Dec 292011
 

Well, I’m known for doing pretty much everything complicated. So I quickly found a complicated way to do tablet weaving! There is an interesting 3-color technique called Sulawesi (named after the Indonesian island where this type of weaving is common) that looks very impressive. I’m fond of celtic knotwork as a pattern and I found a number of celtic knotwork patterns that have been done using the Sulawesi technique. So, I figured I would try it.

After about 5 days of playing with the yarn and twisting the cards every way possible I could not get it to look the way it was supposed to. Very frustrating. But then I finally figured out what I was doing wrong (the pattern I was using, from Guntram’s web site, had the hole assignments in the cards listed in a counter-clockwise fashion instead of the clockwise fashion that most other people use) and fixed that. It works! Here is a photo of the first pattern.

Closeup of the celtic knotwork in Sulawesi technique

I’m using a 16/2 Linen yarn in 3 colors (dark brown, forest green, yellow) with 32 tablets (pattern is 28 tablets). Now that I know how to do it I’ll be putting another warp on the loom so that I can make a belt containing a number of different celtic knotwork patterns in it.