Quite a lot is going on behind the scenes here, not least of all the fact that we have started actual work on the new market stall. The first bit of cloth has been cut and now takes up space in our living room, lying around and looking innocent (as far as 30 square metres of cloth can look innocent, that is). Now we only need to sew one long line of about 7.5 metres before it's time to shrink and waterproof this part.
The wood is already in the basement (mostly - one bit is missing), and after the long piece we're at now is sewn together and treated, the wood structure can be inserted and the fixings made. But it will take a few more evenings of needlework until that is the case!

Another thing happening is my collecting of ideas for some more textile tools for the market stall. I'm thinking of more accessories and tools for goldwork and embroidery - so if you have any suggestions or wishes, let me know, and maybe I'll be inspired to include it.

Blogging is a bit later today than usual, because I wanted to finish the market stall page at least far enough to put a first version online. Originally, I had intended to write a German and English version of the market stall, finish both with all the items I have in my real-life stall, and put them online then. But as things happened (and took longer than planned) and time progresses, I have not managed that yet.

But I know that some people are out there waiting for the page to come up, and I feel bad to let you wait for so long and yet longer. So instead of the all finished, everything included and html polished version, today I'm putting up the market stall page in English, with a link from this blog and the first page of my homepage (that still waits for the full English version, too). And I'll try to add the rest of the goods as soon as I can.

I hope you enjoy it!

These tablets measure 6 x 6 cm, a convenient size when weaving and large enough that you can handle them well and even weave with the tablets standing on the corners, for tubular or other special weaving actions. The parchment is prepared by hand, in one of the last traditional parchment manufacturies in Germany. In this case, it is calf parchment. Rounded corners for smooth turning, large holes for ease of setting up the warp.

Parchment tablets have not been found in archaeological excavations yet (at least to my knowledge), but they are a logical material to turn to for complex bands with thin threads and lots of tablets. In some rare cases, "leather" tablets were recovered in excavations, although leather either needs to be much thicker or stiffened in some way to make it useable. A detailed analysis of these tablets would be interesting, in case they were originally parchment which underwent a kind of tanning process during burial in the soil.

In comparison to wood, horn or bone, parchment can be worked much thinner and will still be remarkably stiff and resilient. On the other hand, parchment stays flexible, so while thin wood, bone or horn might break easily, these tablets will survive bending without problem. The surface of well-prepared parchment is naturally quite smooth and will polish some more with use. With these properties, the parchment tablets are wonderful for weaving with historical material, presentations in a museum environment (please be aware that inkle looms and "tablet weave looms" are not medieval at all!), and well-suited for wide, many-tablet bands. If you are used to or happy weaving with cardboard tablets, these are a perfect historical alternative.

The parchment tablets are made completely by hand in my own workshop. The material is traditionally prepared parchment from calf hide. Being parchment, they can be marked, coloured, scribbled on - whatever is needed or desired. With a thickness of about 0,6 mm for most of them, they are slim enough so that handling a larger stack is easily possible - but stiff and wide enough to grasp them easily and that marking the edge of one tablet will clearly show.

Pins and even more so needles are an archaeological problem because they are so small. This means that unless there is a nest of pins or needles or unless there is a huge stroke of luck, these tiny metal rods will never be found. If they ever survived the corrosive surroundings in damp soil, that is - something that iron or steel might not take these surroundings as kindly as copper alloy. And then these rare items are so much overlooked - because duh, of course they had needles, that's an everyday item, isn't it? - that there is no collation of needle articles or archaeological needle knowledge yet.

There are two possible ways to find out what needles were in use. One way is to find surviving specimens, analyse them, and if possible make some replicas and try them out. That, of course, is quite difficult because of the scarcity of finds and well-published needles.

The other way is by deduction. It is against all logic that medieval people bought extremely costly materials like gold thread and fine silk to weave enormously fine fabrics and embroider them all over with beautiful, awe-inspiring motifs using a huge, bulky (needle) bodkin only, dragging this huge metal abnormity through their costly fine fabric! Fine fabrics require fine tools, and not only density, but fabric type makes a difference too in which tools are needed.

Both ways - deduction as well as the rare archaeological finds - will lead to the conclusion that fine needles were manufactured and used, and that medieval needles were at least partly also made of steel.

The needles offered here are made from non-stainless steel; stainless steel is a more modern invention. Non-stainless means that the needles might discolour with use due to skin oils. Any discolouring can be removed by polishing the needle with extremely fine sandpaper. Better, though, is the prevention by storing the needles dry, not using them with wet or dirty fingers, and best is storing them in a scrap of wool with lanolin content to conserve them.

They have relatively large eyes in a flattened head, designed to take the thread through the fabric without rubbing it and are thus perfect for embroidery with delicate silk or gold threads. This means they are not only wonderful for stitching cloth together, but very well suited for embroidery too.

The needles are completely hand-made by one of the few remaining traditional needle-makers - in Japan, because traditional needle-making has about died out in Germany.

I have already posted a snippet about beeswax some time ago, when I had freshly made my blocks of wax. So here is the version for "All the gory details":

Beeswax is still used for sewing today, sold especially in quilting shops as a little helper for waxing threads for easier use. Drawing the thread over the surface of a beeswax block will lightly coat the thread surface with wax, protecting it from abrasion by the needle eye. Simultaneously, any surplus twist from the plying and winding process is removed from the thread, much reducing its tendency to develop kinks and tangles. Especially linen threads profit a lot from waxing.

Use of beeswax in textile work is documented for medieval times through different written accounts like inventory or acquisition lists. Rests of organic matter identified as wax were also found on pinked edges of cloth, sealing the cuts in their crisp, neat appearance. There are no finds of wax pieces in context with sewing - but like most organic matter, beeswax will quickly decay in the ground.
Beeswax was also used to protect the edges of a cutout embroidery on linen before sewing it into place, or to waterproof linen. That, of course, will use more beeswax than just waxing the threads.

The wax offered here is produced from modern bees (of course), of very high quality and very clean - wax of similar quality is often used in cosmetic production. The wax comes in blocks that were made using modern equipment.

Good-quality linen thread makes sewing a much more pleasant experience, but linen often features slubs in the single threads. These slubs are not only a nuisance when working, they also mean a weak spot in the thread.

I have searched for nice, smooth, sturdy linen thread for quite some time, and I am happy to have found one finally with no or next to no slubs and imperfections in the thread. Each little spool holds 20 m of thread. If you sew much more with linen thread, larger quantities are possible - just contact me.The thread is a little thinner than the "Sternzwirn" often used by Germans and is plied from three singles in Z-direction. Three singles plied make a smoother thread than two singles, and almost all linen yarns nowadays are plied from three or even more singles. Unfortunately, finds from linen are very, very rare, so we don't know if two- or three-ply linen (or another configuration still) was most common.

The thread is either fully bleached or not fully bleached. White linen is often mentioned in medieval texts, stressing the whiteness, so fully bleached linen does fit into that picture. However, bleaching the fibre to this very light shade would mean a long time in preparing and bleaching, so if you like your sewing thread a little more low-key, you can take the not-quite-white shade.

While brown paper is not an authentic medieval packaging, I have chosen it because it is easy to handle, quite eco-friendly and cheap. The brown paper will at least not be blatantly modern-looking in a historical sewing kit; and if necessary, rewinding 20 m of thread onto a wooden spool will not take very long.

Linen thread is very strong (unless buried in soil, where the slightly acidic milieu dissolves vegetable fibres), but can be harmed by too much rubbing from the needle eye in one spot. So when using linen thread, make sure the eye of your needle has no sharp ridges, and move the needle further along the thread at regular intervals while sewing. Lightly waxing the linen thread with beeswax will significantly protect the linen yarn and also inhibit tangling of longer threads, so while I recommend waxing most sewing threads, it really is a "must do" with linen.

So the voices that spoke up on my post about the market stall and how much info should be included on each item more or less all spoke for "all the gory details", even if just speaking for themselves. But it might be a nice thing also for the real-life market customers to be able to check back on the ol' interwebz what they bought and what the story behind really is.

This means I'll set up the market stall page with a small picture of each item and a short description and price, and give a link to "the story behind" or some similar phrase, where all the details are listed about the item.

And to get this done in decent time, I will run a series called "All the Gory Details" on this blog from now for the next few days, each day tackling a new item from the market stall - because blog time is already a little chunk of time reserved for writing each day, and not trying to get it all done at once feels very relaxing. The new series will start on Monday, if nothing untoward happens... and I hope that you will enjoy to hear the background stories of the items on my market stall table.