Here are a few more pics from the making of the dyeing experiment card...

It took me a while of thinking on how to best present the results. I wanted them to be comparable across both the different metals and the different runs of the experiment. Because of the lack of a reference in the add-on 2013, there were exactly three different samples for each data point, which made things nicely line up in the end.



The cardboard strips were labelled on the back, I wound the threads on and fixed them temporarily with sticky tape, then glued them into place with PVA wood glue. I tried to line them up as perfectly as possible, and in the end, there were only very slight variations from the perfect line.



Another thing I pondered for a while: whether I would write the info necessary by hand, or  print it on. I decided, in the end, to do it by hand - there were bits that I would need to do by hand anyways, as I had not printed the metal name on the strips before winding the threads on, and now it was too late. Because I thought it would be weirder to mix than to do it all by hand... well, there you go.

I chose pencil for the writing - because that is very lightfast, and I didn't have a pen that I was sure would be appropriately lightfast. (Yes, I could have used iron gall ink - in theory, but I am not practised at handlettering with that, and, well... perfectionism, anyone?).



As the final thing, I added a blue card - because I could. Because the exhibition and the light exposure of the samples might just as well serve as a fade test; for that, the strips with yarn are layered so they are half exposed and half protected. The blue card is also half exposed and half protected.

I already did a lightfastness test with samples from the last experiment run, in that case fabric samples, but there was none yet with the yarns from that or the previous runs. This will be remedied now! It is, obviously, not a really perfect and proper test as the yarns have seen a few hours (unknown amounts...) of indoor light before in their existence, but it's better than not doing the test at all, or than not adding the bluecard for the reference... so. There you go.

The whole assembly was then glued to another carrier layer of cardboard, and then everything went into a parcel and on its merry way to the exhibition. I hope it will be interesting for the visitors!

The MAMUZ, the museum in Asparn/Zaya in Austria, is preparing an exhibition about experimental archaeology (more about it here, in German). The exhibition will then move on as a wandering exhibition, showing objects from archaeological experiments and explaining the objects, and the experiments, in video clips.

So I've been busy doing video stuff, including the cutting and editing, and doing all the other bits and things necessary to prepare. What ate a lot of time - much more than I had expected - was making a colour sample card as the object to go in there to represent the Pompeii Dyeing Experiment.  This started in 2012 with a first run, and there was an add-on made in 2013, followed by two more runs of the experiment in 2016 and 2018. The aim was to find out how a metal kettle would influence the results of the dyeing process, both due to the presence of metal in the mordanting bath, in the dyeing bath, and in both.



For the exhibition, I wound the samples onto strips of cardboard, grouped by kind (mordant, dye, both) and by metal. Nine turns of the thinner wool, used in 12/13 and 2018, and six turns of the thicker wool used in 2016. All neatly in the same position on each strip...



...and it's amazing how much of brain such a simple task can eat.

My personal main takeaway from this experiment, by the way, is the importance of repetition - plus a much higher appreciation of just how much variation natural materials can introduce, and how much of a role sheer luck plays in even the best controlled experiment.

In the 2012 run, we ended up with a reddish colour on the yarn dyed in the copper and the clean lead kettle - which made a kettle made from lead with an oxide layer on the surface the neutral kettle, very close to the actual control dyed in a glass jar with no metal plate added at all. In the following runs, we were never able to reproduce that reddish colour - apart from the iron, our samples all turned out pretty yellow, and much the same across all kettles. If not for that chance aberration in the first run, we would have thought that there is no real difference between the kettle materials, at least not when using madder or birch leaf as a dye.

I'm actually tempted to run the experiment again next time that the Forum will happen (2021, I'm looking at your autumn with a critical eye!), with weld as a dyestuff instead of birch leaf, and see if results are giving us a clear difference there.

Anyway - the card has been finished, which involved lots of glueing, and the use of some of my bookbinding equipment, and now it will go on its way to Asparn!

[caption id="attachment_5775" align="alignnone" width="169"] Pressing with weights until the glue has set...

You might not guess it, but I have a thing for threads. Which, obviously, includes linen sewing threads.

Linen is a wonderful fibre, and good linen threads are very strong - at least strong in the sense of "can hold a lot of tension". Linen is never strong against abrasion, which is one of the reasons to give the thread a rub with beeswax before using it for sewing.

The best, strongest, and nicest linen threads are those that are wet-spun from long-line flax. Linen fibres are rather smooth, and longer fibres together with appropriate amounts of twist make for stronger yarn than when it's spun from shorter fibre bits. Linen yarns also tend to have a few slubs here and there - much more so than cotton. These can be annoying when using the thread, and having few and relatively small slubs is also a sign of good quality.

The slight variation within a yarn regarding its thickness is also a reason why three-ply sewing threads are more common these days: They have a rounder cross-section, and the probability of the thickness variation cancelling itself out in a mix of three yarns is higher than with two yarns. That means it's more pleasant and more easy to work with.

Here you can see the difference:

 
[caption id="attachment_5723" align="aligncenter" width="297"] Three-ply linen yarn - that is my extra fine linen sewing thread.


[caption id="attachment_5725" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Two-ply linen yarn, about the same thickness - that is my 60/2 linen sewing thread.


The two-ply also looks more frizzy - that is also an effect of the tighter spinning and the tighter plying the three-ply yarn has.

So what is the better thread for your project? As so often, the answer is: That depends.

If you want to go as historically correct as possible, the two-ply is definitely the way to go, as anything with more plies than two is a HUGE exception for medieval and early modern times.

Why? If you're spinning by hand, it makes quite a difference whether you are making a two-ply yarn or a three-ply yarn: You have to spin the whole length of necessary yarn a third time for the three-ply. Historically, two-ply sewing threads thus were the rule. Only in extremely rare cases can we find a three-ply yarn somewhere before the rise of mechanical spinning and plying - a two-ply will bring all the stability needed for sewing or other techniques where you work with open ends or twist, and is the quickest and easiest ply to make.

Today, though, machine-spinning allows for setting one size of yarn thickness and then easily using a higher number of plies to make a thicker end product. And with three-ply or four-ply yarns having the advantages described above, these kinds are now the rule. Consequently, it is rather hard to find two-ply linen yarns suitable for sewing these days. Which is also the reason why I'm carrying a three-ply thread in my shop, this is stock from the days when I had not found a source for the two-ply yarns yet.

If you're not a total stickler for details, or want to have the bit more smoothness and stability that the three-ply will give you, then you can well go for the more modern thread. And with the fineness this thread has, it will take most people a close look, a magnifying glass and the possibility to un-twist a bit of the thread to be able to tell it's a modern three-ply!

Well, here I am. Still doing video stuff... which means that one of the work desk chairs (or, more precisely, a stool) is sitting in the living-room-turned-video-studio. Which means that my old desk chair is back at my desk, and the Most Patient Husband is using his regular chair... and Madam the Cat thus lacks a chair.

Which has been commented upon loudly and verbosely. Cat-verbosely. At least her cat bed is free of stuff (sometimes she doesn't use it for a good while, and I start piling things up on top of it, and then I take them off again and put them away when she expresses interest in sleeping there) so she's using it now. When she's not hanging out over my arm on my desk, that is, during the time that I take care of computer work. Such as blogging.

So currently, I have a very warm right arm; the rest of me is not so warm because I sort of forgot to put on a sweater after the last filming stint, which I started in a t-shirt when it was a good bit warmer a few days ago, and now I'm stuck with that shirt. (Yes, I could change it, but I sort of prefer to look the same, as much as possible, throughout.) And stuck with the level of warmth it provides... it's not too bad, though.

Next step is editing the bits already taken care of, and seeing where that puts me time-wise, and then doing some more video-ing. At least now I have a routine that promises to make some cutting aspects easier - such as holding the clapper into each camera as it starts recording, which should mean I have a written title and take reference for each clip and can line them up more easily. I also have figured out how to align camera 1 (used for the "long shot" and camera 2 (used for the showing-small-things shot) and mount them on their tripods so that hopefully one run through will show all the bits that I need to show. Bonus feature: It's just a lot of fun to use a clapper!

I'll know more soon... after cutting.

Bridges are a wonderful piece of architecture. They connect two shores, they make crossing a river so much easier than having to ford the river, or to ferry across. (They also make paddling more interesting, but that is, of course, not their main use.)

They are, however, rather complicated to make - at least if the water that is to be crossed isn't just a slim bit, but has some substantial width. That means they have to have support pillars in the riverbed, and that, in turn, means... some ingenuity, and good technique, is needed for building them.

If you've ever wondered how such a bridge was made in the Middle Ages, here's a little animation video that shows the reconstructed process for building the bridge now called Charles Bridge in Prague:


Isn't that amazing?

And that bridge is huge. HUGE. I've been to Prague a few times (though by far not often enough, it's an utterly beautiful city, and I'm utterly fond of the old and very old buildings there, the amazing textiles in the castle collections, the lovely textile colleagues working there, and of course the Czech food, which brings back memories from my childhood in parts, and is just utterly delightful in the other parts.
Erm. I digress. The bridge is huge. If you have the chance to visit Prague, go see this monster of about 10 m in width and more than 500 metres in length. And maybe buy a trinket from one of the stalls set up on the bridge, like on so many bridges in medieval times, as a souvenir. (I might have done that. Who knows?)

The shop is back online, after a short break overnight to implement the change in VAT rate that is in effect here in Germany starting today.

I think the change was one of these ideas that are well-meant and sound really good at first, but are not as brilliant on a second, closer look. For me, it was rather easy to implement, with a smallish shop and a decision on how to handle it that makes things much easier for me. Changing the tax rate was, in my case, quick and easy to do. The prices, though, will remain the same, as the shop fixes the brutto price (including the tax). As I have both things with reduced tax rate in the shop as well as normal rate things, and the printed matter is partly bound to the price (there's a German book price law, which means a new book will cost the same no matter where you buy it, and the price is fixed by the publishing house), I can't just slap a general discount on.

My solution is to offer a discount code - you can enter this in the appropriate field shown on the shopping basket page - and you'll get the price reduction on all the eligible items. (Or you can just pay the full price, if you want me to have a bit more revenue from your purchases, which will also be welcome.)

Other vendors have not had it this easy, though. Especially if you have an automatic cashier desk or similar things, I've heard that things could be very complicated, and nerve-wracking. In quite a few branches of trade, there's a lot of confusion on how to handle this, and whether it's better to pass on the reduction to the customer, or to keep the little extra revenue. It should be clear in gastronomics (which was, I think, the primary reason for the VAT rate reduction), but in other businesses, I wonder if the extra amount of work and hassle will really be worth it. It's extra-complicated in the book trade, due to the fixed-price law!

Just like in so many other circumstances, only time will tell whether this stunt will actually do something for German economy. In the meantime, you can enjoy the discount and with it the accompanying "krumme Preise", as we say in German - non-round, slightly weird numbers for the prices.

And that's it for the current behind-the-scenes report...

Since the question came up - here's some more about the weaving knife from Dublin.

The information I have about is is from a single book:
James T. Lang et al: Viking Age Decorated Wood: A Study of Its Ornament and Style (Medieval Dublin Excavations, 1962-81: Series B, Band 1). 
The knife has the catalogue number DW80 and the additional number (1887:143). It was found near Christ Church Cathedral in unknown context. Length ist 26.7 cm, depth 5.8 cm, thickness 1.3 cm. The original has lost its blade tip (it's broken off), so how exactly the blade ended is conjecture. There is no information about the kind of wood used for the knife.

Here's the knife I have, which was replicated by a friend, complete with the carvings:



And here's the same photo, with the archaeological drawing from Viking Age Decorated Wood, p. 77, as an overlay:


As you can see, it's definitely a very good match (and you can also see the conjectured blade tip).

I haven't been able to find out more about the knife. Apparently, the excavation took place in 1972-1976, and it has not been published completely yet. Finds from the excavation date from the tenth to the early fourteenth century, with most of the evidence from the mid-tenth to the twelfth century. You can find out a little more about the excavation on this website from the Irish Heritage Council.

There is a second smaller knife that was found at Fishamble street, which has a similar overall form, including the cutout on the blade back at the tip. It was on display in the National Museum in Dublin, at least a few years ago; unfortunately, the museum has no online catalogue.

Though it is listed as "weaving knife" in the book, there has been quite a bit of discussion on whether it is one or not, and if yes, for what kind of weaving it was used. The shape especially seems to have caused doubts about its usefulness.

From my own experience working with it, I can only say: I love it. It's very useful for both pressing in the weft (with lots of fine control due to the curved blade), and the tip is handy for clearing the shed, picking out individual threads for checking, it can be used to create a brocading shed, and I also find it very useful when weaving back to undo mistakes. You can read more about my personal experience using it in this post here.