We’re heading to the middle of February, and time has been getting seriously away from me. Gulfwars XXV is just over a month away, and there’s a lot I have to get done before then.
I’m teaching a week long series of tabletweaving classes; we start warping on Monday, and end on Friday with 3/1 broken twill, stopping to play with simple patterns, as well as Egyptian Diagonals and doubleface before we get there.
Which means I have been writing teaching handouts; it was time to take some of the old ones out and refurbish them. And I’ve added a new one which introduces some very simple patterns on the same warp you can use for the fancier patterns: Tabletweaving Starter Class Handout.
And while working on that, I also found an old class handout from a few years ago, that explains how to play Rithmomachy (Rithmomachy Class Handout)- a game that was played from the 11th through the 17th century, primarily in monastery schools, where it served as an excellent way of reinforcing students’ abilities to add, subtract, and factor. I keep wondering if we could reintroduce the game to modern students …