Spinning speeds are a topic (or a question) that comes up again and again - and it is, like all questions about craft durations and times needed and work speeds, a difficult one.

To start off by stating the obvious: There's no cut-and-dried formula for saying how long task X will take when we're talking about crafts. That is even true for modern craft works, where there are machines to help with (and often reduce) work time. Usually, when you are experienced, you can estimate how long something will take, but complications can arise at any time. As soon as more unknown elements enter your task equation, things get more squishy as well. And of course a lot depends on details such as the fineness of a textile, or the finishing of some woodwork (raw surfaces, or do they get sanded, maybe sanded more than once, or maybe then oiled or laquered as well?). 

That said, when we're turning towards textiles, spinning is a considerable chunk of the work time needed to make a woven fabric. And of course your spinning time needed will depend on a lot of factors again - type and preparation (especially prep quality) of your fibre, the amount of twist necessary (which depends on what amount of twist you're going to and the thickness of your yarn), and the tool you are working with, and the proficiency of the spinner. Because we're talking serious amounts here when spinning for fabric, a 10% difference in speed will mean quite a substantial difference in time.

Things that should not be forgotten as well are prep time for the fibre (but that's another can of worms, and we'll keep that nicely closed, with the lid weighed down, and stashed in the back of a shelf in the dark for now) and post-processing of the yarn. Reeling off will also take a bit of time, as will setting the twist - a must-do if you're working with high-twist yarns in the historical style. They are not taking too long each, but they will add up, too, especially if you are spinning smaller portions at one go, because your bobbin is small or your spindle has limited capacity.

Finally, when you are calculating the amounts needed for a fabric, you have to allow for the amount that gets eaten by the initial shrinkage, when you take the raw piece off the loom and wash it for the first time. (For me, that is part of the weaving process, because no textile ever is finished before it's been wet and dried again once.) And, of course, my personal frenemy: the loom waste.

Loom waste is the bits of warp thread that you have which cannot be woven. You have a bit of loom waste with almost every weaving process; in the few special weaving variations that you do not get any loom waste at all, your price for this is more hours spent by doing the last centimetres of weaving with a needle, without the help of your normal method of opening a shed. It's entirely possible, but not something that's done quickly and easily (and it would be quite interesting to compare the amount of time needed to do that, and the amount of time spent on spinning for the loom waste, and compare those two). Loom waste, depending on your loom type, will range somewhere between about maybe 70 cm if you're lucky and have an economic set-up, or 150 cm if your loom is rather, um, hungry. That's per warp thread, mind you - so if you have 1000 warp threads (which would be a 10 thr./cm fabric in 1 m raw width, nothing out of the ordinary and actually rather on the narrow side of things), you're spinning a whole klick just for the waste bin. (You can use the cut-offs for stuff, of course, but they will definitely not be part of the fabric.)

There are quite a few statements about how quickly some people spin around the Internets, and some of them seem rather, um, outlandish to me. The Guinness World Record that has been documented is 99,45 m in one hour; unfortunately there's no statement about the tool used for this. There's people claiming that they spin more than 500 metres in one hour... which to me sounds not feasible, to be honest.

There's two to three limiting factors to how much you can spin in a given amount of time: Your rate of twist insertion (that's the rotational speeds you can achieve with your tool); your drafting speed; and - if you are spinning on a hand-spindle or spindle wheel or some other tool that does not automatically wind up your yarn, your wind-up speed.

Well, or at least warp time - I've started spinning for the warp for our textile reconstruction. The first bobbin has been spun, and reeled off, and it was quite a bit of yarn... 

The original textile has very, very tightly twisted yarn in the warp, so I've been trying to spin to the same degree of twist without overtwisting it (so that it corkscrews in places). That is a challenge - but, well, I have a few more kilometers to go, and I'll surely get more relaxed about it soon. 

But for now... the weekend is coming, and I'm very much looking forward to that!

I had the pleasure yesterday to meet up with three lovely colleagues for a little bit of weaving together - working with backstrap loom techniques used by the Maya in Guatemala. 

It was really fascinating for me to see the overlaps and the differences between the other bits of backstrap weaving that I have done. Some things remain the same, some things are done slightly differently, some are very different. I've also managed to do a few of the steps much better than in previous tries - so I was pretty chuffed at the end of the day. 

 I'm especially fond of the super simple way the heddles were made for this variation - they are just loops pulled across the stick, no knots, no nothing, super quick to make. Which was a good thing, because I didn't get the length right the first time around and had to re-heddle, and then there was an error or two so I had to re-do some bits again. And of course there were two errors in the cross (how did they happen, I ask myself, and why did I not catch them?) so I'm planning to do the heddles again next time I sit down with this and return the two stray slackers to the fold. (Also one of the heddles is too long, and despite several tries at adjusting it which is possible in theory, I have been quite unsuccessful.)

So I returned home a very happy lady after that day, and with a few more insights on what is important on a loom type like this, both in regards to the process and the tools. A grand day out indeed!

I'm already looking forward to NESAT - this conference is always a highlight of the three-year-period that NESAT takes place. This time, it will be in Warsaw, Poland. I've been to Poland once already, many years ago, for an excavation, and I have a lot of good memories of these weeks, so it will be really nice to re-visit some of the local delicacies. And, of course, meet with the friends and colleagues from all over Europe.

The conference programme looks quite stuffed with interesting things - you can find it on the website, in case you are interested.

If you're interested in historical weaving, this video by Marta Hoffmann might make you happy. It shows traditional weaving in Norway, recorded back in 1955; the tradition of using these warp-weighted looms there for this kind of fabric goes back into the 1500s at least.

It's not just textile work in the sense of handling fibres here - there's also tool preparation. Such as prepping distaffs for people who order my historical spinning kit with dressed distaff, or cutting notches into spindles.

The latter requires some nice, sharp tools, some courage, and a bit of patience. And, of course, spindle sticks to cut the notches into. 

There's not too many finds of complete spindle sticks from the Middle Ages, and those are usually without notches. However... we do have some finds with notches, and we have plenty of sticks with broken-off ends, which of course happens more easily if there's a weak point in the wood. As in... a notch.

So like in many, many other cases, we have a hard time finding things out for sure.

Personally, I am ambiguous about notches. Having them can be nice, and spinning with them is fun if you just sort of slot your yarn in without the need of doing a half-hitch. They are also very good to have if, for whatever reason, your yarn keeps slipping off otherwise. (When I did the membrane thread spinning, I found that no notch was a no-go for me; this is the one technique where I absolutely want a nice, deep horizontal notch to put my half-hitch in.) But they will limit you in other ways  - a horizontal notch means you can spin s or z, but you still need a half-hitch, and it will hold that securely even when you want to take it off for winding. A spiral or diagonal notch means you can spin without a half-hitch... usually. Unless your yarn is too thick, or you fumble, then your spindle will fall; plus this kind of notch limits you to one spin direction.

But there's plenty of people who will appreciate a notch of this or that kind, and I am thoroughly fine with that. So fine that I will happily provide the notches: 

 In this case, the long spiral ones, worked in the different kinds of wood. They look pretty, don't they?

I'm fitting a bit of spinning in every day now - and there's noticeable progress. Or, more precisely: The first three bobbins have been filled, and been reeled off, and now I have the first three skeins of yarn, destined to be the weft yarn for our fabric reconstruction. 

They might not look like much, but it's almost 1.5 km of yarn, with a rather high twist (as you can see from the skeins crunching up). A bit more to go for the weft, and then I will go on to spin the warp yarn, from a different kind of wool and with even higher twist. The warp in the original is actually really, really hard-spun, and it will be interesting to reproduce this. I just hope it will behave on the loom and not be too hard and awkward to weave with!