Teeny-tiny, and Shiny.

I've reported about the museum trip to see the Albecunde band... and of course, I had to do a little bit of testing. I used the Texel Stocking silk, which is 4-ply and only partly de-gummed; the individual strands are about 110 den in thickness, so I split up the yarn and pulled one of the strands through each of the tablet holes of one tablet.

That was fiddly, but not too bad; for my sanity, I only did 12 tablets anyways.

So... the result: The partly de-gummed silk is very, very pleasant to weave with. I'm getting a nice and tight structure as well; the silk is also still quite shiny even though there's some of the sericin still in. I also have the impression that the manipulation sort of splits the individual filaments apart, adding to the shine.

It's fine. It's tiny. It's relatively shiny. I probably don't need to mention that it is slow work, because it is so fine and the individual picks add very little to the length of the band. And of course there's not the bang effect the original gives, with its large width, but even white on white, the pattern is visible in a very subtle way:



I'm not sure yet why some of the patterning seems clearer than some other bits...



but as you can see, hopefully, there's a threading direction mistake (as, by the way, there was in the original for a bit) in one of the tablets. I'll probably play some more with this, and take some more macro pictures, and will hopefully figure out where the issues are. Might also be that the pattern will be easier to read on a coloured band. (I think I have some silk paint somewhere in a box in the basement...)

 
Also - this silk is too thin. If I calculate from the 4 mm the dozen tablets give me, I'd end up at 30 mm instead of  38 with 92 tablets (which is what the original has). So... about 150 den should do the trick, if mathematics don't mislead me here.