I stumbled across this video in my FB feed (which I look at, occasionally, don't judge me). It's worth watching, in my opinion.

And just in case you did not have the pleasure to hang out with the metal folks as much as I did, and are not familiar with the power hammer thing - it's a machine that replaces yourself or someone swinging a very heavy hammer to hit whatever is held underneath.

Now... if you don't have a power hammer, you can wield the heavy hammer yourself, or you could have a helper (the striker) who will hit the place on the item that you point to (by hitting it with a smaller hammer, in counter-rhythm to the rhythm of the striker). It makes things easier in some way, and different in some other - as you have to turn and place the item at the right spot for the power hammer to hit it in the right way now, instead of having control over the hammer as well now (like angling it a little bit, or varying the power with which it hits at the last instance). 

You might see it a little like using an electric spinner instead of a treadled spinning wheel - it takes away the (stunningly boring) effort of powering the machine, but you lose a little bit of the flexibility and control. (Yes, you can use a pedal to adjust the speed of your machine, but I found it to be much less sensitive than my foot on the actual treadling pedal.)

For some people, an e-spinner is out of the question for this reason - they want to do all the work, not just some of it. Some might prefer the full control, while they wouldn't mind skipping the treadling work. Some might be happy to accept the changes because they do not want to treadle, or are not able to. There's always a range of individual decisions and evaluations behind that choice... if you have it.

For some people, buying and storing one spinning device is the most they can afford, and the question about which tool to use is rhetorical. In that case, you decide once (hopefully wisely to best suit your needs) and then you use what you have. If it's not perfectly suited, well, if you are familiar with the tool, it will usually work in some way after all, and you will make do. (As one of my teacher once said - "The best tool for the job is the tool that you have.") 

Will I judge anyone for using a power tool? Unless it was used for an experiment where the aim was to learn about original processes, or if it was used for a reconstruction where the primary goal was to do everything as correctly and historically accurately as possible - no. Not at all. A power tool, or a modern variant of a tool, might make your life and work a little easier, and a little faster, but it does not mean you don't need the knowledge, skills, and experience to achieve a good result. Or, as the man in the video says: A power hammer does not mean you take a lump of metal, place it on the power hammer anvil, and an axe comes out all by itself. 

Myself, if I am working on a project that does not require the complete use of historical means for one reason or another, I will happily go use my modern tools to make my life easier, and, yes, to make ordering such a bespoke piece more affordable for my customers. I will also happily replace original contraptions like a two-post construction to hold up a tablet-weaving warp by two modern clamps. It's two solid thingummies to tie my strings to. This does not change anything at all in the process of messing up my tablets trying to finally reproduce the pattern correctly. 

If, however, you cheat for something that was supposed to be done all medievally, and you use a power drill to ply or a power hammer to forge, or an e-spinner to make yarn, well, I will definitely give you the Evil Glare of That Should Not Have Been Done. 

There you go. I hope you always have the tools you need to do the job, and that you will choose wisely when getting new ones.

I received a slightly weird email yesterday with some inquiry about the ETF. The European Textile Forum. You know, this tiny, lovely, utterly historically-focused week of madness that I have the honour of organising.

Well... apparently, it somehow got to be listed on some weird event website, and now it's listed there as 

"The European Textile Forum, set to take place in the charming town of Mayen, Germany from November 3 to November 9, 2025, promises to be an inspiring gathering for professionals and enthusiasts in the textile industry. This week-long event will feature a diverse lineup of workshops, discussions, and networking opportunities, designed to explore the latest trends, technologies, and sustainable practices in textiles. Attendees can expect to engage with industry leaders, gain insights into innovative materials, and participate in hands-on sessions that highlight the artistry and craftsmanship inherent in textile design." 

Erm. You got the week-long right, but somehow missed a beat with the latest trends thing. Unless you got stuck in, you know, let's say the 11th century and are now surprised to learn about those new-fangled late medieval trends.

Also, industry leaders. You'll definitely find some really, really good people there. But... somehow I have the feeling that it's not the industry that website is talking about. 

And then, to make things even weirder, I found out that Mayen seems to have snuck over across the pond for our Forum in 2023, because it's listed as taking place in Birmingham, USA. (Apparently we also were quite schizophrenic, too, if there were more than 500 people there. I only counted a few more than a dozen, and I'm pretty convinced that I did attend exactly that event.)

Now I'm wondering if that listing explains the occasional very weird mails and registrations I had for the Forum in the past years, with people from far away proposing some presentation about some very modern process and how to make it more sustainable. 

Funnily, also, the link promising to explain how the event got to being listed there leads... nowhere. Well, to a 404, but basically the same.

I've put in a request to delete this event listing now. I'm all happy for the Forum to get exposure, and for people to know about it, but then at least add a link to our own website, and a correct description, thankyouverymuch.

After pointing you to French articles last week, here's another wonderful piece of news regarding publications: 

The York Archaeology Trust is very happy to announce that the fascicules AY17/5 Textiles, Cordage and Raw Fibre from 16-22 Coppergate, and AY17/11 Textile Production at 16-22 Coppergate are now available on their Collections website by kind permission of the Estate of Penelope Walton Rogers! 

These are wonderful resources - so if you don't happen to have them already in printed version, go head over there and enjoy. And thank you, York Archaeology Trust! 

The Lengberg caps are done, and will go off into the post start of next week. I'm very happy with how they turned out - and very glad that in the end there was the decision to include the trimmings. The needle lace around the main edge really adds a lot to the look, as do the lace connection bits between the main part and the bands. 

The Most Patient Husband of Them All didn't only help with the pictures (arranging it to be photo-perfect and taking the photos), he also tried it on so I could be sure that it doesn't only fit my rather small head. (Though with my hair bunched up it tends to be larger, too - in different places.) 

 I found it quite pleasant to wear; the sprang is a little elastic and will help with the fit, but it's never going towards shapeless as the firm front band will keep it at a set width in the front. The way the sprang shows the lace pattern with darker hair beneath it is also very beautiful, if you ask me!

Only downside is that making a sprang panel like this will take a good bit of time. In the original it's 197 rows plus seven rows of doubled threads in plain sprang, and it's 120 threads to handle in each and every of these rows. In addition, the original has an extremely dense fabric as the result, so some extra time after doing the crossings each row is spent tightening the latest and, as far as possible, re-tightening the previous rows.

I'm also a little miffed that the bits that I found really annoying to sprang - the double-crossings, where you have two threads from the back and then two from the front, and which are always trying to mess with their relative positions in the next row - turn into that really beautiful large-hole pattern. Meh. I guess there's nothing to do but getting used to them, then.

That's one line from a poem by Herman Hesse, and it basically says "every beginning is magical somehow". Roughly translated.

This, I think, is quite true. There's always something magical (and quite often also a little daunting) when something new is happening. There's this phase when an exhibition gets planned, for instance, when it feels like you will be able to do so many wonderful, stunning things. There's this time when planning a reconstruction where you look at all the possibilities, and all the things that could maybe be done, and there's so much to learn and to discover.

And yes, that is true even if you (or in that case, me) know that a good amount of it won't ever happen. Because, well, things happen, and there you go, here a little compromise, there a little budget oopsie, here a little health and safety, there a little political issues, and you find yourself with less and less.

The beautiful thing, though? If you play your cards right, you will still end up with something glorious. Sometimes something entirely different will come together almost magically. Sometimes an oopsie means you reconsider things, and find an even better approach. And sometimes... well, to be honest, sometimes you kill one of your favourites, and that sucks. But that, too, is a part of this job.

Why am I writing all this? Because I have had a request for a maybe-reconstruction, and I spent a good part of today, well, dreaming up possibilities. (And checking notes of past timelines, and work times. Gotta keep it real, and based on something documented, if doing a first estimate...)

Let's talk about... spinning. If you've heard me talk about spinning, you have probably heard me say that no matter what tools or techniques you use, spinning is always "take fibres, add twist".  Whether you use a stick, or whether you use a modern new-fangled industrial spinning machine.

The way in which these modern new-fangled industrial spinning machines introduce twist, though, is rather... creative. It all starts with the Spinning Jenny and now having several spindles served by one spinner, and not just one (or two). That's also when industrialised spinning starts to rely on slivers, or roving, or whatever the thing called Vorgarn in German is called in the context - thin, already drafted-out fibre bands with sometimes a little twist already inserted.

At some point, the spinner is replaced by clockwork and you have the self-actuator. And then a similar process happens as in pre-industrial spinning: While the self-actuator is still doing, essentially, spindle-spinning with its two phases of drafting and spinning and then winding, the ring-spinning machine copies the flyer wheel action (only multiplied and much faster) and spins and winds in one go.

(By the way, I blame the invention of the flying shuttle and John Kay for this. Faster weavers started this escalation, and now here we are today, with air for everything. I'll come to that later.)

And then someone came up and made machine spinning even faster by open-end spinning, where you basically rotate the fibres and pull out a string of them - similar to when you'd pull a bedsheet out of a spinning washing machine. It would twist up, and so do the fibres.

Because there's an event coming up where I might need to know, at least roughly, the difference between how these spinning machines work, I finally read up on the stuff coming after ring-spinning (which was the most recent I did know). Everything that came afterwards sort of seemed more like magic to me (because, as we all know, any technology that is sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic).

Now I've read that nifty explanation of "imagine pulling out a bedsheet from a rotating washing machine drum", and apart from imagining it to be rather heavy, unwieldy, and potentially also very wet, it did click in my brain and now I get rotor spinning.

There was only one thing left to conquer: The Vortex. Or, more precisely... vortex spinning.

So I looked around, and read a bit of some papers here and there, and wondered how that would work. Because, you see, in all the other methods, one end of the process chain is always rotating. You have your fibre supply at one end, and the wound-up yarn at the other end, and one of them needs to rotate to get the twist in; you can't just add twist in the middle and have both ends fixed, as that would build up reverse twist in both parts. 

I had come far enough to know that there are no moving mechanical parts in the vortex spinning anymore, and that there is airstreams used to introduce circular motion in some way. But you don't have rotation in one of the ends that way, so my poor little brain sort of stopped there, and since it is clearly possible, declared it to be something akin to magic.

Well. Now I've read some more, and it's not magic. It's worse. It's cheating.

Vortex spinning does not take a bundle of fibres and adds twist to them, as all the other methods do in some way. Vortex spinning takes a bundle of fibres (the sliver), splits off some of these fibres and wraps them around the rest. 

I think that's not proper spinning. I do guess that yes, if you're generous, you can say it's core-spun. But... well. 

(If you're interested now and want to see for yourself, you can read this open-source article about vortex spinning, and there's diagrams towards the end that show how the thingummy is build up (where, interestingly, they still have something they call "the spindle") and a diagram that clearly shows the principle of wrap-a-few-to-simulate-a-yarn that is used here.)

Now I am a little sad. I had expected, um, proper spinning. At least it's fast, though!

The Lengberg Cap with Sprang (which, by the way, has been nicely published, and you can find the article here) has the usual features of lots of medieval headwear: White linen and surprisingly narrow hems. In this case, it also features the sprang panel, and also...needle lace.

The needle lace connects the ties to the main part, and also is an embellishment of the front of the cap - so after hemming the individual pieces, and whip-stitching in the sprang panels, the next step will be making some needle lace.

Fortunately, the patterns are rather simple, and the originals don't have the same pattern on both sides of the tie connections, so I can go astray a little bit and it won't be too bad.

Meanwhile, that's the sprang panel seen from above, on a dark styrofoam head.