Things are going more or less as planned here - every morning, I make a list of the things I want to get done during the day. Every evening, I find that I have not been able to get all of them done; partly due to mis-estimating how much I can fit into a day, partly due to not being able to finish them off because of missing information, or waiting for something, and partly because other things got into the way, or I decided to split the work over two days for a reason.

Still, progress is being made. This year at the Forum, we'll have not one, not two, but three tests/experiments (plus some extra dyeing with a fermentation vat that does not count for these) and they all need preparation. So I have wound skeins with 5 g of yarn each, and I'm working on putting the plan and protocol together for the repeat of the Pompeii dyeing experiment plus its add-on (I blogged about that here). It's proving to be not so simple to get all three batches done in a sensible way, so there's a good bit of thinking and checking and double-checking involved in making that plan (which is not yet finished, and probably will not be completely finished today, since I will want to go over it once again with a fresh brain...).

For the second experiment I'm deeply involved in, I have been spinning yarn - one batch with really high twist (a spinning angle of 45-50°), which is already finished, and has its twist set, and is now waiting for its partner. Which is a second batch with less twist (spinning angle of about 30°), about half-finished; and that is another thing I did today, some spinning. With the fabulous Zwirnzwerg! I'm really happy that I have this e-spinner now, it does help immensely especially when going for high-twist yarns. I could never have spun the 50° yarn in that time with any of my spinning wheels.

Why the yarns? We will be testing dye penetration in different fabric densities and with different yarns to find out how reliable the white spots between yarns are to indicate whether something was dyed in the piece or in the yarn/fleece. Which means spinning, and weaving, and then dyeing, the latter two done during the Forum.

There also has been ordering of supplies and materials for the Forum, and there will be more lists of things - things to bring for the diverse activities, lists of when what part of which experiment will take place, lists of meals planned by the catering service, and so on. Good thing I like lists!

Right in the middle of the preparing-for-November madness that is going on here, I have finally, finally managed to take photos of things. New things. For the shop.

Exhibit A:


Stone spindle whorls. These have been on my wishlist for oh, so long, and finally things came together: finds to base the whorls on (from Coppergate, York, dating to the 9th to post-12th century), and somebody willing and able to make them. I'm very happy with these, and I hope I won't be the only one!

There's even more whorl-y goodness. The lovely potter who makes my wheel-thrown whorls has made another batch, and has made more different forms this time: biconical, roundish, and the conical/discoid form I had before. So, Exhibit B:


I'm all in love with all the new whorls, and sorely tempted to diminish the stock by sneaking some of them (or, to be fair, a lot of them) into my own personal toolbox...

One of the things in frantic preparation right now are the experiments for the Textile Forum this year. We'll be having a rather experiment-heavy Forum, and all three planned things involve dyeing - one of the experiments will be a repeat of the Pompeii dyeing experiment exploring the influence of kettle metals, one will be a test about linen mordants with protein, and one will be looking at dye penetration in woven fabrics of different densities.

The lattermost requires appropriate yarns, and I will get to spinning tonight - a few hundred metres of yarn need to be done for weaving several samples. The weaving will take place at the Forum, and since the weaver lives in the Netherlands and I live in Germany, she will only see the yarns right before having to use them.

Most modern weavers use machine-spun, plied yarns, at least for the warp, because they are (usually) stronger than singles. Of course a plied yarn is stronger than just one of its singles, and modern yarns are often soft-spun, which means they are not very strong. So modern weavers tend to be a little nervous about using singles in the warp.

Just to make sure that the yarn is suitable for weaving - as in "strong enough" - I was sent instructions for testing, taken from "Inventive Weaving on a Little Loom: Discover the Full Potential of the Rigid-Heddle Loom, for Beginners and Beyond by Syne Mitchell (Storey Publishing 2015)". The two tests are the snap test and the drift test. For the snap test, you take the yarn between your hands so that about 10 cm are slack and then "snap your hands apart sharply"; for the drift test, you apply even, slow tension.

The instructions in the book say that if the yarn survives the snap test and "stretches and then stops" in the drift test, it's suitable as warp yarn. Can you guess my problem?

"Sharply" is not a very quantifyable thing. So if I take my yarn and pull my hands apart sharply, it will break. The same is true if I take a four-ply Regia sock wool yarn. In the drift test, my yarn will stretch and stretch and stretch and eventually snap... so according to these instructions, it would not be suitable for weaving.

I think the problem here is that you'd need to be a weaver and know the amounts of tension or snappiness in your own weaving process to really make these tests helpful. For non-weavers like me? Or for "remote testing" yarns? It needs to be more quantifyable.

So here's my equivalent to the drift test: Tie an empty plastic water bottle in the middle of a piece of the yarn to be tested, then tie the two ends somewhere so that the bottle hangs in a suitable way to be filled. (Hint: A shower or bathtub, or someplace outside that can take a splash of water would be good places.)

[caption id="attachment_2677" align="alignnone" width="319"] Setup for the drift test. Please do admire the typical "bathroom-in-Germany-in-the-Seventies" tiling in the background. The white spots on the handgrip also tell you that we have really hard water here.


Measure out a certain amount of water, such as one litre, which will be one kilogram. Then, slowly and with as evenly a stream as possible, pour water into your bottle until the yarn snaps. The difference between the amount of water you filled into your pouring container and the amount still left is the weight the yarn could take - in my case, about 880 g.

Now the equivalent to the snap test: Tie a weight to one end of your yarn to be tested, then measure out one metre of yarn plus a bit to hold, starting above the weight. Take the end of the yarn securely in one hand, the weight in the other, hold them side by side high enough, then drop the weight. If the yarn bounces back, it has survived the test. If you are not sure on how much weight is necessary for the thread to pass the weaver's requirements, add more weight until it snaps. (Obviously, the smaller the increments of added weights are, the smaller your squishiness factor will be. My yarn snaps somewhere between about 60 and 100 g of weight.)

I've finished my test run with the e-spinner, and the result is 745 m of two-ply yarn.

The things I learned... they are many.

I am a sucker for slow colour gradients in yarns. Always have been - so I had a lot of fun spinning, and I was delighted with the result:


What I'm not as fond of, though, is when the slow colour gradient doesn't match up properly. Which was, unfortunately, the case from about the middle of the two batches. Where there should have been a lot of bright, clear yellow, there was a lot of overlap between yellow and orange instead, and the other colours followed suit.


I'm especially not fond of the mix of very light and rather dark, like the mix of purple and salmon on the very right end of the bobbin. But there was nothing to do but persevere, and finish the plying.

I'm not the queen of plying, by the way. I can spin alright, but I'm not plying often enough to have a lot of practice, so there are more places than I like that are badly plied.

The bobbin was finished in spite of my unhappiness with the colour match:


and at least at the end, the colours did match up better again. I guess I'll find out how it looks when I figure out what to do with 745 m of fine two-ply yarn. Knitting, probably. (Suggestions for patterns are welcome.)

Next step was measuring out the length - that means skeining. Next thing I learned was a two-fer: The plying differences did not even out even though I had a long stretch of the yarn between bobbin and skeiner; and my skeiner is not up to the strain a large amount of wool places on its arms... so I definitely need a new one now, and have to repair the old one. Good thing my length measurement is done via a separate tool and not through counting turns on the skeiner!

Once the measuring was done, I soaked the skein in water, and now it hangs for drying. There are, as mentioned, ample spots where the plying work is not perfect. There are also quite a few places where I could have done a better job spinning. But since the aim of the whole project was to gain experience with the new tool and to get a speed benchmark, that I can live with... especially as I found out that I can spin rather quickly. So now I can calculate for spinning medieval-style yarns on the e-spinner for reconstruction projects. Plus I have some nice colourful yarn to play with. Hooray!

Things I've been up to:

Working on the European Textile Forum programme. (Should be a step further soon, and I'm really looking forward to getting the updated programme online.)

Doing my homework from the last fair - which includes things like re-organising stuff in the transport boxes, correcting the numbers in my inventory list, and similar (usually not very exciting, but necessary) shenanigans.

Wrestling with The Gnome. Well, wrestling is too hard a word - it's been going rather smoothly. I used the excuse that I need to get to know my new tool to finally start spinning rainbow-coloured wool I bought ages ago:


That is half the wool; the top was symmetrically dyed, so I unraveled it, split it in the middle, and now I'm spinning the two bits individually to hopefully get a wonderful rainbow-coloured two-ply in the end, with long colour runs. I have no idea yet what I will make with it, though. It will be about 150 g of yarn when all is done, so it should be enough for a good-sized shawl - but whether I really need another shawl is another question.

Anyway, it spins up nicely:


and quickly:


I can see a bit more spinning in my future, though - that is about one quarter of the first braid done. Lots more to go!

It is a truth universally acknowledged by every spinner, weaver, knitter or other textile craftsperson that any tools needed for the craft are herd animals.

As of today, I have a new addition to my personal herd of spinning tools. Never mind that over the years I have accumulated more spindle sticks than I can shake a stick at (quite a few of the sticks intended for sale made it into my personal tool stash). Never mind that I already have two wheels (four, if you count the two not-really-functional ones).

The two functional wheels I do own already are good ones... for their purpose. The reconstruction of the medieval Great Wheel is a wonderful wheel that is suitable for serious production of woolen yarns. It may be slightly wonky, due to the fact it needs to be completely taken apart for travel, but that doesn't make it less productive. It will only do for woolen yarn, though, and it takes up a lot of space, and the yarn (as I have not practiced enough) tends to be a bit uneven. The other one is a small one - my first wheel ever, and it is rather... slow. These days, it is mostly used to wind off portions of thread for selling them, so it still earns its keep, even though not through making yarn.

Once in a while, though, I get a request from a museum regarding yarns that will be as close as possible to the historical originals. For many textiles, especially high medieval or earlier ones, that means thin, very high-twist worsted yarns. Spinning these on a spindle is technically no problem, but even if I do spin quite quickly these days, wind-up time always means that spinning takes a long time. The wheels I own are also not suitable for making yarns of this type - it is technically possible, but takes about the same time as spindle spinning does. I tried to re-vamp one wheel (that is one of the not-really-functional ones), but there were serious problems with the friction necessary to drive the very small whorls. So I can offer historical threads, yes, but as it takes very long to spin them, they are very pricey indeed.

When I was at Wackershofen the weekend before last, though, I finally got the opportunity to try out an e-spinner and see if it could be persuaded to deliver the ratio of twist and yarn intake that I need. Long story short - it did, and today this package arrived here:


Inside, nested in copious amounts of bubble-wrap, is the Zwirnzwerg (literally: plying gnome):


It doesn't come on its own, though (herd animals, remember?) - it is accompanied by a Lazy Kate and two extra bobbins (for a total of three) and a foot pedal and some spare bits (the brake cord, for instance).

The Zwirnzwerg (and how could I not fall for something called a plying gnome...) is produced in Germany, and is relatively new to the market. With all the accessories, and the maker's willingness to cater to special wishes, it is sold for a very, very fair price. The manufacturer's page is German only, but there are some pics, and google translate does a decent enough job to turn it into semi-readable English. I did ask him when we met at the Ravelry fair, and yes, he does ship internationally.

And here it is, my very own helpful gnome:


We will now have to get to know each other, and I will have to get a feel for spinning the yarns I want with it. Obviously, I had to give it a go straight away. The result?


About 0.5 mm in diameter, and with a twist angle of 35-45°.

Or, to stay with the Austen references: I am quite delighted!

I've been showing video snippets of different textile techniques at my sales table at fairs recently (not medieval fairs, obviously, but modern ones), and one of these snippets shows spinning on the Great Wheel. From the comments, this is one of the most interesting bits, if not by far the part that people like to see most - and it is very, very short, so it gets missed frequently.

Yesterday evening, we took advantage of the fair enough weather to shoot a longer sequence of me spinning at the wheel. The videos have made it to my computer by now, but haven't been checked and edited yet (that is something for next week). There were bonus photos, though - and here are some of them:

[caption id="attachment_2458" align="alignnone" width="640"] Spinning the yarn...


[caption id="attachment_2457" align="alignnone" width="640"] ... and winding it onto the spindle.


[caption id="attachment_2456" align="alignnone" width="600"] The cat, meanwhile, remained largely unimpressed. (She did check the rolags at one point, though.)