The patterns in the book (Tablet Woven Treasures) state how many tablets are used, and how wide the original find was.

Several question about this come to mind.
Those finds have been underground for several hundreds of years or more. I do not know if the weaving has become looser during this time? Or maybe less loose?
I do not know how the bands/fabric were wet finished. Will the yarn have ‘bloomed’ after weaving?

And there is more. Modern ways to talk about yarn thickness (like Nm numbers) are not always very usefull when dealing with handspun. Twist, fiber, and drafting method influence the weight per meter. To give a simple example, a yarn can be spun with much air trapped inside (like a squishy yarn spun from rolags) or a yarn can be spun with all the air squeezed out (like Andean weaving yarn, ‘khaitu’). These yarns may weigh the same. And then will weave up to bands that differ much in looks and feel. And the deeper you get into this subject, the more complicated it gets. Most yarns back then were spun with more twist than modern yarn.

I need to get a starting point. It is easier, to just sample a yarn and weave with it, and see if the result comes close to what is stated in the book. To experience how the end results looks and feels. If, f.e. the resulting band might have been a good ‘starting band’ for an apron’ (band1). This project is about seeing ‘what happens when I try’. It is an experiment.

That means, as always, that I will have to sample, to be able to make a decision. So I spun some different yarns, to weave small samples. The picture at the top shows 3 of those yarns, I have one yarn already, a dark blue, much overtwisted (it is khaitu, intended for weaving in the Andean Tradition) . So I have 4 yarns to weave small samples of Band 1.

This is a post about weaving Finnish Iron Age bands with spindle spun weaving yarn. I weave the bands listed in the book ‘Tablet Woven Treasures, Archaeological Bands from the Finnish Iron Age’ by Karisto & Pasanen (2021), one by one in the order of the book.