By 'suddenly', do you mean that earlier in this game you could craft with tenebrium, but now the same character(s) can not? Have you tried using a recipe to craft, rather than 'experiment'? (ie something you know worked before)
What level of the Tenebrium ability do your characters have?
Is Brandon still around? Did you go through all the speech options with him? Had you already learned the ability from the book?
Brandon ran off, after I exhausted all the conversation options. When I tried to read the book in Attenberrah's house, I was told that I "already know this."
There is no such thing as Tenebrium ability anywhere. My character has 19% Tenebrium resistance. I have not found any recipes for crafting Tenebrium items.
I restarted my game and my crafter now has 5 in crafting at level 15.
During my previous games, I could craft Tenebrium bars to weapons without any problems at this point.
I'm guessing something has been "fixed" that shouldn't be. The only character who ever got any Tenebrium ability in my previous games have been Bairdotr. There simply isn't any ability called that anymore.
EDIT: I run on PC. Also, like I said, I didn't get any experience from completing Brandon's quest, though the quest is marked as solved.