There's something new in the shop - I have finally found someone to make some more copies of the weaving knife found in Dublin, DW80. It was found near Christchurch Cathedral, in unknown context, but is probably Early Medieval/Viking age.

 

They arrived looking like this:

 

 

It's beech, walnut, Zwetschge (a kind of plum) and ash wood; and of course I promptly went ahead and applied some linseed oil and sat the blades in the sun so the oil could soak in nicely.

 

 

The wood looks even more gorgeous with the added depths of colour and the shine it has. Linseed oil will harden by an oxidation process, protecting the wood.

 

These versions have the form of DW80 without the embellishments, by the way - but the functionality is the same as in the original. I've used (and had other people try) this form, and it is wonderful. The pointy tip can be used to pick out individual threads, or to single out a troublesome tablet, or to clear the shed. The main thing, though, is the form of the blade: its curve allows the weaver to gently yet firmly press the previous shed into place.

 

Yes, it's usually called "beating in the weft", and that is what a lot of people do when tablet-weaving. When you have a full-size standard horizontal loom, the motion to settle the weft is indeed beating. The type of loom makes this a sensible and efficient way of doing the task at hand.

 

Of course you can use a similar sharp beating motion to settle your weft on a band, but there are distinct disadvantages to this. One of them: You will need a lot of space between your tablets or your heddle to build up speed for your beating implement before it hits the fell. At least I do - otherwise, my beating is not hard enough to really get the previous weft packed in tightly. You also need to hit with the beating implement exactly parallel to
the fell, or you will end up with uneven weaving. The main reason against real beating in my opinion, though, is that you will put a lot of strain on your tensioning spots and/or knots. With both tablet and rigid heddle weaving, I find that finding the correct tension is one of the key points that will make your weaving go from "okay" to "smooth going with excellent results". Tension has an influence on the width of the band, the elongation of the motifs, and the ease of changing sheds. Fiddling with tension, to arrive at that point sometimes means working with very, very delicate adjustments, held by knots that will sit tight where they are... unless there are sudden, strong changes in the tension on these knots. Which is exactly what happens when you beat in the weft.

 

So I much prefer to press in the weft; I can even hold the band with one hand to build up counter-pressure if I want to press very strongly, using the weaving blade with the other hand. The curved shape allows me to use a kind of rocking or rolling motion across the fell, exerting pressure in a small spot at a time, so I can make sure that the fell is completely straight. No sharp, short motions, but a nice, quiet, gentle flowing move that fits in very well with my general style of movement when weaving.

 

In case you are curious enough now to want one of your own: Here is the shop link!

For those of you interested in the lightfastness tests, here are pictures!

I covered the parts to be protected with cardboard and stuck the whole shebang into the window of our wintergarden, facing south. After 7 days, I took it all down and checked the fading.

On the blue wool scale, each reference strip takes about two to three times longer to begin fading as the next lower strip in the scale. As the Material Technologies Limited website states:

Under normal solar testing conditions, reference 1, the least permanent, will begin to fade in 3 hours to 3 days, depending on geographic location, season, cloud cover and humidity; reference 3 will fade in 5 days to 2 weeks; reference 6 in 6 to 16 weeks; and reference 8, the most permanent, in 6 to 15 months.) These scales are used for paint lightfastness testing under international standard ISO 105-B, and are also used by gallery curators to measure the accumulated amount of light received by museum displays of paintings, textiles or photographic prints. 

This fits in fairly well with the speed of fading that I had, with reference strip 3 already noticeably faded after the 7 days that I took it down for the check. And this is how the birch looked:

As you can hopefully see, there's distinct fading on the first blue strip, and there also is fading on the second and third one. It is not so easy to see on the photograph, but in actual natural daylight, there also is a little fading visible on the birch-dyed cloths. That would place the colour fastness regarding light of these strips somewhere between strip 3 or 4 - not too bad, seeing that modern recommendation for clothing dyes is to have 4 or better.

This, by the way, is another example of it being rather difficult to document nicely and clearly - not everything is easy, or even possible, to show on a photo.

After taking these pictures, the strips were covered again and went back into the window. I'll take them down once more soon, and see how things look then.

There's a German saying which goes "Wenn einer eine Reise tut, so kann er was verzählen" (if someone goes on a journey, he has stories to tell). Well, that's definitely true for the trip I had to Oberstdorf...

On about halfway to the fair, I made a stop to re-fuel the car and have a potty break... but when I wanted to drive away from the fuel pump, my trusty (not-so-)little car refused to do it. The engine started almost normally, but died again at once... so I finally got to use the breakdown cover that we got back when we got the car.

Which was when I stuck the little card into my wallet. Which was not yesterday - and accordingly, the number was not working anymore. So a little bit of internet searching and phoning later (thank goodness for having a smartphone), I was able to tell a friendly young man what had happened, where I had planned to go, and a little bit later, I got told that a pickup would be coming to get me and my car to the next associated car workshop, where I'd get a rental car to continue my trip.

And that is exactly what happened. So I got to handle all my stock and fair booth stuff once more, after loading it into the car early in the morning, now cramming it into the rental car (which was quite a bit smaller than mine). After that was finally done, off I went - to arrive in Oberstdorf a few minutes before the hall was due for closing. Margit had in the meantime set up her own part of our booth, and prepared as much as possible for me - figured out where to place the workshop table and benches, where we would place my tables, and gotten my paperwork and parking permit sorted out.

Then we spent about twenty extra-exhausting minutes running to the car and transporting my stuff inside as fast as possible, so we'd have it in there to finish setup in the morning. We just managed to get it done before the hall closed... and I got to enjoy speed-booth-setup in the next morning.

It all got done in time, if only just, and I remained a little confused as to what of my things was where throughout the fair, as I had had to re-pack (and consequently re-order) things when changing cars. Nothing crucial had been left behind, though.

Needless to say, I was extra tired in the evenings... what a good thing that I could fall into bed nice and early. Apart from the car calamity, though, we had a really good time - nice weather, nice customers, and nice colleagues. I actually managed to catch up with two of them - Renate from Wollstube Wollin (who stood opposite us, and who is to blame for my going home with more yarn to knit), and the lovely Solveig from Alice im Wunderladen, who spent her break with Margit and me.

Meanwhile, I am back home, the car has been repaired and is also back home, and all that remains is - as usual - to re-fill things that have become low in stock and to do the fair homework... and then the next fair will be the Nadelwelt in Karlsruhe. I'm looking forward to that, and hopefully to a smooth trip there and back!

The ink, according to the recipe I was using, is finished - and the result is a very dark liquid with a blueish tinge, much darker than I'd expected. That might be due to my making a very small amount (which would increase the surface to volume ratio, and thus oxidisation) or it might be due to the longer time of the ink standing around, or it might be due to the ingredients.

Whatever the reason, I have learned several things.

One: There is quite a lot of sludge left (which the recipe says can be used for a second batch of ink), reducing the yield of actual liquid to write with quite a bit... to about half, actually, in my case.

[caption id="attachment_4377" align="alignnone" width="854"] Sludge left, ink right...


Two: It's a fairly viscous ink. That is a nice thing as it makes using the ink on fabric a bit easier than when it's more liquid - though with a bit of practice, that is also no problem.

[caption id="attachment_4378" align="alignnone" width="640"] The ink test on fabric...


So that would make this ink nicely suitable for use as embroidery pre-drawing... if there were not number

Three: It's too oxidised, and that means there are too many free-floating ink particles in the liquid. Which means that though it will not wash out, it will bleed - and this, in turn, means I will look for (and try) a different recipe, and see if that works better.



The ink I have now is still a nice ink, though not for pre-drawing. It does give a lovely black on paper or parchment, though, and that usually does not get washed... so if someone needs some writing ink, let me know!

I'm doing a little test run on the ink before making a larger batch - and since that involves interesting stuff, you might want to enjoy some pictures of it...

It all starts with the oak galls - in my case, imported ones (which was done in the medieval times as well).



These get crushed, and then they get to soak in water for a few days, with a gentle stir at least once every day.



The next step: Adding iron sulphate - that's the lovely green stuff...



...which instantly turns the brownish liquid black.



And now the whole thing needs to mature again for a few days...

Time for some links again!

If you like books, and old things, you might be delighted by the item that the Bodleian acquired a while ago, and which is now featured in a display - a 15th century book coffer, one of just over 100 known to exist.

Also related to books, though to more modern ones: The CTR acquired the archive belonging to the Danish textile researcher Margrethe Hald in 2006, and now they have also acquired a grant to digitise this archive, making her work accessible to academic researchers and the public. The digitisation work is taking place right now and is scheduled to be finished on April 30. The plan is to have a full bibliography plus copies of articles, books, slides and photos available on the CTR homepage. This is glorious news, and I'm very much looking forward to this! Here is the info about the project on the CTR homepage (there is nothing of the archive available yet, but some more info about Margrethe Hald and the project).

I've gotten involved in a project, sort of, and that led to my finally stocking up on silk colours for the embroidery silks - emptying out the remainder of the undyed silk stock that I had left.

Somehow, this seems to be linked to fellow archaeologists prodding me - I actually started the project "embroidery silks" because a colleague, years ago, was asking me if I knew a source for naturally dyed silk, historically accurate, for embroidery. I looked around a bit and found out that this stuff was hard (read: impossible) to get. Then the usual thing happened - I looked around some more and found appropriate raw material (only slightly twisted mulberry silk), stuck my head together with my dyer, made her sigh and moan, and ended up with an assortment of embroidery silk colours.

Similarly, a few months ago, I got into contact with another colleague, who is working on a reproduction of an embroidery find, looking for appropriate threads to do the stitching... with a range of colours, most of which were not in my stock.



So soon, now, there will be some new colours in the shop for embroidery silk. I'm all excited that the colour range is finally a bit broader - with, among other things, a nice light, bright green, a darker blueish green and three shades of pinkish colours added in!

The new colours are already wound off, so one of the tasks for the next few days is to take photos of the current complete range and list the additional colours in the shop. The biggest challenge in this, by the way, is the photo-taking part, as a) colours and b) silks are notoriously hard to photograph...