I neglected to report out on my progress on the wool band - it's done! I have pictures, and a complete post mortem will be forthcoming. Biggest takeaway was that I've probably been pulling my weft too tight since... well, since always.
I would not have thought that I'd say this, but I kinda sorta want to do it over again (yes, in the wool!) to apply some of the lessons learned. Not... not right now, though.
So with the wool off the cards, I started to set up for silk. After some dithering, I've decided (possibly unwisely) to head directly into brocading with my broad plate. Past experience says that if I bollocks it up, I'll know pretty quickly, so I can use just a short piece of brocading weft and see if it's working. If it's not, I'll do what I do lo, those many years ago when I first tried brocading: give up and weave a plain band. Then maybe go back and ornament it.
My head measures about 23.5" around, if I measured right, so +33% + 12" means about four feet of warp. (Actually... no, it doesn't. 24 is 2/3 of 36, but 33% of 24 is 8. D'oh. Well, better too long than too short!) I put two chairs 4' apart, attached binder clips to the backs of both, and wound my Webbs burgundy 60/2 silk from White Wolf and Phoenix around them. (I had to tie it down with a knot to start, and cleverly tied it around both the edges of the clip's lever arm, so that it would be easy to snip off.)
Figure 1: Warping clip on chair
Figure 2: Tying warp around clip for easy cutting and removal
I didn't do the warp all in one go - I got anxious that having too many fine threads out would tangle. I removed the warps in pairs from the clip that did not have the tie-down, snipping them free of the remaining warp and then snipping any doubled threads. Still holding two bights at the other end, I folded them into lark's head knots and slid them onto a craft stick for safekeeping - a little bundle of four strands for one card.
Figure 3: Two 8-foot strands of silk, doubled, and tied with lark's head knots to a stick.
Then I became anxious that having all of these bundles with free ends would result in terrible tangles. So I thought I should get the cards threaded onto them, pronto. There was much wailing and weeping and gnashing of teeth until I used another clamp to clamp the craft stick to one of the chairs. Suddenly I could comb out a set of warp strands and not have my anchor come along with! Card threading proceeded swiftly after that, with the warps wrapped into little loops and laid neatly alongside their cards.
Figure 4: Cards laid out with warp coiled by each one
Another lesson learned: Do not wear a fuzzy, loose acrylic scarf while working with silk in a low humidity environment. Nothing bad happened, but the static electricity build-up had the silk threads moving themselves around...
I set up a sort of bastard Oseberg loom using side tables, clamps, and bits of wood. A wide-toothed comb held in a clamp served as a warp separator - this was very helpful for the initial set-up, but when it finally fell over and lost all the strands during weaving, I didn't try to set it back up again. I went slowly, taking the warps from one card, clearing them from the group, laying them in one gap of the warp separator, and setting their card to one side. It took a long time, and I only had eleven cards! I was, at this point, beginning to think that silk was sort of evil and persnickety.
Figure 5: Improvised loom. Clamping the work end directly to the table didn't work, so I later added a 1" square length of wood to elevate it.
Figure 6: A "pocket knitting" device held by a small flashlight clip. Feel free to use your own comb and clamp combination, or an actual warp spreader.
Somehow, when removing the warps from my two-peg set-up, I managed to cut a few rather short. The completed warp - carefully tensioned card by card, and sometimes strand by strand - measured only about 36" from craft stick to knot. Crossing my fingers that this will be enough for a 23" band.
Starting the weave
The fillet whose pattern I'm copying had a brocaded section about 10" long. That's about right to reach from veil-edge to veil-edge on me, so I have a section of plain silk band to weave first. 11 cards, alternately S- and Z-threaded, to get the standard plain ground of lines of tiny chevrons.
WOW. For all the hassle and worry that the silk would tangle and knot and become impossible, actually weaving it once it's set up is NICE. Especially compared to the wool! Sheds magically clear! I moved a table lamp so that I had light right on my work, and followed Spies' advice to measure every pass or two of the shuttle. (And you can DO THAT with silk! I tried it with the wool, but everything was so fuzzy I couldn't really decide on where the band started or stopped on the ruler. The silk is nice and straight and fine, and lays boom, right on the ruler divisions.) My band seems to have settled down to 9mm. And I am holding that within 0.5mm, I'd say! To me, this band looks good, better than anything else I've done, I think.
I'm not sure what I'll do when I can no longer comfortable reach the weaving. Move to backstrapping? Try and wrap it around the wood bar that it's currently clamped to? The way the clamps are, I'd have to turn it 360 degrees; if I turned them around, I think I could do a 180. It's a 1" square piece of stock, and I've already done about 2.75", so I should be able to manage that.
Thinking ahead to finishing
I have my "Cologne princess" silver hooks. Rereading Chadwick, I see that one of the Bifrons finds had gold rings at either end of the brocading - about at the temples, where other small rings have been found in graves. Walton-Rogers or Owen-Crocker (I forget which) mention these, and wonder if it has something to do with how the veil was affixed to the fillet.
I am not going to try and stuff the entire edge of the band onto the hook. I thought about that, when I saw the lark's-head knots, but I think it would just wrinkled and scrunch the band. I think I will make the band a little over-long, if I have the warp for it, and sew the hooks to spots a bit up from the band-ends, and then finish the band ends. (Makes me think of the... Queen Emma? illumination, that shows some sort of long dangly bits coming from under her headdress. Ah, here it is.) Gold rings only if I can figure out what they're for. (Maybe... tiny little annular brooches used with fine pins?)
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