Adventures in Historical Tabletweaving

Hi, just a quick note to say that I and everyone I know is fine after the quake on Tuesday. Our house is in a bad way and it may not be getting water again for some time so I am staying at my parents' right now and my work will be flying me up to Auckland for a couple of weeks when they can get me a seat. Blogging unlikely in the near future. 28 Feb: Enjoy some photos taken by my flatmate of our house: http://insanitylooms.blogspot.com/2011/02/and-there-are-pictures.html

Warp: Red, white and blue wool (fibreholics) Weft: blue wool (the original was a plant fibre) Pattern: Humikkala H31:18 -3/1 broken twill Cards: 33 Width: 2.8 Length: 14cm OK, here is my best effort at Humikkala H31:18. This band is covered in Hansen, and Hansen's pattern is converted into something that actually works by Guido (I think he tried to reconstruct the band based on the photo of the reconstructed band in Hansen, which differs from the actual pattern given). However after hearing from Silja Penna-Haverinen that there were some problems with Hansen's reconstruction, I really wanted to have a go at this band using other sources. Silja put me in contact with Maikki Karisto, who is working on a book which covers this band and many others, and who has examined the band closely. Maikki is understandably a little cagey about sharing all her information, since a) it is still evolving as she researches, b) she would like people to buy her book when it comes out and

Warp: Red and yellow wool (fibreholics) Weft: red wool Pattern: Snartemo II Cards: 16 Width: 1cm Length: 110cm I haven't had much time to post recently; most of my time has been going into organising the meal plan for Canterbury Faire . But the event is now over (and went very well!) so back to blogging... I wanted to have a simple-but-period band warped up for demonstration/teaching, and having just recently done Masku Humikkala, 8658:H17 I thought that Snartemo II would be good, since patterns where the cards turn as a pack are much easier for people to get their head around. I finally got the band warped up on the Thursday, halfway through the event. As usual, a lot of people came over and opined that the band looked lovely, but they couldn't possibly do anything like that themselves. In fact the majority of the people brave enough to give it a go were children! The band took form ridiculously quickly compared to other bands I've been doing recent