be another two-hole brick-style pattern.  It'll be fun.  I could have done continuous warping for everything except the edge cards but I didn't feel like it.  I'll probably go back and forth a bit with both warping methods for a while as I work out ways to make things easier/better.

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.

A non-two-hole interlude (diagonals-type band)

This is one of the patterns in Applesies and Fox Noses by Maikki Karisto and Mervi Pasanen.  It is pattern 8, Fine Crooked Knees and Small Applesies.  Umm, OK.  It is a very striking pattern, in my opinion.  It's been on my want-to-do list for a long time.  Since I am still dithering about which two-hole (or other) pattern I want to do next, I shrugged and made this one.

I chose cotton from the #10 crochet cotton stash, in a dark color, a medium-ish contrast color, and a light contrast color that is more or less in the same color family as the medium-ish color.  In this case, it meant black, teal, and sage.  The edges turned forward continuously, while the others went forward and back in pattern.  I used white or off-white #20 or #30 cotton for the weft since it was already on the shuttle.  I kind of like the little edge dots one gets from using a contrasting color for the weft.

It is a balanced pattern.  I love this style of pattern, with blocks of tablets having the same set of turns as other blocks, either mirrored or offset, and with the turns balanced.  If that makes sense, because I'm not sure how else to describe it.  (The S-sign pattern, also in this book, is similar in its underlying principles.)

The band is based on 7s (or 14s which of course is just 2x14).  Fourteen tablets.  Fourteen rows in the pattern.  Reversal patterns based on seven  (either 7-7 or 4-3-3-4).

It's in the category of diagonals-type patterns, even with all the odd numbers.  Some people say that Egyptian Diagonals, in the way the term was originally used in English-language card weaving books, always involves moving cards from F to B and vice versa in blocks of two, meaning two cards and two picks.  Obviously that is not required, since this pattern has blocks of three tablets, going from F to B after three picks.

Anyway.  It was fun and relatively quick to make once the underlying logic settled in.  It is a very striking pattern, and I'd be willing to make it again.  It would look amazing in silk, not that I have any.

The smoothness of the band is a bit of a contrast to the pebbly texture of two-hole bands.

It's about 61.5" long and 0.5" wide pre-blocking.  I think the backside is also quite attractive.

And now I'm back to dithering.  There are a couple of two-hole patterns that are whispering to me, and ditto for some monochrome things (some two-hole, some not), plus there are plenty of other wonderful patterns and pattern ideas out there.  Yes, I can do my own patterns if I want to, and I have.  But there are a lot of cool examples out there already, whether they're already charted up or if I need to re-chart them based on a photo or description or partial chart.

Small two-hole band from Antinoè grave C 333

As the title proclaims, this is a cute little two-hole band from a pattern found in Antinoè grave C 333.  I found the pattern in these two places:  here and here.  It is a two-hole threaded-in 4F4B pattern (with the edge tablets turned in one direction only) with a small trick on one of the rows.

The band is described as being from a group of artifacts known as Coptic Egypt textiles, dated from 3rd-7th century.  The original was made from red wool and natural/white linen and was sewn onto a fragment of a turquoise wool men's coat.  It was roughly 8mm wide (mine is 8-9mm wide).  I used cotton, red and cream (close to white but not blindingly so).

It is kind of adorable.  The pattern is quite effective.  My little X motifs are a bit elongated compared to the original and to the re-creation on aisling.biz, but eh, that's OK.  I wonder if it has to do with me using cotton rather than wool, or something about the tension I use?

This is the first time I've done the trick of pushing down warp threads at a particular pick.  I'm glad I chose a matching red cotton for the weft, so that it remains unobtrusive!  It makes me laugh a bit to consider all the times I've mistakenly caught the wrong thread on the wrong side of the weft.  Now I'm doing it on purpose.

The chart given is a bit weird.  It is supposed to be read top to bottom, left to right, with S and Z used for thread directions.  But that doesn't seem to line up with the forward/backward turning directions given on the chart.  Clearly I am confused and/or not quite understanding the charting conventions used.  So I re-charted it to make sure I understood what was going on.  Obviously I came up with something that more or less resembles the original!

I'd make this again.  It's a little more fiddly than some of the patterns I've been doing lately, but not too annoyingly so.  Heck, it's been a while since I've made anything too fiddly, so I'm not complaining!  I am feeling the urge to do something more fiddly again, though.  We shall see.

I'm not sure what I'll make next.  I'm feeling an itch to start another tablet-weaving project, so no doubt a decision will be made soon enough.

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.

A few quick cords

 While I've been dithering over what to tablet-weave next, I cranked out a few quick cords.

The small cotton cords are two-strand chain sinnets, aka finger crochet aka zipper sinnets.  The variegated purple one is a two-loop finglooped braid.

The zipper sinnets are not true braids since the two strands are interlooped rather than obliquely intertwined, according to my understanding of current braid/cord terminology.

My tensioning with the fingerlooped braid isn't half-bad, all considered.  The strands were fairly long so I worked with shortened loops, letting out the additional length when needed.  It's not a perfectly-made braid, but that's OK.  It does spiral a bit, like it's supposed to.  I wonder if I should try to make one where I alternate which way I twist the loop?  If I did that, it would probably look like the same 4-strand braid one sees with free-end braiding and marudai-kumihimo braiding.  It's so fast and mindless the way it is now, though.  It's still worth maybe trying it as an experiment.

The two sinnets are made from random leftover crochet cotton, both roughly #10, though the blue/purple might be a little finer than that, maybe #20.  The green and yellow sinnet uses big-box crochet cotton (so a bit thicker than #10) which has a thin strand of tinsel/mylar wrapped around the cotton. Shiny!  I did roughly 3 meters (roughly 10 feet) of each cord.  The fingerlooped cord is made from leftover Red Heart acrylic.  The variegated yarn hides most of the irregulaties.  It is roughly 2 feet long.

I think I know what I'll be tablet-weaving, but I haven't yet warped it up.  So maybe there will be more quick cords until I'm ready to cut the yarn, thread the tablets, and start weaving.

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.