Since the question came up - here's some more about the weaving knife from Dublin.

The information I have about is is from a single book:
James T. Lang et al: Viking Age Decorated Wood: A Study of Its Ornament and Style (Medieval Dublin Excavations, 1962-81: Series B, Band 1). 
The knife has the catalogue number DW80 and the additional number (1887:143). It was found near Christ Church Cathedral in unknown context. Length ist 26.7 cm, depth 5.8 cm, thickness 1.3 cm. The original has lost its blade tip (it's broken off), so how exactly the blade ended is conjecture. There is no information about the kind of wood used for the knife.

Here's the knife I have, which was replicated by a friend, complete with the carvings:



And here's the same photo, with the archaeological drawing from Viking Age Decorated Wood, p. 77, as an overlay:


As you can see, it's definitely a very good match (and you can also see the conjectured blade tip).

I haven't been able to find out more about the knife. Apparently, the excavation took place in 1972-1976, and it has not been published completely yet. Finds from the excavation date from the tenth to the early fourteenth century, with most of the evidence from the mid-tenth to the twelfth century. You can find out a little more about the excavation on this website from the Irish Heritage Council.

There is a second smaller knife that was found at Fishamble street, which has a similar overall form, including the cutout on the blade back at the tip. It was on display in the National Museum in Dublin, at least a few years ago; unfortunately, the museum has no online catalogue.

Though it is listed as "weaving knife" in the book, there has been quite a bit of discussion on whether it is one or not, and if yes, for what kind of weaving it was used. The shape especially seems to have caused doubts about its usefulness.

From my own experience working with it, I can only say: I love it. It's very useful for both pressing in the weft (with lots of fine control due to the curved blade), and the tip is handy for clearing the shed, picking out individual threads for checking, it can be used to create a brocading shed, and I also find it very useful when weaving back to undo mistakes. You can read more about my personal experience using it in this post here.

The eye, the nose, the neck. Ah well.



First, let me tell you about the main difference, for me, in weaving ass-first versus nose-first: When starting with the nose, I will very easily end up with a baboon ass on the dog because of getting the timing of leg slope start and back slope start not quite right. When starting with the tail, I have a high probability of ending up with a too-thick neck because of somehow fuddling things up in the middle, and then getting the timing for the neck not quite right. I suspect that if woven cleanly, the thick-neck-problem might evaporate. (It's on my list to manage that the next time.)

The nose area, however, is a different beast.

[caption id="attachment_5364" align="alignnone" width="328"] Photo from UNIMUS.no


[caption id="attachment_5365" align="alignnone" width="441"] Photo from UNIMUS.no




If you compare the look of the back of the band in the tail and leg region, you can see that there is a characteristic look of broken narrow lines - that's the back of the regular diagonals structure, which is exactly what we have on the front for a while: white, purple, white, purple.



The noses on my dogs are all one of these regular stripes as well - white, purple, white; a single (two-thread) line on top of the band, and the regular broken line on the back. Except in the very first dog, where I did a wide nose.



Now, the rules of normal twill dictate that a line you "draw" on the background is either one line (two thread's worth) wide, or three lines (in order to go out with a nice clean line again). Three lines because you have, in the diagonal base setup, a white line coming out of the twill, then your pattern dark line, a light line, a dark line, and then a white line going back into twill again. For a wider line, you cover up the light between the two dark lines by change of tablet turn direction, but you still have to weave into the regular dark line to get a clean shape. So. Two or six is the choice you have.

The original animal's nose is wider than a single line (of two threads) and much more narrow than a regular wide line, though, and that is technically not possible without doing Strange Things (TM).

I suspect the sneaky and ingenious use of some double-turns here, to get the effect. I'm not sure yet how and where they need to get started, though. This is one of the cases where I'll actually sit down with pen and paper and start drafting this to see where lines meet normally, and where lines have to start, or change, to get the desired effect.

And then I can see another dog-weaving stint in my future...

(By the way, in case it interests you: If I don't make silly mistakes and have to weave back, weaving a doggie takes me about one and a half hours. Do try this at home, but not late in the evening when tired, especially not late in the evening when tired plus distracted by other stuff going on in the room that you feel the need to participate in while making silly mistakes in your weaving.)

The Evebø band... oh, source of joy and questions. For me, at least.

The Evebø band is a find from Norway and dated to the 6th century; it's a tablet-woven band with twill technique patterning, and very good, very detailed pictures of the band can be found at the Fotoportalen Unimus. Including, to my great joy and delight, photos of the back of the band... because, as simple as the band might look at first glance, there are some strange things happening with the animal that might be a dog (though the Most Patient Husband of Them All says it looks more like an ant-eater to him, and I sort of agree).

[caption id="attachment_5364" align="alignnone" width="368"] Photo from UNIMUS.no


The original band happens to have a 20 tablet pattern zone, which coincidentally is the width of one of my playbands... so of course, at some point, I had to weave the Evebø ant-eater doggie. And as we all know, dogs are pack animals.

So. Let me introduce you to my Evebø dog collection:



The first one, in the upper band part on the image, was woven starting from the nose, after just a sketch of the original animal. Though I was sort of aiming to reproduce it, I wasn't going for the "have to match it exactly" approach, but more for the general direction. As you can see, it has a wider nose than the original, a much thicker neck, and a baboon butt.

The rest followed a considerable amount of time later - they grow younger from right to left. First (rightmost) was woven from the tail onwards; then, because the first one had been so long ago and that made it hard to compare what the differences were, I did another one starting from the nose (you can easily tell that by the baboon butt). Finally, I did a third one, trying to a) weave less mistakes than in the first ass-starter, and b) matching it as closely as possible to the original. Which was... well... not completely successful in both cases. As you can see mostly in the chin and nose area. Sigh.

If you compare my versions with the original, you can find quite a few differences (even disregarding the baboon butt versions, and just looking at the ass-first doggies). A small thing is the forelegs not having the split further down than the hind legs in one case - though that is just a question of me not paying enough attention to where the split was supposed to come, and not a technical issue.

The really interesting differences, though, are in the neck, eye, and nose area... can you spot them?

It's a public holiday in Germany today, and I'll use that as an excuse for a long weekend. I will leave you with these two versions of the Evebø dog:



See you on Monday! (Or on Sunday, if you're joining for the Lauresham tablet-weaving presentation...)

If you looked in vain for a blogpost yesterday, you've probably guessed that it got gobbled up by the current project - which, as other publications tend to do, has eaten up all available time and then some. However, it's about done now (I'm keeping my fingers crossed that there will be no hiccup during the final file export), and hopefully everyone watching it will enjoy the thing on Sunday late afternoon.
If you're interested, you can find more info here on the page. Info text is in German, but there will be an English version of the presentation (where you will see that I didn't even try at all to match the voice-over to my German speaking face action...). I'm assuming there will be a link to the presentation posted on the site on Sunday at around 17:00 German time, but you might want to register for the Discord thing as well and hang around there in the EXARC channel - and join the discussion afterwards!

I wrote a while ago about the Albecunde belt, which is one of the tablet-woven bands in the museum St. Afra in Augsburg. It has survived in two parts, a longer and a shorter one. Onto the smaller part of the Albecunde belt, another smaller piece of tablet-woven band is sewn. Its date is not clear, but it has been revered as the belt of St. Mary for a long while - and thus is called Mariengürtel.

It's a twill weave, with animal patterns in colour on an off-white background or in off-white on coloured background; and said background is green, red, and light bluegreen.

This is the overview picture from the museum:



...and here are some detailed pictures that I took, with kind permission from the museum.







It's a beautiful piece, and I am definitely itching to try and weave some of these little animals. According to my count, it's 2+41+2 tablets, so I can try them on my 42 tablet playground band. Once I have the current things done and finished, that is...

 

I've spent the day weaving, and preparing things for my little presentation about tablet-weaving due on June 14 - as part of the digital event at Lauresham:



Preparing for this meant I finally got around to do a few things that I've been planning to do or try out for a while - among them brocading over diagonals (as it was done on the Ulrichsmanipel) and warping a new explanation-/demo-band that's not as narrow, ratty, and worn out als my old four-tablet one was.

Tomorrow will be more video-taking for this, and then I will get to do some cutting, and editing, and things like that. Exciting work, and I have finally found an editing programme that I seem to be able to work with... which is a very, very good thing indeed.