It's the season of people looking for ideas - things to give to others, things to wish for. So in case you're one of the many, many folks on search of good ideas, here are three things - all of them related to tablet weaving, and all of them guaranteed not to catch dust:

If you're interested in tablet weaving, especially in the brocaded kind, you have probably heard about the book "Ecclesiastical Pomp and Aristocratic Circumstance". It's a nice collection of tablet-woven bands, even though there's not a lot of images of the original pieces in the book. It appears that this has gone out of print, but it's now available as a pdf download from Nancy Spies' Etsy shop. At 12 USD, it's also quite affordable!

The same thing has happened to Anna Neuper's Modelbuch, also originally published as a paper book, also out of print and now available as pdf. In this case, you have to invest 5 USD.

Louise Ström has written a booklet about how to do tablet-woven patterns without a pattern draft. The motifs are fairly traditional Scandinavian ones, where you have variations in each pattern section, resulting in a band with non-repeating (though similar) motifs. This, too, is available as a pdf download via Etsy and will cost you about 18 USD.

Disclaimer: I do own the paper version of Pomp & Circumstance, but know neither of the two other books. They have ended up on my list, though...

Oh, and by the way - it's Blogiversary today! Nine years of blogging!

I'm here, back from a little break, and I'm still working on stuff. Like the tablet weaving thing - here's the current status:



You see some bits of wild playing around, followed by the start of weaving a coat of arms. You can also see the width difference between plain tablet weave (the diagonals) and twill, which is a good bit looser and thus the threads snuggle closer to each other, making the band narrower.

What you cannot see is that there is a mistake in the last pick, which needs, thusly, to be un-woven. What you also cannot see is that I did get a few more lightbulbs, but there's still a crick in my brain when it comes to finishing the coat of arms with the stuff that comes on top... well. I'll be working on that some more in the next days. I still have a few of them left.

I will probably not manage to do this and find the time (and brain!) to blog, so - while I'm sorry to announce a bit of blog silence right after a bit of blog silence - I'll say, for my sanity and peace of mind, that I will be back after the Textile Forum week and a bit of recuperation. Which means November 16.

Somebody really packed my calendar full of stuff...

Apart from the work on the Bernuthsfeld tunic, I'm also preparing for my bit of programme for the European Textile Forum, which is drawing closer and closer. In the usual mix of optimism ("I can do that! In time! No problem! At all!"), enthusiasm ("This is such a fascinating topic!") and anti-procrastination planning ("If I hand in a title and abstract for this conference, I will finally make the time to sit down and actually get some more research done on this, just what I wanted to do for so long"), I signed myself up for a presentation and practical session about tablet-weaving.

With, of course, an angle - I'm trying to figure out possible ways in which medieval tablet-weavers might have arrived at their patterns, which are sometimes really, really breathtakingly complicated. There's rules to tablet-weaving, so you can't just place a carton with a drawing behind your warp and tapestry away; you have to plan ahead for the patterns and know when to reverse which direction, and keep track of your main direction of turning when you are doing twill, and so on and so forth.

While the basic rules and structures are fairly simple (I usually say that you need to be able to tell light from dark and count to two), keeping track of what has to go where in a complicated pattern can quickly bend your brain into knots. I've tried to figure out a few strategies using a part of the pattern of the Maniple of St. Ulrich, but that, alas, turned out to be a hard start. You can see how the pattern degenerates from my trying to use less of the written pattern draft and more of my own brain:



until I finally gave up and transitioned again into nice, clean pink background twill. (There's even a fault in the twill lines where I gave up, and a little bit of erring in the twill later on, as you can see from the floats and the blue spots.)

So. Next step was taking a step back and trying to build up things from the base line - in this case, from a single or double blue line on twill background. (It would of course be possible to forego the twill background and just do diagonals, but I think it's clearer to see the pattern afterwards if it is on a solid colour background. So there you go. Also... I like twill in tablet weaving.)

There are certain patterns and rhythms to much of the weaving, and I think that a large part of the trick is to learn those patterns and basic rhythms, and learn when to look where to make sure nothing unplanned is happening. Also: Rules. Hard and firm rules regarding the sequence of the individual steps to be done (turning tablets, inserting wefts, and re-sorting tablets) as well as the base setup (one direction of turning will always result in the stripes running the same way for me, or I will go crazy).



And then, more patterns can be built up on that. Next step: lines branching out from lines, and figuring out how to figure out when to reverse directions for pointy bits growing out of nowhere...

I've been tablet weaving again, a bit, trying to wrap my brain around... stuff. I've used the next Textile Forum as an excuse for this, as I want to take a look at tablet weaving, or, more concisely, on how patterning was done.

This is one of the things that keep fascinating me, and that I've wondered about for ages. We have incredibly complex weave patterns (not only in tablet weaves, but that technique is more accessible to me than loom weaving), and when we do these patterns today, trying to recreate the historical textiles, it usually results in a huge chart for the weaving pattern. Heidi Stolte once took the pattern from the maniple of St. Ulrich, and the pattern drawing on graph paper is about 7 m long and a good 70 cm wide. That is huge.

For the tenth century, we can quite safely assume that there was no similar roll of graph paper with the pattern on it. Which means that the weaver was either just all making it up as he or she went along, or had something else to work with. What, though - something like a sampler band, a sketch, or a different kind of pattern, or just a memory aid such as a rhyme - we don't know.

Now, whatever the aid for the patterning, it will most probably require you to be able to look at the band and see what has to come next. There might also be a kind of flow to the pattern at some point... so since the Ulrich maniple has also been fascinating me for ages, I took a part of the pattern and a silk band with 42 tablets, sat down and tried my hand.


From my previous tablet weaving experience, I found that having strict rules on how things are done and in what sequence they are done does help a lot. The tablets are separated into packs that turn in different directions, and I know which direction of turn always results in which slant in the band. In this band with its 42 tablets, I have split them into two sections that I can still turn with good control; a necessity that, unfortunately, also complicates matters a little.


I have a few ideas on how this could work, and I've had a bit of success before in getting an inkling on how and where to look, but today, unfortunately, my brain was not up to it - partly because there was a mistake to fix, and then I wanted to get a few picks correctly, and so I sort of fell into the trap of going after the charted pattern, counting tablets and marking off picks that were done instead of looking at lines and structures... which, yes, is a brainbender, but much more helpful than counting 5-3-1-change next 2- and so on. I've not given up hope, though - there will be more time spent at the band.

Probably with more coffee. And some chocolate.

The workshop planning for the tablet-weaving is finally, finally finished. I've done a testrun on Wednesday, with three lovely ladies volunteering to be my guinea pigs for trying out the concept and the materials - and it was a good thing, and a fun afternoon to boot.

[caption id="attachment_3229" align="alignnone" width="677"] All ready for the testrun!


The good news (for me, at least): the materials, setup things, and general concept are all sound, and they all did work as I had hoped them to. The timeframe of about 4 hours, a little more if necessary, also works.

Of course, though, there were a few issues. "No battle plan survives contact with the enemy", right? They were, however, mostly small, and to my relief, all of them can be fixed easily. One of the small issues was a sort of back-firing effect from handing out pattern sheets - they were intended to help with visualising the patterns, and as a reminder on how they are done for after the course at home. They turned out to be rather distracting, as they were either not understood easily or, in one case, were understood well enough to be used to tick off the wefts that were already done. Which is, of course, a perfectly valid method to approach one's tablet weaving - getting or writing a pattern, then following it - but exactly the opposite of what I want to teach, which is knowing what kind of pattern you want to do, looking at the band, and then seeing what needs to be done in order to get the pattern you want. This, admittedly, is a bit more of a brain exercise than reading a written pattern and following it step by step - but it does give you the possibility to weave without a pattern, and the flexibility to change things on the go without getting (too) confused.

Well, this is easy to remedy - I just won't hand out patterns. Saves paper, too...

The biggest issue was my intended approach to teaching the 3/1 twill structure. Tabletwoven twill is basically a doubleface with staggered colour sequence - when you turn all tablets into the same direction, you get diagonal stripes. When I learned how to twill, I got taught with the band set up to make a chevron pattern when all tablets turn forward, so you get V-shaped stripes.

[caption id="attachment_3230" align="alignnone" width="218"] Band with chevron stripes. This will still be done in the workshop - but not as the basic setup for the twill part.


This has the advantage of having a mirror-image in your band, so if you mess up on one side, the other side can help you in correcting your mistake. The problem for teaching a group with this method? You need a broader than feasible band in order to clearly see the twill structure, and get into the twill rhythm. When I did my concept and test-weaving, this didn't occur to me - I've done enough of the twill stuff to see the pattern emerge almost instantly, and with it the rhythm. With time, it becomes totally natural how the tablets move, and what you expect from them - and that is good and necessary, as twill patternwork will tend to twist your brain, so everything that is automatically done following a strict rule is one thing you don't need to pay attention to. (This is also why I have firm procedures when weaving and firm rules in how to set up the band - I need to know what direction of turning gets which diagonal, or my brain busts.) For the course, though, and beginners in twill, the areas worked in twill and in regular structure in this setup are too small, and things are following too closely on each other, and thus it gets too confusing.

Fortunately, this is also easy to remedy - with a different setup, and slightly different explanation with a different emphasis on what to look for. Which, with a few small changes to the handout, settles all my remaining problems with the course concept. Yay!

So now my script is updated, the handout has been changed, my list has been checked and amended with a few details, and the course is ready to take off. First instance, according to current plans, will be at the Nähtreffen (there's still spaces left, if you'd like to join us). And then - who knows? With about 4 hours, the course is fairly long to offer it at events like the Ravelry Meetup, but it's not completely out of question. And of course, it's always possible to book the course for a group of like-minded folks, either taking place here or where the group is based.

I had a lot of fun yesterday preparing for a tablet weaving workshop testrun - which, unsurprisingly, proves to be a lot of work. I last posted about this almost one and a half years ago, so it's been stewing for a really, really long time now. That is mostly due to logistics problems. One of the large stumbling blocks for me were the questions "How do you enable up to eight people to warp simultaneously?" and "How do you get the warps tensioned?"

The answer to both, in my case: F-clamps. I love those things, especially those single-hand F-clamps, and I've used two tiny ones for years now. I should probably say "abused", though, because, well, they are not intended to be clamped down onto something upside down and then get stuff attached to the stem sticking upwards. There's high-quality ones that will withstand this kind of abuse, though, and cheap ones that will eventually give up and come loose with rather little tension on their stem. Which means the sensible thing is to go for the higher quality tool... with the higher price.

Unfortunately, regarding my two questions, "F-clamps" is not the full answer. The full answer is "a shitload of F-clamps", and it has taken me a while to get to terms with that, bite the bullet, and invest. But I have found a good clamp, they have arrived, and I'm now working on finalising my teaching script, getting the handout (which will be a how-to-make-your-pattern cheat sheet) all done and lined up, and then there will be three nice guinea pig ladies coming over next week to try their hand and my teaching ideas.

It's all quite, quite exciting - and if it all works as planned, the course will cover warping in the "endless" method, the basic system and mechanics underlying all tablet weaving, how to read and write patterns, and how to do 3/1 twill on tablets, including how to work (and design) patterns in this method.

[caption id="attachment_3213" align="alignnone" width="4272"] One of the possible pattern bits that will be part of the workshop - and part of learning how to design swirls and stuff.


The course will then have its first proper appearance at the Nähtreff in October - which right now seems rather far in the future, but with the way time is flying, it will probably be happening before I know it!

I have a stack of links to throw at you again - but before that, here's proof that our garden knows which month we have:


These are called Maiglöckchen in German - which literally translates to "May Bells". The German language seems to like flower names with a time of year in them - we not only have "Easter Bells" (daffodils) and "May Bells", but also "Whitsun Roses" (peonies).

Cathy from Loose Threads has something else: a list of tutorials. I haven't looked at any of them yet, but they range from medieval things to Victorian, and you might just find something that amuses you - or might prove helpful.

Erik Kwakkel at the medievalbooks blog has a fascinating post about medieval scripts, including a picture of a scribe's advertisement sheet.

Aisling has a list of tablet-woven bands from the Anglo-Saxon and Viking period found in Great Britain and Ireland.

Rainer Schreg has some thoughts about the Vienna Statement about the threat to cultural heritage in the Near East and North Africa. If you want more about that topic and don't mind a gruesome read, check out Heritage for Peace's newsletter about damage to heritage sites in Syria.

To end with a lighter note: There's a new Jane Austen film, "Love and Friendship", coming to theatres tomorrow. It's a screenplay adaptation of "Lady Susan" (a short epistolary novel). Here's an interview with filmmaker Whit Stillman. If you'd like to pass the time until then with more Austen film adaptations, you might want to check out this list.