A while ago - last autumn, to be precise - I was asked about a workshop or course on tablet weaving. This has been on my agenda for a while, and I have taught tablet weaving before, but not just the course I really want to teach.

Said course, as I plan it, will be suitable for beginners as well as for people who already know a bit about tablet weaving. It will be teaching solid basics, with a strong emphasis on the underlying mechanics - so after the course, you will have an understanding of what happens when and why. With that understanding, reading and making (writing and designing) your own patterns will be possible. And if you feel so inclined, you will also have the tools necessary to work 3/1 broken twill patterns.

This is, admittedly, a stiff programme. Which means it needs careful developing (what will I introduce when? For the many elements of tablet weaving that are linked together, how can I best structure them?) and also time-management (which includes deciding on whether I will teach how to setup the warp or not, and whether to prepare warps for the participants or not).

There's also the problem of logistics. There's a difference in necessary equipment between teaching a simple introduction and teaching the course I have in mind. I have space, but I will also need either a lot of table space or a lot of (simple, medieval-style) tablet-weaving frames. I also need tablets that are both suitable for the weaving that we'll do (as in large enough) and affordable, plus suitable yarn in at least two colours and enough length.

So all this has been stewing in the background for a good while now, and yesterday I finally solved the yarn-and-tablets problem. Which means two things: a lower price alternative to the parchment tablets will turn up in the shop very soon, and I can finally do a test-run for the weaving course plan that I have!

Time for some tablet weaving stuff! (In my next life, I will manage to get more time for tablet weaving. And for napping in the sun.)

First of all, a blog post about an Estonian shawl, 13th/14th century, with a tablet-woven border.

Cathy thinks about the Køstrup find, which also has a tablet-woven border. (There's a link to another post with pics in there, should you want to look at brownish textiles.)

And the final tablet-weaving-related bit: Maikki Karisto & Mervi Pasanen have published a book about Finnish tablet-woven bands, called "Applesies and Fox Noses". It's bilingual in Finnish and English, and if I understand correctly, at least a good part of the patterns are taken from original Finnish bands, including medieval ones. The book is available for pre-ordering here, and it's scheduled to come out on June 20.

Finally, all things necessary have come together: The wood that I need, the machines and tools that I need, and the lovely upstairs neighbour with time on his hands to show me how to use the machines. So on the weekend, I started work on the new wool wheel.

As German strategist von Moltke once said, "No battle plan survives contact with the enemy" - I have already made some changes to the plan that I drew in meticulous work. The board that will carry all the rest of the wheel has gotten somewhat slimmer (so that it could fit into the planing machine), and it's not all even (though that does not bother me a bit), and it's about 5 cm shorter than intended originally. But all that is no big deal, since the plan was more or less drawn after a Psalter illumination and part of the plan was to adjust as necessary.

In addition to the wheel, and in some way also to practice some of the procedures, I am also planning to build a crossbar-and-post tablet weaving "loom", which means a run to the hardware store today. And the loom will come in very, very handy for my latest weaving project which will also travel with me to the RGZM in two weeks. Fortunately, the thing is an utterly simple affair... rendered even simpler by my planning on how to build it.

Because of both Tannenberg and the liveARCH conference in Hungary coming up, I am away for the next two weeks - so no blogging during this time. Regular blogging will continue on Monday, October 12.

Today, instead of another instance of the "Gory Details" series, you get a sneak preview of things to come in the market stall. Ages ago, I have already blogged about gold thread once, still pondering whether to carry some or not. Some while later, I made the decision to give it a try. After all, the worst that can happen is that I have to do goldwork for the rest of my life to use all the thread!

Meanwhile, things have progressed, and I have received the sample in final thickness and quality. And just as I had expected, the quality is outstanding, the thread is extremely beautiful, and I am very much looking forward to the day that I can offer it in the market stall.

Of course, before placing the final order, I had to play with the gold thread, having fun brocading and embroidering dutifully test the thread for its suitability for both brocade and embroidery. And here you see the results:


The cent coin is included for scale. On top left, you see part of an unfinished embroidered (couched) motif from 12th century Villach-Judendorf, with the gold thread couched on in pairs. The different shades are made by using green and red silk thread - plant dyed by Sabine and also for sale (coming soon in the "Gory Details" series). It's amazing how much coloured shading this will give - and giving colours to the gold by stitching with the fine silk and giving textures by strategical placing of the stitches really is a delighting and delicious work.

Left of the coin, you can still see most of the steel needle I worked with (and still threaded in with green). And right of the coin is a tablet-woven band, eleven tablets threaded with Gütermann silk in a dark red shade and brocaded with the gold thread, again taken double. While the picture does more or less catch the look of the embroidery, the brocade on the band gave me a hard time photographing it, and the picture doesn't do it justice. It shines and glitters in real life and looks really, really expensive. (Well, it is.)

You can click on the picture to see it much larger, but please don't look too closely at the quality of the weaving and stitching - these are the first bits I made, it was just playing around with it to get a first impression, and I have not really worked with gold thread before. But the thread is wonderful to work with, smooth and flexible and very, very golden. And I just could not keep all this shininess to myself any longer!

For the exhibition in Bad Staffelstein, I made video snippets to demonstrate both how the textile techniques look "in action" and to give a small impression about how time-consuming textile works can be. Here's one of the four snippets I made, showing tablet weaving in twill structure, done with modern weaving tools (also known as butchered playing cards). I translated the text into English - it's German in the exhibition, of course.

It's no teaching video, but it does show my weaving setup and work procedures - so tablet weavers might be able to see what I'm doing and how, and others hopefully still get an impression of how long such work takes, and that it's not the tools or any machinery that make the pattern, but the brains and hands of the person working.

When I learned tablet-weaving, I used either beer mats or butchered playing cards. For my small hands, beer mats are definitely too large, so I went over to playing cards cut up and punched with holes for good. They are slim, lightweight, quite sturdy and cheap - the only problem is that you have to cut them to squares and punch holes. And as I'm a bit demanding about my hole placement, wanting them all in the same place, this did always take some time; time spent to prepare weaving equipment that was obviously so not historical. So I've been looking for alternatives for a long time now.

I tried to weave with small (really small) bone tablets one time - they are nice, smooth and good-looking, but they are also tiny with their side length of 2,4 cm, and I did not manage to get a smooth weaving sequence with the tiny things in a band with more than just 5 or so tablets. I also got wooden tablets made as a present once - again, carefully cut, bored and sanded for smoothness, and just the right size to weave. However, wooden tablets add a huge amount of bulk to the tablet-stack and are quite heavy.

So despite all these tries to use more medieval materials for the tablets, I always returned to my trusty playing-cards for weaving work. Since I don't weave for show on medieval events, it was never a problem. But there's a difference between not needing and not wanting... and I wanted.

And now I have - and I have to spare, so they are on offer at the market stall. I present to you the museum-compatible, slim alternative to cardboard and playing-card tablets: Weaving tablets made of parchment.


These tablets measure 6 x 6 cm, a convenient size when weaving and large enough that you can handle them well and even weave with the tablets standing on the corners, for tubular or other special weaving actions. The parchment is prepared by hand, in one of the last traditional parchment manufactury. In this case, it is calf parchment. Rounded corners for smooth turning, large holes for ease of setting up the warp.

The tablets, being parchment, can be marked, coloured, scribbled on - whatever you desire. With a thickness of about 0,6 mm for most of them, they are slim enough so that handling a larger stack is easily possible - but stiff and wide enough to grasp them easily. So... no more excuses about not having acceptable weaving tablets to work with!

I've almost won my struggle with the unwieldy article - just the pictures left to insert, a once-over on the text and bibliography, and then it's finished. Whew!

In other progress news, I did a bit more on the play-band yesterday evening, so the warp is almost used up now. Besides playing around with turning sequences and finally trying a few pattern variations I've wanted to try for ages, I have arrived at the conclusion that for weaving freestyle knotwork patterns, the "less is more" approach won't work properly.

I set up this play-band with twelve tablets only, because that is a number that will already allow to see some interesting patterning, can be divided into two small, easy to handle packs of six tablets when doing a split of direction in the middle, and is fast to work even in twill - since there aren't many tablets to shift from one pack to the other. Because the band is intended as a teaching tool/workshop helper, those were things I thought important (and I'm still sure it is a very good width and setup for learning how to do twill).

To give me a greater variation of things to try out on the band, I looked for pattern inspiration on other bands (both my own, older play-band sequences and pictures of bands on the internet). There were some simple knot-style patterns that I drafted for trying on my band, and to my delight I found that an astounding lot of patterns will just be possible to do with such a slim band.

However, when weaving those tiny patterns with knotwork elements, I found that while twelve tablets will technically work, it is utterly complicated... because there is so little time. I'd finish one of the red pattern lines, running from the outside to the middle of the band and going back into twill to have only that pattern line visible on the band. But the band is so slim that I can't get into a proper twill pattern there, because already a complete reversion of weave direction is needed, or I have to start out on the next pattern bit. And the other tablets also need attention because of go-into-twill, come-out-of-twill or some patterning in their sequence. That is just too much on too short notice and too little room - and I imagine that on a wider band with more tablets, there is much more time to let this section twill on quietly while you care for the pattern bit in the other section. Also, the sets of tablets going mainly this or that direction were too small. Try working a twill structure with 12 tablets divided into four sets - that is three tablets only per set; much too few to see the structure or get into the rhythm of the thing. And rhythm and structure both are very important to me when weaving, since I hate nothing more than following a pattern draft line by line and counting off tablets (first forward, second backwards, third and fourth forwards, yuck!)

Well, since the play-band is almost finished, and since I have some nice silk lying around for a wider band, and since I wanted to weave a slim belt for some fittings I still have around... I think I'll make the warp for the new band a tad longer and play for a bit, just to see if freestyle knotwork is better possible on a band with 40 tablets.