Band 1 is finished. I am getting fond of this band, a small sturdy serviceable edging this band must have been. It is beautiful in a non-spectacular way.

In the end my yarn was almost worn through, I cut the warp then. I will look for a way to make the yarn better, smoother, and with more twist. It needs to be even more abrasion resistant than it is.

Weaving the Band 1 from two sides was easy The woolen warp threads behaved well, and no issues with tangling of warp threads as a result of buildup of twist were present.

 But the end result, I expect no weaver to find acceptable.

The first half of the warp, that has the original pattern with almost all the tablets in S-direction, turns out fine. But the second half, where I wove from the other end, there the pattern gets messed up.

I think, what might be happening is this: It seems, that the pattern is well defined when the twining direction of the threads is the same as the tablet direction. This is the case in the first half of the band. In the picture that is the band on the right side.

The stich definition is much less, when the tablet direction is opposite to the twining direction. As is the case in the second half of the Band 1.  In the picture it is the one on the left.
It looks a bit as if the twining direction interferes optically with the pattern, in the same way as (not real), twill stripes will sometimes appear in plain weave. It looks as if the pattern has diagonal stripes, while it is still a brick pattern.  Any change in turning direction or tablet direction one would like to make to get rid of the build-up of twist, will change the look of the pattern in a way that is really annoying.

Therefore, simulating two weavers, as well as a changes in tablet direction every few inches are not the way to go if I want to get rid of the twist behind the tablets in starting or finishing bands like the first 4 bands in the book.

Back to the drawing board it is. I will need to look for another solution to get rid of twist build-up as well as for a better yarn.

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.