Four decades ago I discovered the technique of tablet weaving in Mary Atwater’s just-published classic, Byways in Handweaving. I bought a pack of cards and, after the first project, I was hooked.
Although I learned inkle and other off-loom techniques, I always came back to tablet weaving. Why? What attracts a person to a particular craft? My mind turns on patterns by nature: As a trained mathematician I marveled at the almost limitless variations in patterns permitted by the freedom to turn any combination of cards for each pick (see below). Or perhaps, as with all weaving techniques, it was just seeing how intricate patterns can be created from the near nothingness of a pile of thread. In my craft’s infancy I tried simple threaded-in patterns, and double-face. Then…
Time for hobbies quickly disappeared, supplanted by growing responsibilities for family and job. The books, tablets, inkle looms and yarn were put away. Fortunately, they were never relegated to the garage-sale pile and they followed us as we moved from Columbia, Missouri, to Duluth and finally the Twin Cities. As retirement loomed and our youngest children drifted away from home, free time reappeared and begged to be filled.
Fortuitously, my daughter met and married a son of a tablet weaver. His enthusiasm reminded me of mine, earlier. So, I found the stashed weaving stuff, became a member of the Weavers Guild of Minnesota—incredibly, just two miles from my house—and joined the “Banditos”, a study group focusing on band-weaving techniques. I bought Collingwood’s The Techniques of Tablet Weaving, and was off and running. My 40-year-old supplies—Atwater-labeled cards, shuttles, inkle looms, and even some 5/2 and 10/2 pearl cotton yarn—were still in near mint condition. I was tablet weaving again, and happy!
A near infinitude of possibilities
So, how many different tablet-woven patterns are possible? To keep the numbers from being astronomically astronomical, lets calculate the possibilities when weaving just six rows of just ten pattern cards.
Further simplifying, assume that each card can be turned in just one of two ways: one quarter turn forward or one quarter turn backward, ignoring the option to idle a card or turn it a half turn or more. And ignore threading direction. Finally, assume that the number of patterns equals the number of different sequences of picks. This ignores the fact that some patterns are mirror images or shifts of others. The assumption doesn’t much dilute the magnitude of our calculations.
Under these assumptions, you can pick one row in 1024 (two to the tenth power) different ways. Picking each of six rows are independent events, so the total number of six-rowed patterns is 1024 raised to the sixth power, approximately1,153,000,000,000,000,000/. That’s a very big number.
How big is it? Well, suspending disbelief for a moment, suppose that you could produce one pattern every second, and that you started weaving at the earth’s inception, about 4.6 billion years ago. As of today you would have woven just 145,000,000,000,000,000 patterns, a small fraction of the total. How small? Well, you’re about 1/8 finished, so you’d be done in another 36,500,000,000 years. You’d better stock up on yarn. And start now. And hope that the sun doesn’t wink out beforehand.