I spent the morning in the closet, successfully so (at least I hope the recording will be fine, the talking was successful) and only realised after posting the blog yesterday that I had not linked to the previous podcast. So here it is - in German, again. 

In theory, we are talking about tablet weaving. At least that was the plan, but there were... distractions, which means that there's less tablet weaving and more general textile-related ramblings in there. 

We did actually fix that in today's chat, but you will have to wait a few weeks until it comes out. Meanwhile there's this two-hour monster to keep you entertained, hopefully. 

After a little bit of a tech hiccup (that, if you ask me, should not have happened, but at least it got fixed relatively quickly) I'm very happy and relieved that the blog is back, with very little extra shenanigans for me to do. Phew.

I am still technically on blog hiatus, though, and will be until November 17 as planned. But since I'm in the blog checking for its okay-ness, you might as well hear from me.

I am deep in the preparation for the Forum, so there's stacks of stuff here and there, waiting to get sorted for packing. The wood is already in the car, as is the big coffee maker; the clamps are waiting to be loaded, the yarns are almost all stuffed into suitable boxes, and I have had the motivation needed for untangling (well, mostly) all of my unfinished tablet woven bands. There's also a stack of books that will travel with me.

So. Much anticipation. Lots of packing still to do. See you here later in November! 

As you might know if you've done medieval-style tablet weaving before, there's a special kind of contraption usually seen when late medieval women are depicted: Some kind of stand with two uprights, one floor crossbar and usually a second crossbar, or some diagonal stabilisers. The warp is then tensioned between the two uprights, and off you go with your weaving work. 

Like here: 

Now, the plan is to make some more - but larger this time, and with bits of wood bought in a normal hardware store, and less glueing plus more screwing (hopefully not screwing up, though). That should hopefully make them even nicer to work with, and easier to take apart and put together again, with less wonkyness.

We shall see if that plan works out!

Mathematics and weaving go rather well together - it starts with calculating the amount of yarn needed, goes on with doing divisions for the heddle rods and pattern repeats, and then there's calculating the shrinkage, too.

If you're tablet weaving, you can apparently use maths to help you generate patterns, at least of a specific type. There's a freely downloadable short paper here, titled "Markov Chains, Coptic Bananas, and Egyptian Tombs: Generating Tablet Weaving Designs Using Mean-Reverting Processes" written by Joshua Holden.

There's even a link to the code online. So in case you are looking for another way to get some tablet weaving patterns... 

If you are into historical tablet weaving, you might know the tablet-woven band found in Hallstatt. Now a new find has been made and analysed, and it might be from the same workshop or even a part of the same band - at least the colour pattern and the thread number all match so that you can weave both motifs on the same warp.

Want to read more? The new piece has been published in an article in the newest Archaeological Textiles Review for 2024, and you can download the full issue (and all the others, too) on their website.

If you're interested in Finnish tablet weaving as it was done in the 19th century, you can find a selection of bands on the twisted threads website. Mari Voipio, a Finnish researcher, has put this together from photos and books. The website also includes weaving instructions - so if you're looking for inspiration, maybe hop over there!

I'm back, I've taken a bit of time off yesterday to make up for the weekend, and now it's playing catch-up with all the tasks left to do this week. 

The weekend was lovely, and fun, and a little exhausting (for everyone, probably, not just for me). Friday morning, as I was ready to go to the train station, I got a message from the app that the train I was planning to take would be 98 minutes late... which, knowing how things go, means it would arrive even later by the time it was supposed to arrive, and I would not be able to catch the second ICE, and would travel at least double the amount of time scheduled. 

Now... if it would have been a 2-hour journey, I would have considered doing it. But it would have been almost 6 hours as scheduled, so... no. Which meant I did take the car after all, and drove there, and I did that rather early to avoid getting caught in Friday evening rush hour traffic. (Plan worked.)

I spent a very nice afternoon and evening with the organiser of the workshop and one of the other participants, and then on Saturday I set out with them to make a lot of brain cells work hard. In theory, tablet weaving is very, very easy - you have to be able to tell light from dark and count up to two. In practice, putting all the things together and remembering all the new rules can make heads spin...  

We started with warping (as I usually do in my workshops) and went on to explore threading and turning directions, stripes and monochrome surface weaving before moving on to diagonals and freestyle diagonal patterning. 

As usual, I took way too little photos during the whole thing... I am always too distracted to remember to do so. This time, it was a little better thanks to "take photos" cues in my workshop script - which means that I can at least show you a photo of part of the room:

That was taken during a break, with everyone getting some nice food and filling up on coffee.

And in case you're curious: Installing the edge tablets did go quite well, but next time I will do the installation a little later, in hopes that that will make things a little bit easier. 

After the end of the workshop on Sunday afternoon, I packed up everything, was gifted with a bit of food for the road and set off for home, tired but happy.