Adventures in Historical Tabletweaving

I'm probably going to refer frequently to this book in this blog. It's great. The first half covers the social context of tabletwoven bands, historical uses for them, and the materials and tools used. The second half starts by giving a bunch of patterns of extent bands, and then goes on to list details (but not patterns) on all the extant bands the author, Nancy Spies, could find. Apparently all the cool kids are abbreviating the book's title as EPAC , so I will do the same.

I'm Amalie von Brisache, resident in the Barony of Southron Gaard in Lochac (or Amy, from Christchurch, New Zealand, if you prefer). I'm from 12th century Swabia but can occasinally be spotted in Viking garb. In the past I've mostly decorated my garb with embroidery, but have decided this year to branch out into brocaded tablet weaving, since it's a) quicker and b) easier to end up with something very similar to extant articles. I don't have any experience with "real" weaving and the only tablet weaving I've done before is the simple 8-card chevron/diamond shape that most people cut their teeth on in the SCA. I've decided to blog about the bands I weave in the hopes that this will guilt me into making steady progress- but at the moment I have plenty of ideas and motivation.