I have bags! Paper bags!

They are white. They are cheap. They are flimsy. They are not very large... and they come in large quantities only.



Those large quantities are subdivided into packs of 100 each, neatly threaded onto a bit of string...

and they are just the right size for wool samples.



Which is exactly what they are going to hold.

Because, you see, I have all those wonderful rare sheep breed fibres, and I have them in packages of 100 grams, which is a nice amount if you want to spin a little or felt a small item, and it's also a good base amount to order multiples of, if you have a slightly larger project. But maybe you don't want to have a full hundred grams but still are curious about the fibres, or you would like to have just a handful of locks for some small projects, or you are not sure which one to take and would like to try a little bit of them all first, or you would love to have a sample of different ones to see (or show others) how very different the wool from various breeds can be.



And now I have the solution for that - sample packs of the fibres I have in the shop, a handful of each, which is enough to get you a taste (or rather a feel) of how the fibre will work and behave.

The actual sample set will have one more bag, but the Walliser Landschaf fleece (another dark one) is not dry yet, so no stuffing in bags of samples of that one at the moment. If the weather holds, though, next week should see these sample packs in the shop - and I plan to do a second set of sample packs with carded fibres, too.

So yay for these white paper bags!

One of the recurring questions about my spindle sticks, especially from modern spinners, is "Why don't they have a hook?" followed by "why don't they have a notch?" and "how do you fix the yarn without hook or notch?"

Finds of medieval spindle sticks are not too common (wood has that tendency to rot, and can be burned, and a spindle stick is not very spectacular so you'd want to carefully preserve it somewhere like you would a wooden altar, for instance) and they are published here and there, so putting together a good collection takes some rootling around. Even with surviving sticks, they are not always complete (the tips are often broken off), and then they may not be published in detail, with a drawing of the tips.

However... it does seem that the plain, un-notched and un-hooked spindle was very, very common, and I personally usually spin with the plain tips and am very comfortable with them.

There are instances of notched spindles in the medieval finds, though, and since I've been asked time and again about notches, I have finally looked through my sources, sharpened my little knife, practised some more... and am now offering optional notch cuts with my spindle sticks.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="900"] Notches! From left to right: plain un-notched tip, horizontal notch, diagonal notch for z-spun yarn, diagonal notch for s-spun yarn.


They are available both in horizontal, where they will very securely keep a half-hitch for either spinning direction, and in diagonal, where they will either keep a half-hitch, or, if the thread is thin enough and you wind it around the spindle in the right way, hold the thread all by themselves. I've tested the diagonal notches, and they usually need a bit of getting used to, but then they work fine. They accommodate a thin thread, and the notch sort of latches onto the thread to hold it securely enough for spinning. It's not as secure as the hitch, though, so the probability of the spindle slipping out and falling down is a bit higher throughout.

When it works, though... it's really, really fun!

If you've ever done a spinning demonstration, you will probably have heard the Sleeping Beauty question at least once. If I had a Euro for every time that I've heard it... well, I'd be a good bit richer than I am.

Especially for people who only know a (flyer) spinning wheel as handspinning tool, the question about where you could prick your finger is a vexing one. Then, when people see a hand-spindle, they sort of jump on the possibility that this could be The Thing! My usual reaction is to offer them a glass of beer and a band-aid if they manage to draw blood using my spindle. Up until now, nobody has taken me up on it...

A while ago, the question also came up on a German facebook group page that I'm in. I'm not on FB much, mind you - but occasionally I check stuff, and even more occasionally, something makes me feel the urge to write an answer. In that case, I did a short bit on the topic and put it on my website, and now I've finally translated it into English. So if you feel like reading a bit more about it, you can go here and check out The Sleeping Beauty Question. And of course, please feel free to link to this if the question pops up in your bit of the internet, and you think it would be helpful!

You remember that ridiculously large package of wool I sent away recently?

It has returned from its adventures... looking still very large, and slightly (ahem, well, maybe more than slightly) battered.



And it contained wool, beautifully combed into top.

Lots of it. Obviously.



Of course I had to take a little bit of the fibre right away, and a spindle, and give it a little twirl - and just like I expected, it spins absolutely wonderfully.



So now I finally have Rhoen sheep wool and Valais Blacknose wool, already prepped ready to spin, in the shop! I'm ridiculously happy about this - and I hope other people will be just as much in love with these two rare sheep fibres as I am!

I've had a beyond wonderful time up in Scandinavia - but I can't tell you anything specific about the details of the project part at this time, as the team wants to have good, solid results from their tests before anything gets written about it on the internet. So for now, you're stuck with the abstract available on the CTR website... and the short video there. The team, by the way, was a group of utterly wonderful people, and it was pure pleasure to work together with them.

What I can tell you, too, is that learned a few interesting things about my spinning - for instance, that I move very little apart from what is necessary, and that I can actually spin decent yarn with a very small, very light spindle. The moment this small spindle clicked for me was a total delight, and I spent the rest of the day, and a good bit of the next one, marvelling about how workable it was. Mind you - I don't think I will become best friends with tiny spindles now, but we will be able to develop a good working relationship. Plus it made me reconsider park-and-draft as a production technique, something I had only seen as a method to use while learning and before progressing to "proper" spinning.

I've also learned that Swedish cinnamon rolls are the originals, with a different dough than the Danish ones; that the Danes are utterly incredibly good at making marshmallow puffs; that Scandinavia is so much more of paying with card and not cash than Germany; that both Copenhagen and Lund are very bicycle-friendly; that public transport there is, compared to Germany, quite affordable and very good; that there is a really nice bouldering gym in Copenhagen; and that bringing a tiny immersion heater and a few bags of tea along with my trusty thermos mug (that travels with me about anywhere) makes a huge difference to my comfort levels in the evenings, sitting on my own in a hotel room somewhere.

Did I say back to the usual stuff yesterday? Well, this year is starting off with exciting things only; for one thing, getting the Bernuthsfeld stuff to a close. (There's just a few more patches to decide upon and to sew in, and the shirt to make. I've already cut most of it, and the rest will be done once I get confirmation on the measurements so it will actually fit the figurine. Nothing worse than sewing something and then finding out it won't go onto the body it is supposed to dress!)

But wait, there's more!

When I was at NESAT last year, Eva Andersson Strand gave a presentation about one of the current projects at the CTR, called "Capturing our intangible past". You can read a bit of an introduction on the CTR website.

One of the aims is to get a better idea of craft knowledge and how to capture it. If you've ever tried to learn a craft skill from a description in a book, you will know that this can be rather difficult - and the motion capture might be helpful in isolating relevant motions without having too much data. If this works, it might also be a good method to record practical knowledge. There's still more, though - plans are to combine the motion capture with an EEG to get an idea of brain activity while doing the craft.

The research group is currently focusing on spinning as a craft, and you can imagine my delight on being asked if I'd like to participate in their study. So I'll be travelling to Lund later this month, to get lots of recording bitsies stuck onto me and to do some spinning. I'm beyond excited, and still can't believe something this cool is coming my way!

 

What about these small spindle wheels with crank drive, though? They did get a mention already. Usually, the really small ones are winding wheels to wind bobbins or pirns for weaving, and are not really suitable for spinning. That does not mean they cannot be used for spinning at all - they can, and I know of a few people who have used them for just that, and there are even a few old illustrations showing them used as spinning wheels - though these might not be the really small ones, but medium-sized wheels.

[caption id="attachment_3350" align="alignnone" width="1775"] Detail from: Tobit en Anna met het geitje, Symon Novelanus, 1560 - 1590; etching, h 213mm × w 180mm. Rijksmuseum NL, see the original file here.


In my opinion, centre-crank-driven wheels are not really suited for production spinning due to the stop-and-start procedure already mentioned in depth. On old illustrations, these smaller spindle-equipped wheels are often found in the context of weaving workshops - there might also be some spinning shown in these pictures, but the presence of looms makes it pretty clear to me that we have winding wheels in action here.

Small wheels, centre-crank-driven and equipped with a flyer, however, are a different beast altogether, and they were definitely used for spinning, as lots and lots of pictures show.

[caption id="attachment_3351" align="alignnone" width="862"] Detail of Arbeidzaamheid, Crispijn van de Passe (I), 1589 - 1611, engraving, h 211mm × w 144mm. Rijksmuseum NL, see the original file here.


The game-changer here is the flyer, though, as it eliminates the need to stop and start the drive wheel by conveniently twisting and winding the spun yarn at the same time. So once you've brought your wheel up to convenient speed, you can happily crank on to keep that speed and spin with your free hand.

[caption id="attachment_3349" align="alignnone" width="925"] Old Woman Spinning, Nicolaes Maes, 1650 - 1660; oil on canvas, h 63cm × w 55cm × d 9cm.
Rijksmuseum NL, see the original file here.


So - centre-crank driven wheel with spindle - winding wheel, centre-crank driven wheel with flyer - spinning wheel; though this is not a Great Wheel, then, obviously.

Also obviously, turning the crank requires one hand, leaving only one hand free for drafting. This means these wheels are always shown with an attached or accompanying distaff to hold the fibre and provide some resistance for drafting. Since the speed that you can build up turning the crank on the small wheel and the ratio between the wheel and the flyer pulley is not going to be very high, these wheels will not give you a yarn with particularly high twist, and the bobbins do not look large enough to accommodate sensible quantities of really thick yarn, which would be nicely stable with relatively little twist. So my personal opinion is that these spinning tools were predominantly used for flax/hemp/nettle, long fibres that do not need a large amount of twist and that can be drafted quite easily with one hand only.