The last of the fabrics for the project has arrived - a 2/2 twill woven from the same yarns as the previous plainweave fabric. It's now hanging out to dry after being fulled just like the others... and it's beautiful. Really, really beautiful.

Here's the cloth in its raw state:


And this is what it looked like after washing:


The last picture of the after-fulling state will have to wait for tomorrow when it's dry again - but I can already tell you that the fabric shows no tracking, hasn't shrunk a lot, and is really nice.

Here's a closeup of the threads after washing:


And tomorrow, it will go off to new adventures - cloth metamorphosis part two!

The third batch of cloth for the project is done, and it turned out just beautifully. Here's the cloth in its raw state:


After a little soak and a bit of a wash, it looked like this:


And then I took a little walk on it, and after about one hour, I had this end result:


I find it totally fascinating how the fabric changed - especially its hand, which went from stiff and coarse in the raw fabric to firm, but still somehow soft and fluffy in the fulled version. And I can't imagine a more beautiful tracking effect than the one apparent in the fulled fabric - it looks splendidly like diagonal lines even though it's plain weave throughout.

I've already hinted at it - while the packing cloth has turned out very nicely, and the sailcloth is about as perfectly as I had imagined it, there's a third type of fabric to be done... and that one is acting up. Considerably.

Doing archaeotechnical work (as in "recreating stuff known from archaeological sources") is interesting, and exciting, and lovely, and usually it is great fun. It is even more so if you are doing it as part of your work, and are actually getting paid for it.

However, archaeotechnical work also includes a guarantee that you will occasionally get kicked into your face by your technique and materials. You've not estimated correctly how long something will take, or how difficult it will be. Something behaves unexpectedly and throws all your plans into the garbage bin, leaving you to draw up new ones and do the work again. Leaving you also to lament your monetary gains that are joining the plans at the happy bin-party as your work hours, now unpaid, rack up and up and up. Germans have the term "Lehrgeld" for things like that - the tuition fee you pay, in this case to life.

And yes, all of the times in the past that something like this has happened, I did get to learn a lot from the experience. However, it is still painful. It's not only the feeling that you have made a mistake, or two; it's the tendency for a bad feeling to creep into your soul, making you think that maybe you are not competent at all. Maybe it will never work. Maybe you should never have agreed to do it.

It's especially painful if it is taking a colleague along for the ride, and the self-doubts are not getting fewer with someone else hanging in the same bad spot with you. There's no way out, though, but to try it again and again, keeping at it until you succeed. Hopefully before the deadline has rushed by... and at the moment, I think I can already hear it. (It does not help that February has fewer days than any other month in the year...)

If you're looking for me? I'll be spinning some more. Again.

Here's another little gem regarding the measurement of twist angles: the Human Factor. As in "different people get different results".

I had been suspecting it for a while, and the last Textile Forum gave me the opportunity (and the willing participants, a big thank you to you all!) to do a little test.

If you'd like to play yourself, here is the photo of one hand-spun thread. What twist angle would you read out for this one?

Once you're finished, scroll down... and see what others measured.


Done?

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Here you go:


As you can see, measurements of the eight participants of this mini-study range from between 20° and a bit to 48° and some, depending on where the measurements were taken... and who took them. Several people took measurement in a similar spot (there are two small black dots about in the middle of the thread), but even then, results range from 31° to 48°.

So. Twist angle. Hello there. It would have been nice to have a reliable, measureable something to describe threads with... right? Describing fabrics or threads with words is hard in any case, but this just seems to make it even harder.

Sigh.

I've taken a few closeup photos of the sailcloth after washing, and, well, have a look for yourself:


Now... it looks to me as if the twist angle of the white yarn is about the same or seems to be even slightly lower than it was when spinning (I have the reference cards to compare with), but the brown weft yarn now clearly looks higher-twist than what I spun (which was about 30° approximately). This is definitely... interesting.

Next step for the cloth will be getting fulled, and I'll take another closeup photo then and give it another reading. But my first conclusion from all this looking at twists and getting stuff woven and comparing is: Twist angles lie. Do not trust that they are spun like what they appear to be in a finished cloth - and in further conclusion: If you need to do a hair-splittingly exact replica of a piece of fabric, you will have to do test-spinning and test-weaving and look at the angles in the finished fabric to figure out what you will have to spin.

Good thing I'm already mildly crazy, or that would drive me towards craziness indeed. Can't that textile stuff be straightforward once, just for a change? Please?

Today, a lovely green box came in the post - and inside was the sailcloth textile, fresh off the loom.

Here is a sneak peek at the cloth, in its raw state:


As it's a 2/1 twill, the two sides look differently thanks to the different colours of warp and weft.

The cloth is currently drying after a first wash, and then it will get its picture taken again, and after that... I will put my foot down. And again. And again... until it is slightly fulled.

Though I'll finish the rest of the spinning first, I think!

I've done a few more shenanigans with the spinning angle changes conundrum - and here are pictures for you to look at.

Here's a pic of yarn before steaming:


and of a second bit of yarn after steaming:


and the same yarn used as weft for weaving a sample:

[caption id="attachment_2887" align="alignnone" width="640"] Weft is running vertically here, and the thing is quite weft-faced plain weave (I only had a puny frame with huuuuge warp spacing for the quick test...). I'd have preferred a more balanced plain weave, but well. Maybe next time.


In the weaving, the warp yarn was spun to about the same spinning angle, and the same thickness, only in the other direction. (Again - hitting an exact angle and keeping to exactly that angle is really hard, and there will always be digressions.)

So. Can you see differences?