Tablets at Work

Tonight, I was trying to find a page on EXARC.net that was referenced in someone's Instagram about a new book on the use of bows and arrows by the Vikings.  The link given on Instagram was dead, so I started looking through all the book reviews  I could find on EXARC. 

I still haven't found out anything about the bow-and-arrow book, but I did find a review of a book which is indisputably relevant to this blog:  

Wollny, Claudia. Tablets At Work. (Claudia Wollny Edition 2017).

Tablets At Work, which is written in both English and German, is a 704-page, self-published tome that includes over 900 tablet weaving patterns.  The EXARC reviewer noted that these patterns "can be followed without having to understand in depth weaving techniques." From the review, it's clear that Ms. Wollny intends this book to be a one-stop education on how to perform every possible tablet weaving technique, including how to design one's own patterns.  The book is proof of the success of her pattern design methods, as the EXARC reviewer states that all of the patterns are new and can't be found elsewhere.*  And there are lots of photographs of bands made from Ms. Wollny's 900 patterns, too!  Like EXARC, TWIST (Tablet Weavers International Studies and Techniques) also gave this book a glowing review, which you can find and download here.

If you have 49,50 Euros to spend and this book sounds interesting or useful to you, you can buy a copy from Ms. Wollny's website, here.  (She even takes Paypal.)  I have looked a bit for other places to find it, and her website appears to be the only place from which one can presently obtain this book.  Although 49.50 Euros strikes me as an amazingly reasonable price for this much information (to say nothing of the photographs!) I am sad that I can't justify spending that much money right now, given how little tablet weaving I have done or even tried to do in the past decade, and even though Ms. Wollny's book may well supersede Peter Collingwood's classic work on the subject.

If historical tablet weaving is closer to your heart than even the best manual of techniques, Ms. Wollny is also selling another book of hers, also written in English and German, which is her publication and translation of a notebook found in a 15th century Poor Clares convent in Nuremberg that contains hundreds of brocaded tablet weaving pattern. Ms. Wollny's book publishes the nuns' notebook but does not stop there; she also includes, according to her website, "a basic course for brocading, web pages in a modern form (?), a motif overview and a dictionary."**  That book, roslein und wecklein, may be purchased for 29,90 Euros here.  According to the webpage Ms. Wollny only has a few copies of this book left, so act quickly if you are interested!

EDIT: (11/7/2019) Ms. Wollny also sells her books and other things on Etsy, here.

*    Though it's unclear whether this claim is based on the author's statement, or on some other information.
**  The quotation is what Google Translate made of Ms. Wollny's German.  I have so little knowledge of German that I have no basis on which to render an opinion concerning its accuracy.