As usual, the month is running out and I am assembling my monthly (German) newsletter with news from the shop (plus some additional info I find interesting) juuust on the edge of it... somehow, every month, there is something happening to delay things.

This time around, it was the Textile Forum first, then I caught a cold (again! I am of the firm opinion that one instance of winter-related sniffle-containing illness is more than enough per year or cold season), and now... now I still need to take the last photos.

Because, you see, I finally have embroidery frames back in stock. Nice, large, wooden ones - slate frames, like they were used before the small round ones came up in the 18th century. And while you do not need a frame for many kinds of embroidery, including counted stitch work, when you do need a frame, this kind will provide you with very nice, very long-lasting tension and a large area to work in.

So after being out of stock for a while (it took longer than expected for the woodworker and me to get together on some changes to make the frame even nicer), I now have the frame not only in beech, but also in birch wood and maple wood. Even more important than this mostly visual thing: The top and bottom slates are formed a bit differently now, which means they can accommodate a wider fabric.

Well. If I want to link to this lovely new thing in the newsletter, obviously, this has to go into the shop first. Which means I have to update the description... and the photos. The frames are too large to photograph with my usual setup, though, and when I whipped out an alternative background fabric and placed it on the couch, then set the frame on it, guess what happened?

Yes.



I got cat-bombed.

Thank you so much, little cat, for making my work easier. Not.



Though maybe I could use this picture with the remark "cat-approved" and "cat not included with purchase"?

I'm still weaving. I'm also trying not to get completely sucked into that black hole eating all my brains and trying to eat all my time as well... because while things work really nicely on paper, and while I know what I want to do, some details still have not clicked yet. So the tree is not yet finished, and I'm not yet all happy.

Never mind that, though. There is something else going on too. Something delightful. Something... stony!

I have received a new delivery of stone spindle whorls, and they are beautiful, and they are going into the shop now. While you are getting a sneak preview of them here:

I've been working on the new things, and they are successfully finished and in the shop - you can now get a sample package of the carded wools as well as a sample package of the washed wool to prep yourself.

To celebrate all this newness, there's even more new things - I can now make coupons for the shop. Such as a coupon to get 10% off all the spinning fibres, for example. And though it's not May anymore (there's a German saying that goes "Alles neu macht der Mai", May makes everything anew), in the spirit of all new things I have done exactly that.

So if you order spinning fibres (including the sample packages, of course) before July 7, you can get 10% off their price if you use the coupon code ichglaubichspinn (which is German, obviously, as it allows this delightful double-entendre. It both means "I think I am spinning" and "I think I am crazy"). The end date for the coupon is just before the start of my summer break, which will run from July 9 to August 12, by the way - consider yourselves forewarned, as there will also be no blogging during this time.

Even more other newness is coming up behind the scenes, where I am working on getting new info leaflets for my shop, with the very kind help of one of my friends. It will take a bit, though, before they are done completely.

I also have some progress on the wood stuff research going on low-key (but still going on) behind the scenes, too. There were gorgeously helpful finds in Schleswig, dated to the 11th century, which should make for good models for yarnwinder reproductions.

Still more, but smaller newness: I have found a way to tweak the blog's typography a little bit, and hopefully the text now is a tad easier to read than before, when the letters were running just a little bit too densely. Let me know what you think of it in the comments, please!

 

I spent yesterday doing research stuff in the library, and today is earmarked for getting things finished - things like getting the fibre sample packs into the shop.

This is how the almost-done stage of that task is looking:



A huge heap of bags, ready to go into even more bags (so I have the sets nicely held together for direct sale) or boxes (if you buy it in the online shop).

In other status news: One of my backup disks in the RAID is failing, so there's IT stuff to be taken care of. I've finished knitting the right front of my Cushing Isle, which means there's currently nothing on the needles until I get to cast on for the first sleeve. (Which will happen, at the latest, on Saturday.) There was rain during the last days, which means I can go on with my wool-washing spree. I'll have two friends visiting, one after the other, during the next week... and a summer break is coming up, and I'm so, so much looking forward to that!

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!

Sometimes, things change unexpectedly, and while that can be a nuisance, it's somehow also an opportunity. Or at least t can be seen as such.

And something like that happened semi-recently, when my woodcrafter, who has been quick and friendly and reliable for years now, suddenly decided not to answer my mails anymore. Which is weird, and annoying, and I'm debating with myself whether to give them one last try now or not, but let's say that I am not amused at all about this situation.

Something similar happened to me twice ago. In one case, the crafter had changed his line of work, which I found out through a common contact later. In the second case, I never found out why - a supplier suddenly broke contact and there was no reaction anymore. Weirdly, I got a number of letters a good while afterwards asking me to update my customer information.

In the previous case, I was rather annoyed as well - but in the end, I found a new supplier, and the result was good - the linen yarn I carry now is even closer to the yarns used historically than what I had before, and it is at a better value as well.

So. Now I'm sitting here, using the opportunity to go through the wooden things that I offer and review whether I want to change anything, add anything, or take something out of the stock while I am at the search for someone new to make things according to archaeological originals.

As always, your input is welcome. Any wooden textile tools you're aching to have available?