Adventures in Historical Tabletweaving

Warp: White and blue wool Weft: White wool Pattern: Laceby Cards: 12 pattern + 2x2 border Width: 0.8cm Length: Approx. 1.1 metres So you may have noticed, I'm kinda obsessed with two-hole patterns at the moment, and this is one that people mention a lot.  It is described by Grace Crowfoot in Antiquaries Journal 36 (1956), in the article Anglo-Saxon sites in Lincolnshire by F.H. Thompson. The preserved fragment is only 3x1.1cm, found in the back of a 6th century brooch from Laceby, England. The original is made of linen. Crowfoot posits two different ways of weaving the band, one using a heddle (ie not using tablets), and one using "six 2-hole tablets, with two threads in each hole".  I'm utterly unable to explain how the latter system would result in the pattern reconstruction given (same as the one pictured) so I assume that the reconstruction was a bit of a stab in the dark.   This reconstruction uses a tabby weave.  You can see a similar (possibly...

Warp: Wool (fibreholics) Weft: Wool (fibreholics) Pattern: from Latviesu Jostas Cards: 20 pattern + 2x3 border Width: 1.5cm Length: 55cm   This technique came up on the SCA-Card-Weaving list recently and I was inspired to give it a go.  The pattern is from Latviesu Jostas by Aleksandra Dzérvítis & Lilija Treimanis.  Wonder of wonders, this book was in the National Library of New Zealand (Finding a book I'm looking for domestically is a minor miracle).  The book is in Latvian and English.  Mostly it covers traditional patterns but it also has some 12th century patterns, although information from an archaeological perspective is lacking.  This one is described as "Stameriene, blue wrap". The book is pretty emphatic about getting the colours to have the characteristic greenish tinge of local dyes.  I gave this a crack by overdying my blue, red and yellow wools with green dye.  It didn't really result in the rig...

Warp: Blue (fibreholics) and white (Anna Gratton) wool Weft: white wool Pattern: Evebo band, pattern by Maikki Karisto Cards: 22 pattern + 2x1 border (original has a wide border) Width: 1.5cm Length: 76cm (43 cm for 1 full repeat of pattern) I had just strung up my inkle loom with the intent of weaving the Evebo band using this pattern - which I believe is based on Lise Raeder Knudsen's pattern which is the one in Hansen- when Maikki Karisto coincidentally emailed me with suggestions of bands I might like to try- including this one, which she offered to share her pattern for.  Maikki's pattern has 22 pattern tablets as opposed to the 23 in the GTT pattern .  It also includes the partial 6th figure from the edge of the band.   The GTT pattern also does not include the zigzag region which occurs twice in the pattern.  This region is particularly interesting because the tablets lose their offset to one another so that the zigzag is...

Warp: Blue and white wool (fibreholics) Weft: Blue and white wool (fibreholics) Pattern: Mammen band Cards: 17 pattern + 2x2 border Width: 1.5cm Length: 80cm This is the first "vanilla" 3/1 broken twill band I have done and it was a bit unexciting after Humikkala. I am generally pretty good at doing the same thing over and over again but I got quite bored with this one. I don't think it's the technique for me although I'm sure I'll end up doing more of it- I do want to try the Evebo band and at least pattern out that Chinese lion from Collingwood. This band will form one of the straps that hold my straw mattress to my Oseberg bed. That means 3 other random bits of tablet weaving to do in the next 6 months.

Warp: Red, white and blue wool (fibreholics) Weft: blue wool (the original was a plant fibre) Pattern: Humikkala H31:18 -3/1 broken twill Cards: 33 Width: 2.8 Length: 14cm OK, here is my best effort at Humikkala H31:18. This band is covered in Hansen, and Hansen's pattern is converted into something that actually works by Guido (I think he tried to reconstruct the band based on the photo of the reconstructed band in Hansen, which differs from the actual pattern given). However after hearing from Silja Penna-Haverinen that there were some problems with Hansen's reconstruction, I really wanted to have a go at this band using other sources. Silja put me in contact with Maikki Karisto, who is working on a book which covers this band and many others, and who has examined the band closely. Maikki is understandably a little cagey about sharing all her information, since a) it is still evolving as she researches, b) she would like people to buy her book when it comes out and ...

Warp: Red and yellow wool (fibreholics) Weft: red wool Pattern: Snartemo II Cards: 16 Width: 1cm Length: 110cm I haven't had much time to post recently; most of my time has been going into organising the meal plan for Canterbury Faire . But the event is now over (and went very well!) so back to blogging... I wanted to have a simple-but-period band warped up for demonstration/teaching, and having just recently done Masku Humikkala, 8658:H17 I thought that Snartemo II would be good, since patterns where the cards turn as a pack are much easier for people to get their head around. I finally got the band warped up on the Thursday, halfway through the event. As usual, a lot of people came over and opined that the band looked lovely, but they couldn't possibly do anything like that themselves. In fact the majority of the people brave enough to give it a go were children! The band took form ridiculously quickly compared to other bands I've been doing recent...

Warp: Red, yellow, green and blue wool (fibreholics) Weft: green wool Pattern: Phiala's Snartemo V pattern (6th century Norwegian) Cards: 44 Width: 3.5cm Length: 50cm OK, so I said I'd do Snartemo V and here it is. It is from Phiala's pattern, with a few tweaks, and also a few points where I lost track of where I was up to and did the motifs in the wrong order! This is one of the few bands I have done where there is actually a decent pciture of the original (click through to a larger version). You can see that my own version is a lot more stretched out than the original which is if anything about shorter than square. I found it impossible to get the weft density up using sticky wool. This is a popular band to try and it always looks great. Here are some other examples: Guido Gehlhaar ( Steinmaus ) Irene Lyng ( Brikvaevning ) Micky V Schoelzke ( les tissages de micky ) One nice this about this band is that because the eyes are drawn to the regions with long flo...

Warp: Red, yellow, green and blue wool (fibreholics) Weft: same as above (varying colour) Pattern: Phiala's demo Snartemo pattern Cards: 18 Width: 1.6cm Length: 60cm The name "Snartemo" is given to a technique where each hole in a tablet is threaded with a different colour, and tablets are offset a quarter turn from each other so that turning them as a pack produces diagonal lines. Sometimes a card is turned repreatedly backward and forward, forming "floats" where a single colour appears on the top for several passes of the weft. The canonical Snartemo band is Snartemo V, from 7th century Snartemo, Norway. Hansen lists three other bands in a similar technique. This is the band I warped up while demonstrating how to do a Continuous Warp. It is the demonstration pattern (Excel format) Phiala gives showing how to construct a Snartemo pattern, with the green and blue warps swapped because that's how I absentmindedly warped it up. I've also marked...

Warp: White wool Weft: DMC linen Brocade: Wool Pattern: Birka 22 Cards: 21 Width: 1.7 Length: Approx. 0.4 metres What's new: Wool Birka 22 is the only pattern from Birka found with both silver and gold brocade (the rest are all silver). Next to the simple 8-card threaded in chevron pattern, it seems to be the most common tablet weaving pattern for re-enactors to follow (at least in this corner of the world). However most people don't seem to do it as a brocade pattern. Þora Sharptooth has created a "recipe" for Birka 22 that uses Egyptian diagonals to create the pattern and it seems to have taken on a life of its own. I doubt all the people that have woven it are aware the original Birka bands were brocaded. No slight intended to Þora Sharptooth, whose website is an excellent resource and who is quite clear on the fact that this isn't actually the original form of the pattern. The wool I used for the warp is from Anna Gratton Ltd . The brocade is wool fr...