Finished: Zigzag and diamonds gift band #2

It is done.  I started with 180" of warp, and ended up with a bit more than 140" completed, before blocking (my feline weaving assistants made it hard to measure accurately).

Cats are terrible weaving assistants, especially during shedding season.  Sigh.  I hope the recipient isn't allergic to cat fur, though I'll pick off what I can.

I tried leaving little bloops of weft on each side, in hopes that the band would fill out a bit after that section was no longer under tension.  I think it worked, mostly, though I wasn't as good as I could have been about consistency.  The motifs are all still a bit elongated.

There are 208 repeats of the 4F4B pattern.  There wasn't a lot of waste at the end, either, and the fringes are maybe 3-4" long at each end.  I did use a weft that was the same weight as the warp, and I tried to pack the weft down fairly tightly.  I think it was pretty tight since it was hard to dig out when I had to unweave occasionally!  (though that might have had something to do with the weft getting felted into place with cat fur, at least sometimes)  Anyway, that says something about future long projects and estimating the length of warp needed for what length of finished band.

Although this was extremely straightforward weaving and the band is attractive, I was rather tired of it by the end.  I'm glad it's done.

What next?  I've been thinking about the texture part of the Philip of Swabia band.  Not the section where the brocading is (which is all F), but the part where it's 5F5B.  The area where the cards change direction is kind of interesting, with the little bloops between the S and Z direction tablets and also with the slight difference in width at the turn.  It's basically a monochrome version of any F/B patterned band out there, of course.  I think it would look nice in something shiny, whether silk or some other shiny-ish material.  I'm also thinking about tablet-woven cords and more of all of my other favorite techniques (2-hole, Sulawesi, 3/1 twill, maybe double-face, etc.).  And maybe it's time to learn a bit about brocading.

But I'm not totally sure what's going to be next.  I might be doing more gift bands.  And I've been doing more knitting lately, meaning less time for things that aren't knitting.

Current project: Zigzag and diamonds gift band #2

The next simple gift band has been warped up and weaving has started.  It's the Sawtooth and Diamonds pattern from Twisted Threads.  I started with 5 yards of warp, which required a bit of ingenuity to do.  Hopefully it won't tangle too much as the band grows.

This is a 16-tablet pattern, 4-threaded, 4F/4B.  Well, I'm doing the edges as all F because that makes me happier, but it's still an extremely straightforward pattern.

I'm trying to keep the weft loose and not use too much weight but the motifs are still somewhat elongated.  Some of that is because the above photo was taken with the warp under tension -- it'll relax a bit and shorten up once the weight is off.  Not a lot, but some.  I'm trying to even leave a teeny bit of weft showing at the edges to see if the threads will poof out a bit while the band is being soaked in water after it's done.

24 pattern repeats is about 15".  I'll be at this for a while.

Finished -- zigzag and diamonds gift band #1

Simple and cute.  It ended up being roughly 3/4" wide and a bit more than 90" long.  The cats helped with the measuring, so there's some uncertainty in the length.

This is destined as a gift.  On to the next band!  It too will be a simple F/B pattern, also destined as a gift.

A simple tablet weaving project (zigzag and dots)

I've been dithering about the Next Tablet Weaving Project for a while.  While I'm dithering, I started this simple little band that's intended as a gift.

The pattern is charted out nicely on Twisted Threads here: https://twistedthreads.org/pattern/2iubdKQLn5dQWoT8N

I'm pretty sure I've seen this in a lot of places over the years, not just on Twisted Threads.  But since there's already a chart, I'll link it and use it.

The chart calls for 17 tablets, all 4-threaded.  It's a threaded-in 4F4B pattern, though I'm treating the outermost tablets (1 per side) as edge tablets and only turn them forwards.  I'm using my usual Aunt Lydia's #10 cotton for warp.

I found some green DMC Cebelia in my doily leftovers and am using that for weft.  I think it's #20.  It shows little green dots where the tablet direction switches, but I decided I wanted to match the green edges rather than the yellow background.  The request was for at least 3/4" width.  I'm barely able to achieve that.  I'll have to consciously try to keep the weft tension loose-ish yet still keep the width consistent.

The back is cute, too, though nowhere near as well-defined as the front.  I'll share a pic of that at some point.

I'm getting low on several colors.  Do I fill in the colors I'm low on so I can still weave with this stuff?  Or do I let my supply run out, using the last bits for braiding and inkle weaving, and move on to a different thread?  I'm not sure.  It's actually kind of difficult to find easily available relatively inexpensive thread of decent quality in a good range of colors, especially if I want to get the stuff in person.  I'm sorry to say that this big-box-store cotton #10-ish stuff might not be a half-bad choice.  I'm probably going to do a few of these simple bands as gifts, and it would be good to have more options for the colors I can select for each band.  Sigh.  So off to the big-box crafts stores I'll go, I guess.  Or do mail order.

Fingerloop braiding in public

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And ditto for braiding, of course!

Two-hole diamond pattern booped to completion

 Well, except for the blocking, but that'll happen soon.

It ended up long enough, whew.  I warped about 11' and ended up with close to 9'.  Well, 106" (before blocking), but if I'd needed to and was willing to deal with the aggravation, I probably could have gotten another couple of inches woven.  It's about 3/8" wide (11mm or so), which also fits in with the request for a narrow band.

It was a reasonably fun and relaxing project once I settled into the booping-along phase and I like how it turned out.  I hope my friend likes it, too.

Now I get to dither about what to make next.

Two hole X and O tablet woven band progress

I wrote about this in my last post -- a long tablet-woven band for a friend, in a 2-hole X and O pattern that is based on something found in Siksala and is also a common motif from Antinoe and wherever else 2-hole tablet-weaving is done.

I started with a pic from one of Aisling's instagram posts.  It showed a striking 2-hole pattern of red and blue Xs, with the O's subordinate to the Xs.  I liked that a lot.  As far as I can tell, the etsy pattern she based her band on had only two colors.  That's also true of the Antinoe/Coptic band patterns in Aisling's book (and the museum samples her book re-creates).  It was quite simple to chart out the pattern just based on the photo.

My friend showed me a pic of the fabrics the band will go on and requested colors to match -- turquoise, purple, and taupe (well, a medium beige-y brownish-grayish color).  So I warped up.  Purple for the middle X, aqua for the outer two Xs, taupe for the background, taupe and purple for the edge tablets, and purple for the weft.

Here is where I will digress to talk about warping.  Ugh, I still have so much to learn.  I ended up using a warping board since I didn't have conveniently-placed areas to set up C-clamps and using my inkle loom wouldn't be long enough.  I wasn't able to keep the yarn balls untangled so continuous warping wasn't working well.  I don't have a set-up to keep the balls from bouncing around yet, and that seems to be key for successful continuous warping.  It wasn't too bad to do a few tablets at a time, in hopes that will reduce the tangling.  Mostly I'm trying to keep the unwoven warp ends from tangling too badly, since this is a long warp and the ends can be a pain to keep straight.  Oh, well.   Also, the floor had more cat fluff on it than I realized until I found myself removing little cat fur pills from everything.  That will haunt me for the entire warp, alas.  And it won't be helped by the cat's continuing assistance, such as sitting on the warp and shedding, playing with and sitting on the unwoven warp ends, etc.

Someday I'll get warping streamlined.  It's not so much cutting a bunch of threads and warping.  It's more about keeping things under control so they don't tangle so badly.  Even continuous warping offers great scope for tangling what with the tablets bouncing around and needing to rotate or flip tablets to get them in the correct orientation for the pattern.

Anyway, off I go.  It's really fun, as two-hole always is.  Bright little Xs, etc.  But then I looked at the backside.  Ooh, I like that better!  Bright little diamonds in two colors, surrounded by the neutral/taupe background!

Hmm, should I alternate areas of colorful Xs and then colorful Os?  I thought about it for a little while, then decided I didn't want to keep track of how many repeats before switching.  This will be a long band with simple weaving, and I'd rather zone out and enjoy the rhythm.

So I unwove back to the beginning.  The purple weft was pilling a bit and picking up cat fur, and there probably wouldn't have been enough for the full band.  Hmm, maybe I should change that, too.  I found a bit of taupe-ish thread in the doily leftovers stash that looked reasonable as a substitute.  That's what I'm now using.  It's almost certainly DMC Cebelia #10.  I do like the little colored blips at the edge of the band that I get when using a weft color that contrasts with the edge warp color.  It's ornamental.  I also like hiding the blips by matching the color to the edges, which had been my original plan.  The band will look good either way.

I am booping along happily now.  Yes, changing out the weft and slightly altering the turn sequence was the right choice, at least for my own aesthetics.

 

The above pic is near the beginning so I'm still futzing around a bit with how tight to pull the weft and all that.

It amuses me that at first glance the band is so different from the pic that inspired me.  I mean, it's really the same, just two steps from the inspiration, which was itself two steps from its own inspiration, and that too was an interpretation of the original artifact.

Hmm, the band might be cuter with 4 more pattern tablets in purple/taupe to add another set of purple diamonds.  But no, I think I'm good now. Time to crank out pattern repeats!

I'm already dreaming about what I might want to tablet-weave next.  More two-hole?  That's always an option!  Or maybe I should make sure I understand Icelandic double-weave or do more Sulawesi.  Broken 3/1 twill is also calling to me.  Or maybe more cords or some double-face.  So many options, and they all make me happy.

I still need to do some experiments to see if I can reduce elongation in my tablet-weaving.  Some of it relaxes out when I soak/wash/iron the band after it's done but nowhere near all.  I've seen at least one person say that it's typical for cotton.  Dunno if that's true.  I should try some wool to see.  Also, maybe backstrap might help?  I certainly do pack the weft down pretty tightly (I can tell by the difficulty I sometimes have in unweaving), my weft is not pulled too tightly, and the elongation appears to be relatively independent of weft thickness (though thicker wefts might help -- I'll have to experiment).  It also appears to be relatively independent of weight/tension, at least for the set-up I have.  For two-hole, I could also try the thing where the edge tablets (the 4-threaded tablets) only turn every other row rather than every row.  It's also possible that I like the more relaxed feel of my bands, and that I would not like the stiffness of a band that was way more tightly woven even if the motifs were forced into squareness.