Tablet Weaving Update and Loom Musings

I finished another tablet weaving band! Here it is:

I took a break about halfway in, and it ended up sitting half finished for about 6 months. I guess I'm not motivated to weave in the warmer months? But as Autumn arrived (here in the Southern Hemisphere), my motivation returned, and I picked it up again. I even went to the trouble of finishing off the ends straight away. This one is long enough that I can use it as a belt. (I will model it another time. To be honest, I'm not sure I have any clothes of the style it would go with, and might not end up using it as a belt anyway.)

I was so excited that I started another band straight away, an even longer one this time. I wanted to try a different pattern, but unfortunately I had forgotten which pattern I used for the previous one, it being so long ago, and I ended up choosing the same one from my notebook! Even the colours are the same. (I've found that spare pages in my Hobonichi diary are great for recording patterns that I find online: the grid lines are perfect for tablet weaving patterns!)

I had written "Oseberg Weave" next to it, but not the source. Also, I think there was actually more than one kind of tablet-woven band found in the Oseberg burial. I should be more comprehensive with my notes in the future!

When I googled it, I remembered that I had sourced the pattern from this video on the Elewys of Finchingefeld Youtube channel. I highly recommend this channel! Not only is Elewys an expert weaver and excellent explainer, but I love her friendly and down-to-earth attitude. I hope to do more weaves from her channel in the future.

If you'd like to see some of my previous janky tablet weaving efforts, check out this blog post!



After only having done 2-and-three-quarters pieces on my 'new' loom, I'm already starting to see its limitations. (I say 'new', but I've had it for a year -- Husband helped me to make it as a sort-of birthday present, and my birthday is coming up again!) The loom is incredibly simple: it's just made up of a board (actually a shelf) with a drawer handle at each end. In theory, this isn't even the simplest set-up that's required. But it's also certainly not the most complicated, either. I very much like the idea of this kind of loom. It's only a few of the details that are off.
(Note: in the photo below, I have taken off the bobbins at the far end because I was getting towards the end of the weave. Normally the yet-to-be-used threads are wound on to them and they hang off the back end.)

Firstly, the tablets should ideally hang off the threads, not touch the base. There isn't enough of a gap between the drawer handles and the base. The big box hardware store I went to had a large range of handles, but these were the most 'gappy' ones I could find. I hoped they would be okay ... and they are ... But the tablet set I have is made of cardboard, and having them hit the base all the time is eventually going to damage them. I can always get some wooden or plastic ones later on down the track. Or buy some smaller ones, once my lil clumsy fingers are more used to weaving (they'd have to be pretty small to clear the base, though!). As you can see in the picture below, they don't tend to sit upright, but veer off to the side, leaving the weaving sort of half-twisted. It's still perfectly possible to weave that way, but not ideal. I also have a feeling that it mucks with the tension, but more on that later. The biggest issue, though, is that it's going to make more complicated patterns, well, even more complicated. In a lot of patterns you have to separate the tablets and turn some forwards and some backwards on every turn. Having them sitting all hinky is going to make that very difficult. So that's the first problem I'd like to solve.

Secondly, I sometimes have trouble with the tension. I've tried a few different things to attach the work in progress to the handles at each end, and landed on bag clips as the easiest solution. (They are absolutely not historically accurate, I know, but dang they're convenient!) The clip at the front end works fine; the only problem is that it leaves an impression in the finished piece (which you can see in the second photo from the top in this post, on the right hand side). It's a minor inconvenience that you can only see close up. The clip at the far end though, I've had some problems with. At first I tried using weights to give the band tension (a common historical solution) but found them cumbersome and annoying. I tried winding the threads around a piece of dowel -- in pictures I've seen it locks them in place -- but it didn't work for me. (The technique is shown in this blog post; photos near the bottom.) The bag clip worked better than these solutions, but it doesn't grip the threads evenly, and they tend to lose their grippiness over time. (I've ruined two clips already!) I really want to find a solution that reliably locks the threads in place and gives them a taut tension, while still being quick and easy to release for when I get to the top and need to move the finished weaving down and off the loom.

Thirdly (don't worry, this is the last one!), my back gets really sore when using the loom. I certainly can't have it sitting on a table horizontally, as my arms won't even reach the far end, and there's no point in having a long loom if you can't reach the far end! I tried using it at a shallowish angle (with the far end resting on a cardboard box) while sitting at my desk, but even then my back gets really sore from reaching forwards. Lately I have tried leaning it almost vertically on the edge of my desk, with the front edge resting on my lap, and that works a lot better back-wise, but dang: those sharp shelf corners really dig into my thighs! (Excuse my messy hobby room and non-period-accurate outfit, it was just a quick selfie to demonstrate!)

Okay, one more tiny thing -- I'd like a way to keep the finished part of the weaving neatly out of the way and clean.

Okay, that's all I want! I don't want to ditch my loom completely, because I'm proud that I made it myself -- and the finishing on the surface of the shelf looks cool. I would rather try and modify it to solve these problems. I have been doing some research. More on that soon!

Unfinished Crafts, June 2021

Plushy Letters : O

Continuing the plushy letter theme from my last post, I started a Plushy 'O', as it seemed the second easiest letter to design after 'I'.

Floral Skirt

I started this skirt a few months ago, and it's almost finished. I just need to finish the bottom hem, and I'll probably add some of this lace to it. To be honest, it's deep Winter here now, and this is a rather summery skirt, so I'll probably put it aside until the season comes around again and work on other things in the meantime.

Grannyland Blanket

This is such an easy go-to project to grab when I'm feeling the urge to craft, but don't want a lot of brain-work to do. I realised a while back that the overall blanket will look better if I edge each square in the same colour. I finally got around to purchasing some wool for the purpose. I don't know why I chose red. Black is too common for this purpose, and I'm already making another blanket with white edgings. I thought about the primary colours and red just felt like the right one. I've started the epic task of adding one row of red to each of the 36+ squares. To be honest, I'm still not sure what dimensions I want the finished blanket to be, so there may be more squares before this thing is through!

Art Projects

The last two projects are ones that I'm doing under my artist umbrella, rather than 'private' craft projects. They're both still in the early stages, so I won't talk about them too much now. They both involve a lot of cross-stitch, bead embroidery, knitting and other crafty details, so I thought I'd mention them here at least.

Take care and keep on crafting!

Craft Goals for 2021 - My Make 9!

The Make 9 craft challenge has been around for a few years now, but with everything that happened last year, I had completely forgotten about it. Even when I was reminded by seeing other people's goals popping up here and there on the internet, I hesitated. It just seems strange to plan for the future these days. Finally though, last week I felt an urge to work on some craft projects again and thought, maybe I'd like to do a Make 9 anyway!

(The accompanying pictures aren't really relevant, they're just nice backgrounds from photos I found on my phone!)

I deliberately made the goals very vague. My interests tend to change rapidly and without warning, so I wanted goals that would accommodate anything I was interested in at any given time. I did take the chance and looked through my current and planned projects list to add some to the grid. I made sure to choose some smaller projects, with the awareness that I'm starting 6 weeks late. Here are my thoughts:

1. something I want - probably my next sewing project: a skirt from a blue/silver floral fabric I bought recently. Hopefully it will be more successful than my last sewing project!
2. something I need - a pair of shorts, because I need them. Not sure what fabric to use yet.
3. a gift - a secret project! Ideally I'd like to have it done by the end of March.
4. a long term project - Green Plushy Monster. It's not that long term, I guess, maybe 18 months. But he only needs some arms and maybe a fuzzy hairdo and he'll be done.
5. a small project - to finish off: Trollen Braid. Over Christmas I had a mini-obsession with making trollen braids (a new-to-me craft). I started 2 and I'd like to finish at least one.
6. for a festive time - future project: Christmas garland. I bought some supplies to make a Christmas garland a couple of years ago and haven't gotten around to putting them together yet. It can sit on the back burner until close to the end of the year.
7. spliced - Lace Gilet - an experimental work in progress at the moment. I bought two lace dresses and want to try to splice them together into a gilet (sleeveless cardigan thingy).
8. altered - pants enlargement. I bought some pants online and they were a bit small, so I'm planning a way to make them fit.
9. decorated - Tablet Weaving piece. As I talked about earlier in the year, I taught myself tablet weaving. My enthusiasm slowed down a bit on the third piece, but I'd like to finish it off and find something to use it for.

Of course, this may change at any time!

101 Things in 1,001 Days : Huge Overhaul

For the last few years, I've been on the 101 Things in 1,001 Days track. (Click that link or the tab above to see the full list.) My second cycle is due to finish this coming March. 1,001 days seems like a very long time -- two and three quarter years. Or, it used to seem like a very long time, anyway. Now, at the end of 2020 and all the things that happened (and didn't happen!), it seems like just a hop and a skip.

For most of last year, I forgot about my 101 Things goals. There were so many more important things to think about. I didn't feel like doing most of the things on the list, and some of them I wasn't even able to anyway.

Recently things started to look brighter, and I looked at my list again. It hit me that the end date of 13th March 2021 is only a few months away. And I'd only completed about 15 of the 101 items! That's a bit drastic!

Things I did do: played board games!

I've seen people online refer to 2020 as "the year that time forgot" or a "leap year" -- not in the sense that we had an extra day in February, but that it felt like we collectively skipped a year in our lives. So I've decided to do the same with my 101 Things list! I extended the due date one year, to 13th March 2022.

Remember when the seasons used to change?

Then it was time to look at the actual things I'd wanted to achieve. Soon after the first lockdown started, I'd already gone through the list and marked some items with the label 'Compromised'. This meant anything that I couldn't really do at home, like going to a drawing class, or getting a beauty treatment, or going overseas. (Yeah, that last one was a big one!) I had trouble thinking of a good word for the label, and I ended up choosing 'compromised' because it was halfway between things being fine and things being actually cancelled. I'm really glad I did that in the past, as it helped me to overhaul my list and not get too overwhelmed with all the things I have to let go of.

We had an indoor picnic!

There were also some new things I'd started that I wanted to be included in the list, so I replaced some old items with them. Here are some of the things I changed:

❖ #8 - removed "make a gluten-free flour mix" and replaced with "keep a Morning Pages journal for 1 year"
I'm no longer eating bread at all (gluten-free or otherwise) so this goal is pretty pointless. I started writing daily Morning Pages last November and have been going steadily so far, so I thought I may as well make it a proper goal. A whole year seems like an intimidatingly long time, but I thought I may as well challenge myself.

❖ #82 - removed "re-read the Harry Potter series" and replaced with "complete 6 challenges on The StoryGraph"
While I'll always like Harry Potter, I'm really over JKR's recent activities, and I just need a rest from her creations. I was in a bad reading slump throughout most of 2020 anyway, until I discovered The StoryGraph. Their challenges are a lot of fun, so I added this one in.

❖ #56 - removed "go overseas" and replaced with "complete 3 writing challenges"
It was with a heavy heart that we had to cancel our trip overseas. We postponed it for 2 years to October 2022, which is too late to add into the current 101 Things list. It will hopefully be in the second one, though. I've been much more into writing again, so I replaced it with a writing goal. I've talked myself into and out of writing (properly) so many times, and I just want to do it! Or not do it! But either way, just make up my mind, haha.

I had a green-themed tea party in my backyard.

There were some things that I decided to reduce and/or modify, rather than replace, including:
❖ #44 - art/craft classes reduced from 6 to 5; also online classes count too
❖ #33 - finish current craft projects reduced from 12 to 10
❖ #74 - read biographies reduced from 10 to 8
❖ #49 - computer-free days reduced from 20 to 15

Example of unfinished craft project.

And there were a few things I was pleasantly surprised to find that I've completed! These were:

❖ #15 - "decide on something to collect and do it"
I decided a while back to collect tea pots and tea tins. I visited my Mum once I was allowed to again, and she let me have first pick of all the knickknacks she was getting rid of. I chose 4 teapots and lots of other teawares for my collection. Added to the 8 or so teapots I already have, I think that's probably enough ... for now!

❖ #77 - "read A Christmas Carol every Christmas"
I actually managed to do it before Christmas this year, too! I watched Townsend's reading at The Nutmeg Tavern on Youtube, and it was delightful. Technically now though, seeing as there's another Christmas to go before the new ending date, does that mean I still have one to go before I can tick this off? No, I think I'll give it to myself. We all deserve some self-kindness.

I'm still feeling hesitant to make any firm plans, and I think I'll review my list again in a few months. But just having done this much feels like a real achievement. Now I can get back to reading and writing and making art and crafts! And hopefully writing about it here more regularly. See you soon!

I've been doing a lot bit of drawing too.

I Learned Tablet Weaving!

Tablet weaving is a very old craft. It's been known since the Middle Ages, and it's thought to have been around since the Iron Age. That's nearly three thousand years ago! It was a favourite craft of the Vikings, and was quite common throughout Europe, Northern Africa and Western Asia. This great (and short) video shows a demonstration of a traditional pattern being woven at an Iron Age reconstruction farm in Norway.

But what is tablet weaving? It's a form of weaving that uses tablets or cards to weave a narrow band. The finished work is usually used for belts, straps, or decorative edgings for garments. The cards allow for coloured patterns to be created relatively easily, in just about any number of colours. Here's one of the finer examples I've seen; it's a set of bookmarks showing some of the different patterns achievable using the same set-up:

Picture source.
I've known about tablet weaving for years, but when I first saw pictures of the process, it seemed so complicated and intimidating that my brain shut down straight away. I never even gave it a second thought. Then a couple of weeks ago, Youtube recommended a video to me at random, and the comments underneath complimented it as the clearest and easiest-to-understand video on tablet weaving that they'd ever seen, so I thought, there's no harm in watching it. Here's the link. And actually, they were right! The video isn't even in English, and I got it straight away. I was so excited that I thought, I have to try this!

I got out my old embroidery frame and ripped off the sad, stained cross stitch piece that had been on it since I was a teenager, and converted it into a weaving loom. I found some wool in vaguely old-timey colours and went for it!

So, are you ready to see my janky first piece? Here it is!:

Hoo boy, is it janky! But I learned a lot from making this piece. I mean, A LOT. Firstly, don't use acrylic wool! It's too stretchy and fuzzy. You need a yarn that's smooth and shows up the pattern crisply. Also, I must have threaded the cards wrong because it was supposed to be a diamond pattern, not a weird wave and dot pattern. So be extra careful on which colours to put in which holes in the beginning. Also, you need to pull quite tight or it ends up rather cushy. Which is good for something like a blanket or a cushion, but not a bag strap or a belt.

But you know what? I'm really proud of it! It's been probably twenty years since I made something this crap and been so proud of it, not since I was a kid. It was actually quite a good feeling.

This guide was also incredibly useful to get me started. It has some simple patterns, and also diagrams which show how the mechanics of tablet weaving work very clearly. My second one was a bit better:

I started to experiment more with things like different patterns (chequerboard vs stripe), flipping the cards so the stitches slant one way or the other, and added a nice plaited loop to each end. I read somewhere that there has yet to be an example found of a historical tablet-woven piece in which the pattern was consistent throughout the entire length (at least, in the earlier period before it became institutionalised). That is, the maker changed up the pattern as they went along, usually several times. So that made me feel a lot better about experimenting! Here's a close-up:

I also learned that handedness is a thing. Yes, left handers are discriminated against even in weaving! (Sort of.) Basically it means that the cards have to be facing the way (i.e. left or right) that the designer specifies when you're setting the piece up. Which is almost always to the right, of course. In fact, most designers don't even bother to specify it because it's so common. If the cards aren't facing the correct way, the pattern appears underneath, and you're seeing the 'back' of the band as it's facing you. It's not the end of the world, but I have to keep flipping the loom over to check that the pattern is going well. (And to admire my handiwork, if I do say so myself.) I forgot about it for my third band, so again I'm having the same problem.

Here are some photos of it in progress, anyway. Firstly is cutting the threads and threading the cards according to the pattern. This is honestly the most complicated part and takes up a lot of the time in creating a band.

This photo shows the weaving project after I've started to get a good length going. I use the big pin to stop the cards from slipping backwards/forwards or just getting jumbled when I'm not working on the piece. For some reason I'm having a lot more problems with tension than the previous band, even though I set it up on the loom exactly the same.

Note it's slightly wider than the last one, and I added a third colour with a border on each side! Because of the handedness issue I mentioned before, you're seeing the back of the band in the above photo, so here's one with the loom flipped over so you can see the proper pattern:

And here's a close-up because it's just kind of cool. It's not perfect -- the edges are a bit untidy and sometimes there's a kind of double-long stitch where the direction of turning changes and I have no idea why -- but I like it!

I made my tablets out of thin cardboard (from a pasta box), but they don't last for too long unfortunately. They eventually get mashed up from all the handling. The first set was already ruined after only the second band. Yet you don't want to use thicker cardboard because it has to be smooth so the threads don't get caught when you turn them. It's a bit of a catch-22. I want to upgrade to wood once I'm able to order things from overseas again. Here's a good video on how to make your own tablets. I would recommend rounding off the corners -- you can use scissors or a corner punch.

The variety of patterns that can be made is almost endless -- abstract shapes, words, florals, and the typical Viking dragons. Apparently there are double-faced patterns where it's the same on each side so I wouldn't have to worry about handedness, but they're very complicated and I'm not ready for that yet. Perhaps one day!

Now I just have to figure out how to use all of these strips of weaving!

I Really Need to Finish this Knitted Dinosaur!

I've been working on this knitted dinosaur since 13th June 2013 (thanks Ravelry for helping me keep track!). That's, um, rather a long time. It was stuffed in the back of the cupboard for a long time, and has moved house with us once. I started it because I just felt like making a dinosaur and wanted the challenge, but I guess that wasn't motivation enough. After my friend had a baby last year, I decided to finish it and give it to her for her first birthday.

The body was almost finished. I'd gotten stuck at the Wrap and Turn instruction for the head shaping. Now I remember why I gave up on it! It took a while nutting out, and I had to rip back twice, but I finally understood it. I finished the body; it just needs to be stuffed and a face and other details embroidered on.

Since then I've made two legs out of four. Looks like they'll be cute, stumpy legs -- the best kind!

Then I just have to make 10 back plates (two pieces for each), and the four pointy thingies for its tail which I'm assured are called thagomisers. Everyone else calls them thagomizers but, being an Australian (we follow British spelling), I just can't bring myself to spell it that way.

I have until next weekend (9 days) -- wish me luck!

You can get the pattern for the dinosaur and see a photo of a finished one here. There are also some really adorable ones on the Ravelry page. Though, looking at the photo, I can see that the head on mine is much smaller. I'm sure everything will be okay though... maybe...

Addendum: While I was writing this blog post, I got a message from my friend saying she is cancelling the party due to the virus. While I'm very disappointed, I totally understand. There isn't as much urgency to finish it now, and my rather click-baity post title is totally irrelevant. But I'm going to post it anyway. As a great Australian once said, "such is life".

My September

For a short month, it seemed like so much was packed into this September. And yet, it seemed like nothing much happened at all. I was still very sick for most of the month, due to a sort-of-new, sort-of-ongoing health issue (yeah, my health is complicated lately!), and wasn't able to leave the house. Finally in the last week, I was given some medication which has let me live a bit more normally again. However, I'll need to have an operation to fix it permanently, hopefully in a couple of months. That's left me in a strange limbo where I'm well enough to work, but there's probably no point in getting a job until after I've recovered from the operation. Oh well, may as well take advantage of the situation.

Let the art and craft commence! (Or continue, really...)


What I've been reading ...
I completed my personal September reading challenge very successfully, in my opinion! I read several short books and stories, and discovered some new authors that I'd like to follow up on in future. I've decided that for the month of October, I'm not setting myself a formal reading challenge. I'm still planning on reading, but some other things have piqued my interest lately as well, and I want to make sure I have enough time for everything.

What I've been showing ...
I seem to have neglected to mention it here, but I had a piece in an exhibition called Fat Feminism at NOIR Darkroom (actually it's still on until 6th October 2019!). I'm too shy to show my piece, so here's a photo of some of the other amazing art from NOIR's website:

What I've been drawing ...
After procrastinating for months, I finally started to draw a little bit again. I created a Terrible Drawing Challenge, in the hope that it would be less pressure, and I think this reverse psychology worked ... some days, anyway.

Here I copied a picture from the Voynich Manuscript. This mysterious book in an undeciphered script has been endlessly fascinating to me lately. The original is on the left and my drawing is on the right.

A Terrible Drawing of Saiki from The Disastrous Life of Saiki K. I really should have started further down the page! I really enjoyed this anime and liked the bright colours so I wanted to give it a go. I coloured it in with pencils because I don't have any watercolours bright enough for his hair.

A baby monitor. Don't ask me why. I just love the combination of smooth curves, soothing colours, buttons and what's basically a spy camera.

What I've been eating ...
Husband and I went with a foodie friend to a Rotary Hotpot restaurant, a new thing for us. It can be described as a cross between hotpot soup (or shabu-shabu) and sushi train. The soup is cooked at the table on an induction cooker, while the ingredients pass by on a conveyor belt for the diners to choose and add. (For anyone worried about food safety, the meats are kept separately in a freezer. They are cut very thin so that when added to the soup, they cook almost immediately.) There were several different soup bases to choose from and, as you can see from the photo, there's an option to choose two bases with the divided bowl. With all the different ingredients to choose from, the potential for different soup flavour combinations is truly endless. It was a lot of fun as well as delicious, and I would definitely go back!

What I've been observing ...
Spring happened. It's getting quite warm.

What I've been knitting ...
Aaaaaand, right at the very end of the month, I became interested in craft again. I was all crafted out after finishing my blanket. I guess it took me a few months to recover. Plus the nerdy/obsessive part of my brain seems to be quite perverse, as it always seems to point me in the direction of crafts that are inappropriate for the season. After visiting my friend and her baby, I was inspired to finish this dinosaur plushie which was supposed to be a birth gift. I might be in time for her first birthday, though. I have just under 6 months, and it's already half done, so I'm quietly confident.

My June, and Life & Health Update

In June I've been enjoying the colder weather, as I wrote about more in my Hello Winter blog post. In this post I want to talk about some more personal things. Some long-time readers might know that I have Ulcerative Colitis (I even wrote a zine about it a couple of years ago!). In late May I developed some new health problems, quite suddenly. I woke up in the middle of the night with severe pain in my knee. I was almost unable to walk. I managed to make it to a doctor and to my chiropractor with Husband's help, but I was given conflicting information about it. The most likely diagnosis is arthritis, which is a secondary complication of Ulcerative Colitis. It began to improve very slowly, but has relapsed several times. I can only stand for a few minutes, I can't walk very far and between that and a Colitis flare-up, I haven't been able to work. At the moment, I don't know if I'll get better, or if this is how my life will be now.

Having said that, I've been trying to stay positive and do what I can. I can still cook, do dishes, etc, as long as there's a chair nearby to rest my knee. I've been making art, crafting and even writing a couple of stories, which I might share soon.


What I've been painting ...
Here are some paintings in progress, and finished. I like giving the paint-by-numbers an ironic message. I have at least 10 more stashed away to do.

What I've been crocheting ...
It's been a lot of fun making these little plushy monsters. I'm currently onto my fourth. I love choosing the colours, and designing the faces.

What I've been reading ...
As one of my 101 Things in 1,001 Days items, I've been continuing on with The Lord of the Rings, and nearly finished the first book. The Fellowship have just left Lothlórien and said farewell to Galadriel and the other elves. I have been deliberately trying to imagine everything independently, not just fall back on what places and people looked like in the movies. Sometimes it can be quite difficult, even though I haven't seen the movies for about 5 years. Am I the only one who worries about that?

What I've been playing ...
I've started playing The Blockheads again. From what I understand, it's like a 2D version of Minecraft (though I've never played Minecraft). I'm working towards the ultimate pinnacle of the game -- the creation of a jetpack! so my Blockhead can fly through the sky rather than having to put up with riding donkeys. So undignified.

Bonus Kitty Picture ...