I'm back! And, can you believe it, it feels like I'm almost back on track? I'm sort of half-expecting and half-fearing, though, that I will find out any minute now that I am way more behind than I thought I am...

This year has been sort of crazy in regard to our summer holiday, and the summer break, with a lot of things lining up more or less seamlessly. That meant very little breathing space inbetween... so we ended up going off on holidays directly on our first free day, instead of taking one or two days off at home for preparing the trip and doing all the home things that should be done before.

And just like the holidays began - as in "very suddenly" - I'm back and there's things on the agenda for the next days already, starting with a talk (in German) about two experiments that took place during past European Textile Forums. At 19:00 CET tomorrow, I will be chatting with Franz Pieler, director of the MAMUZ in Austria, about the spinning experiment and the Pompeii dyeing experiment.

Here's the link to the MAMUZ site, where you'll be able to follow the livestream (which will also be available later).

Next thing to come up in line is the next German Online Spinning course, Tuesday next week - so on the 28th of September, starting at 18:00. There's still some spaces left, so if you book your spot now, you can join in with the fun.

For English speakers, the next online spinning course is on November 5, 10:30 CET (it's the Down Under Edition, hence the morning start). Again, there's spaces still free, and you can learn more about it here (and book as well).

And now I'll get back to catching up some more...

There's been some more behind-the-scenes website wrangling, though that was not quite successful. (If you've run across broken image links in the blog - I'm working on it, they will be fixed soon. This is a side effect of me getting rid of the many, many extra images that Wordpress generates when media is uploaded... which cluttered up my webspace.)

I hope the other issue, which regards the new site and especially its template (sigh...) will get better with some support... and now I'm really looking forward to the weekend.

Which promises to be quite sunny, and nice, and warm.

There also was some spinning! Here's the results:


One very nice skein of dark, rather shiny yarn, which was a joy to spin up. As opposed to the "fun" spinning I'm currently doing with some mystery fibre (well, I know it's wool, but I forgot exactly which kind) which has a lot of crimp, and somehow does not please me at all to work with. I'll stick with it some more, though, so that we can have some yarn for the Textile Forum to play with.

I'm getting asked time and again about what I do with my handspun. Well... that depends.

Sometimes I spin for a museum reconstruction project, so it's spinning for a certain end result, and the threads then get passed on to the weaver, or I do something with them.

Most of the other spinning I do is for no specific purpose, and a lot of it is yarns I do for demonstration. Thus they can be a little inconsistent... because of explanations like "see, this is how you make thicker yarn, and this is how you make thinner yarn, and this has more twist and this less..."

With that kind of yarn, not much is happening. It mostly sits around on spindles somewhere until I take it off, or until I need some bit of string, or have to demonstrate plying (yarn with little twist also plies up shittily, but ah, one copes).

Sometimes, though, I also haul it out (the better, not so inconsistent yarns) to do some experimentation, or fooling around. Like now, when I've set up a warp to test our Blindis band technique reconstruction once more, and (most importantly) take some decent photos of the process.



So... that's a bit of the brown handspun used...

I'm back with my Bronze Age Fibre problem. Well, it's not just my problem... it's a pretty common one if you look at reproducing fabrics from that time. Let's take a look...

Modern Merino wool, which is seen as rather fine stuff, has - if of the fine kind - fibre thicknesses of around 20 micron. Sometimes you get extrafine, which is at about 17 micron.

Bronze age fibres were, mostly, around 17 micron. There's fluctuations, of course, but that's the main component of the textiles - really, really fine fibres. Then there's some few extra coarse ones thrown in, with 45-150 micron thickness. A diagram of fibre thicknesses counted was published in Skals, I., & Mannering, U. (2014). Investigating Wool Fibres from Danish Prehistoric Textiles. Archaeological Textiles Review, 56, 24-34, and thanks to the generousness of ATR, you can download the whole issue with the article included here. To save you the search, the histogram is on p 26, and it looks like this:



Getting this mix of fibres is difficult these days. I have gotten some superduperfine special wool now, with (according to my supplier) around 15 micron of fibre thickness. You can see it to the very left in this picture; next to it is a sample of my beloved Eider wool, and on the right Valais Blacknose wool.



Even though it's just a macro photograph, I think the difference is quite clear. The difference when you touch it is very clear as well - the superduperfine wool feels like silk, and it's supershiny (which is partly due to some post-shearing treatment), while the Eider and Valais are just normal shiny.

I've also compared it to the Manx Louaghtan, which is an old breed, and to another wool sample that I got for these comparison reasons:



Again the superfine is on the left, followed by my South American test candidate, then the Manx (which appears more saturated brown than in real life) and, for comparison, the Eider wool again. Both candidates are definitely finer than the Eider wool (which should have around 30-33 micron), but considerably coarser than the superduper benchmark.

And here you are. The Bronze Age Fibre Problem, in pictures. The superduperfine wool lacks the coarse fibres strewn in, and has been seriously processed to make it silky, smooth, and shiny. It also is very, very white, and BA fibres are mostly quite heavily pigmented. The two coloured wools have a mix of coarse and fine, but way too many coarse fibres strewn in to match the BA originals. They are, however, nicely pigmented.

So, like with many reconstruction projects, there's the choice between compromises. Use the very fine fibre although it has been heavily processed, dye it, and accept the fact that it lacks the coarse hairs? Try to blend some extra coarse fibres in (it would still need to be dyed)? Or use a wool that is naturally pigmented and not supertreated, but has too coarse fibres, or too many coarse fibres for the amount of fine ones?

Or... would someone please invent a time machine and fetch a handful of Bronze Age sheep? Pretty please?

Today was a little test run for the camera setup for the online courses - and I'm delighted to say that it was successful. It includes my putting on a slightly daft-looking hat with a camera installed on it to give the workshop participants the maker's perspective... definitely something that you can only do with an online course.

And because delightful things might well be accompanied by other delightful things, here's a picture of the cleaned, dried, not-yet-sorted fresh spindle whorls for you:



 

My hair still smells a bit like wood fire... a nice smell, if you ask me. It reminds me of many, many different activities, and lovely times with friends and colleagues, in many different settings.

Yesterday's fire was a true work-fire, though - and since I had a lot of other things to do as well, I didn't get to sit down, relax, and enjoy watching the flames this time around. I didn't even make coffee on top of the spindle whorls, that would have been fun, and it's definitely on my list for the next time!

Firing whorls, the way I do it, is a kind of simulated pit firing. Instead of digging a hole in the garden and filling it with wood and the things to fire, I use a clay fire bowl (which is also the bowl that travels to Living History events with me). The bowl keeps the warmth of the fire nicely as opposed to the metal fire bowls, thus making cooking much more efficient in terms of fuel use. And for firing whorls, it is quite good at simulating the dugout pit.

In pit firing, generally, there's a high percentage of reduction firing (most of the whorls will turn out at least partly black). Temperature control is possible only in a limited way, by choosing how you build up your fire/pit, and what kinds of wood you use, and how long you let the fire burn. In my case, the firing temperature is not very high to quite low, and there is also always some loss of whorls if they get heated too quickly, or too unevenly.

But you want pictures, right? Here you go.

It all starts with filling the bowl with wood, wood shavings and, of course, whorls. It's a bit like whorl lasagna.



I start the fire on top of the whole thing then, trying to heat it up as slowly as possible. When that does not work out as well as intended, I get to hear cracking sounds... which means exploding whorls.



That is not a good sound - but there is some loss, that's just how it is.

Firing then goes on, with me putting more bits of wood on, and trying to have it burn nice and hot all the time:



That takes a few hours. It would definitely be enough time to make coffee on top of the whorls!



Once the firing is done, the bowl has to cool off a bit before I can take out the whorls. Usually I have a hard time waiting long enough, but I don't want to risk more damaged whorls because of taking them out too quickly. Then, once they're completely cold, the ashes and soot have to be wiped off or washed off, and once the whorls are completely dried again, I can weigh and sort them.

Here's the dead ones from yesterday's pit:



About ten whorls that did not make it, approximately. Not too bad - though I've done better in the past!

In German, there's the saying "Alles neu macht der Mai" - May makes everything new. Coincidentally, there's a few new things afoot here...

Thing One: Recycling Spindle Whorls! Medieval spindle whorls came in oh so many shapes, forms, sizes and materials... and one of the types was disc-shaped whorls made from broken pottery. This has been on my list for a while now, but finally I've gotten around to getting the tools and the broken pottery to try making them.



These are cut using modern tools, and the material is modern broken pottery. In the best-case scenario, I'll be able to get some potsherds from replica pots in the future... but for now, I think these will do nicely. They weigh somewhere between 11 and 19 g, depending on which pot they came from, and which part of the pot... and I confess that I'm utterly delighted by those.

They have been tested first thing, of course:



I find them a bit too light for starting off an empty spindle, but then I am fond of using heavy whorls for that. They do run beautifully on a half-filled spindle, though!

I'll be making a few more the next days, and then they will find their way into the shop as well.

Thing Two: I've finally decided to take the plunge and try online teaching. I've done in-person courses only up to now, and I do think it's so, so helpful to be able to touch and feel things and not just see them, but with the pandemic going on and on, I'm starting to think that half the deal is better than nothing. So now I'm planning an online spinning course... I am still trying to figure out a few details, but it will be about 2 hours, showing how to spin with hand-spindle and distaff. My biggest question at the moment is how to make sure that every participant has suitable tools and materials - in my in-person courses, I just bring a bunch of distaffs and a pile of spindle whorls so everyone can pick one to use during the course, and then either buy afterwards or toss them back to me. That is not so easy when teaching over distance, of course. Unfortunately, many modern spindles will have rotational properties that don't work well with the distaff spinning style. So... do I send out kits as part of the course? Or do I just offer them as an option, with the possible danger of someone participating with entirely unsuitable tools?

If you're interested in a spinning course, feel free to drop me an email, or comment here - and once I've figured out the rest of the open questions, you will also be able to find info in the shop in the workshops/courses section.