I am fully occupied with sorting through some stuff here, trying to stow tools and materials in a better way than before, getting my textile technique demonstration projects maintenanced and ready to show things again, plus planning for and working on some stealth projects.

And I have one non-stealth project to blog about, too: My "Fehlerschautafeln" have arrived! These are rectangular black cardstock boards with slits punched into each of the long sides. Using these slits, thread can be wound onto the card and then sits in exactly parallel lines. And then it's very easy to get an impression of how evenly spun the thread is, if it is smooth or rather fluffy on its surface, if there are any thick blobs of fibre or badly twisted bits, and so on. Now I just have to decide how to handle all the thread samples with their vastly different lengths - should I start winding about five metres in, where possible? And if yes, from the beginning or from the end? Or should I try to get the middle section of each thread? Going "x metres in" would be much easier to accomplish, but I am willing to do the "more work" approach if there is a good reason for it; however, the method has to be the same for all the samples (except the utterly short ones where I'll use an alternative method of determining where to start).
I can wind about 3,5 metres on each of the boards; most of the spinners made between 30 and 40 metres of thread during the one hour spinnng time. 3,5 metres would thus correspond to about 6 minutes of spinning time.

Now, if you spin for two hours, and there's a sample from hour one and from hour two - when in each hour would you suspect are the most representative six minutes to pick?

The programme and workshop programme for the Textile Forum 2010 are finally finished, and we are happy to present a very varied and interesting week. Topics for workshops range from Stone-Age Twining Techniques to Norwegian Twined Knitting and from Estonian One-Piece Shoes to Filet Netting - many fascinating possibilities to learn a technique or two that you are not yet familiar with. For the evenings, we have planned a panel discussion about the question "what makes a textile?", plus several very interesting lectures. Inbetween, there is of course plenty of time to talk about textiles and textile techniques with the other participants.

The Forum will take place from 6.-12 September 2010 at the Archeoparc Museum in South Tyrol, Italy. Conference fee for the whole week, including full board and lodgings in a two- to six-bed-bedroom (with shower and toilet ensuite), is 350 Euro; workshops cost 40 Euros (plus in some cases a few Euros for materials).
We still have a few places left, so if you would like to have a thoroughly textile week with us, go to www.textileforum.org to register - or if you know somebody who might be interested, please pass this on!

We spent a most wonderful and deliciously lazy long weekend, and I am a little sorry that it is over already - since the weather is still fine and warm and sunny, just like during the last three days. And it is amazing how much like a holiday it can feel if you are hanging around having breakfast and coffee with friends, sitting out in comfy garden chairs and seeing green all around you.

And for the first time in what seems like ages, I have found the leisure to take up the knitting needles again, starting to work on the "Skew socks" with a delightfully teal-coloured variegated wool.  Unfortunately that sock is not designed to work on feet with a very high instep like I have - so after working the heel on the sock, I found I had to rip back to the beginning of the instep, and I will now try stretching the gussets with extra plain rows and starting them much earlier.

But data doesn't mine itself - and that means back to the computer, and nose back to the grindstone. And today, in addition to data mining, an update to the Textile Forum website is due - so hop over there later today or tomorrow to find the preliminary programme!

I'm still crunching on all those numbers and will be for a while, I guess. Next item coming up will be to handle all the samples again: Spooling them back into cops from their skein-state for better handling and easier storage and measuring thread diameter as well as making an "inspection card" for each of the samples. These are cards in a contrasting colour to the thread, where the thread is wound on in parallel lines - that gives a quite good first impression on how even the thread is.

And for now, I think I need a better graph program than ol' MS Excel. Any suggestions?

I'm back from spending a very instructive and very nice (though also quite exhausting) time in a textile laboratory, measuring the lengths of all the thread samples. For this, I had the use of a thing called "Weife" - a special, very accurate reel with thread guides and a counter, turned with the help of a hand crank. Two full lab days were needed to measure all the thread samples, and I can probably still do the sequence of motions in my sleep: Open small bag, take out thread sample and label, smooth out label, replace empty drinking straw on the "spool-holder" with the sample on its straw, turn crank until counter stands at next full 10 metres, note down the number it stands at (I filled one whole page on a notepad with number after number), search for the spinner questionnaire of that session, double-check that it is the right questionnaire.
Fix end of thread to the reel, start turning the reel (all the while taking care that no snag on the sample spool changes the tension too much or leads to thread breakage). Once the red starter thread turns up, stop cranking on. Temporarily fix the red thread end somewhere to maintain tension and keep everything in place. Read the amount of full metres, then measure the rest down to the last centimetre. Write down amount in metres on both label and spinner questionnaire. Secure the skein with the red starter thread, take down from reel, fold together securely and put back into small plastic ziplock bag together with its label. Place spinner questionnaire on the "done" stack, place finished sample into large ziplock bag. Repeat until all samples of spinner are done, then put stack of questionnaires into large bag too, close bag, put into box, take out next spinner's bag. Start early in the morning and repeat until lab closes.

While this might sound very, very tedious, I actually did still enjoy myself. It would probably have been the most mind-numbing thing ever if that had not been "my" spinning experiment - but as it is, I had a lot of things to discover and marvel about. One of my pastimes was finding out again who had which spinner ID letter - some I did remember at once, and some I needed to read one or two questionnaires. And then, of course, the data! The metres spun! The different thicknesses (though I did not see much of these turning the reel, that blurs up everything). And, most interesting to me, the fact that a spinner complaining about bad, slow spinning in the questionnaire does not at all mean that the thread had to be bad or short - quite on the contrary: Complaints usually meant nothing in regard to thread length. My guess is that a "badly running" spindle will automatically require more concentration and thus a higher output compared to an undemanding one.

Some tidbits of the data: least amount spun was 2,90 metres, maximum length spun was 72,69 metres. Overall, the least amounts were spun on the 15/5 (the spindle from Hell with almost no moment of inertia) and on 52/41 (the thick cylinder whorl with a very high weight compared to its moment of inertia). However, this does not mean that these spindles were not also used productively by some spinners - 60,00 metres and 66,98 metres were also done on those two (by th same spinner, by the way).

Spinner output is influenced by the spindles used, but not in a similar pattern over all spinners, and with the more experienced spinners, there is not as much variation as you might expect given the very, very weird "spindles" used in the experiment. And thread thickness ranges are another very interesting thing: Some spinners seem to have a "thin range" and a "thick range" with a distinct gap between those two.

These are just the very first results, and I hope to get some (or even much) more out of that. There are lots of possibilities now to look at all the variables - which means doing all sorts of different sortings and of course different graphs to see if something can be seen.

It's all very, very very very interesting. I'll be off to play with yummy data some more now...

If anyone of you is looking for a way to widen the skillset and learn a heap of new things as autodidact, I can only recommend running a conference with an archaeological experiment. It is amazing how many things you can hone on that - including not only computery stuff like database wielding, but also things like photographing.

I spent the day yesterday behind the camera and a photo-tent (for good lighting). In the photo-tent? A sheet of paper with orange millimetre-grid and changing motifs (but all of them similar, and very wooly). And I progressed from photos like this,


when I started fiddling with the settings,



to this as the final result:



All photos are taken with a very long exposure time and a very small aperture to get a high depth of focus. I'm very happy that my camera has a setting exactly for things like that, which means that once I set up the label and wool cop, I only have to press the button once and then wait until the camera on its tripod has taken three pictures with slightly different exposure time...

Today I will take the rest of the photos, which is easy work but more than a bit boring, since the long exposure time means that it takes about two to three minutes for each item to finish. And in that time, I can more or less just stand around and be bored...

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man day spent very productively must inevitably be followed by one much less productive.

Following this truth, I did (of course) not get done everything I had hoped for yesterday. Still, gold thread has been wound off into portions, "get-hooked-on-goldwork"-kits have been assembled, things have been aired out and packed up and put together and planned.

So. Today I have to take care of some mails and then I can start getting all that stuff into the car... and I'll be off tomorrow! Since this means no blogging until Tuesday or Wednesday the week after next - when I'm back and hopefully recovered - I will at least leave you with few links.

First of all, there's an exciting new research project on textile and clothing terms in unpublished medieval sources at the University of Westminster.

Secondly, the workshop list for the Textile Forum is now completed and online - so if you are interested in learning about stone-age bast twining techniques, couched embroidery, traditional one-piece footwear, twined knitting and much more, get yourself registered for the Forum!