I am reproducing the Birka B6 tablet-woven band, which is one of many tablet-woven bands discovered at the Birka archaeological site on Björkö Island in Lake Mälar, Sweden.
The pattern I am using is one which was graciously made and shared by Lady Elewys of Finchingefeld on her blog.
To begin with, I had to prepare my threads. Given that we were sharing our three chosen spools of thread between the three of us, we gathered together to cut all of our lengths at once, before warping them through our tablets.
Transporting my cut threads back home on the bus proved to be a slightly bad choice, as I then had to spend a while untangling them. I suppose we all learn from our mistakes, though, as you will see in a bit, I did not.
I then warped them through the tablets – a set I’d been let with a few homemade ones added in – with the aid of a long table, a chair, and my favourite podcast. It took me just around an hour and a half, I think, when adding in the time it took to untangle and sort the threads into their correct bundles of four, in the right order of colours.
Once I’d done that, I unfortunately had to move the threaded cards to another room before I’d started weaving them. It was at this point that it became clear I had not learned from the earlier trial of transporting them back from campus. Somehow, the cards had managed to flip themselves around and switch their S and Z threading, no matter that I’d very carefully wrapped them up to move them. I later figured out that they were simply all upside down as well as the cards managing to flip themselves several times, but by that point, the threads were all so tangled that it was just easier to unthread everything, untangle it, and start again.
So. Warping (pt. two) went a whole lot smoother than part one, and I made sure to carefully tie off both ends and leave them in the same, secure place to prevent tangling. I swear, you so much as breathe on this thread and a knot appears.
It took me a bit to get the hang of the backstrap method, and for a while the tension on my pattern was off. Due to this I took a while to really get the pattern started properly. My pattern is a type that involves turning groups of tablets in different directions, but to get it started, I was simply turning all of them forward to test my tension and make sure I’d threaded everything properly. But now, with my tension mostly figured out and my pattern at hand, I am finally ready to properly start weaving!
May your threads stay ever untangled,
Quynn