On the 3rd of March, the archive of Cologne collapsed. About 18 kilometres of books, manuscripts, letters and documents now lie in a huge crater in Cologne city - most of it probably mashed to a pulp. Many old documents are lost, and with the damaged paper that can be recovered, a whole generation of paper conservators will find work enough for the next twenty or thirty years.

This leaves me speechless. Go google for news about it and mourn. In the Middle has already posted about it, too.

I'm on the conference about colours in the middle ages, "Farbiges Mittelalter" in Bamberg. The conference will last until Thursday, but since I'm a bit stressed right now, regular blogging will resume next Monday.

Let's say you could not resist the temptation and started netting yesterday. Now you'll need to know how to do the embroidery, right?

The stitch used for the bird motifs is called linen stitch, because it emulates the binding most commonly found in linen cloth: tabby. It is simple darning, first filling in threads in one direction. Then, in a 90° angle to that, you weave the thread in with your needle, alternately going over and under the threads already in (including the threads of the meshwork).

In case you have never tried darning in this way before, you can have a look at Thérèse de Dillmont's instructions, straight out of her wonderful book "Encyclopedia of Needlework". And if you don't know her book yet, consider getting a copy - either an old one, or one of the reprints. Or go for the online version at encyclopediaofneedlework.com. In any case, don't miss out on this book: If I could choose only a single book for textile crafts to keep, it would be this one.

Bonus pic: The netting needle tip, without thread on.

Clickable for larger view

Hairnets. Yes.
Should you feel that the actual netting of rather large mesh is just not enough, even when combined with a bit of embroidery on cloth to sew on later - you can always do some embroidery straight on the mesh. Lacis, or filet lace, or however you want to call it, has a rather long history. The even ground made by the meshes of the net is a good groundwork for embroidery and allows for a nice contrast between open mesh and filled-in mesh.

A nice example for this is this fragmented net from the 13th or 14th century, with origin in West-Europe. There are two larger fragments and some smaller fragments preserved, with the largest piece measuring 13.5 by 43.5 cm. It is made from red silk for the knotted ground and embroidered with yellow and white silk.
picture clickable for larger version

On the bottom right side the large fragment has larger loops of thread, measuring 1.1 cm. The regular mesh size is 4 mm. If I read correctly, the red silk is dyed with madder, yellow was done with weld (Reseda luteola). The embroidered motif consists of alternating white birds and flower motifs, maybe fleurs-de-lis. Embroidery was done in rows, and three rows are still preserved. The flowers are embroidered by stitches around the mesh threads, while the bird motifs fill in the open mesh squares, using linen stitch.

With rather sparse embroidery, on a mesh that is a whopping 4 mm size, this would be a nice starter for your medieval hairnet collection, don't you think?

By the way, medieval silk nets really have small mesh sizes in comparison to later ones. A pattern book for lacis by Therèse de Dillmont is available on the net (German version of "Filet Guipure": Part 1 and Part 2), and she offers thread weight advice for mesh sizes between 7 and 11 mm.

Source for text and pictures:
DECONINCK, E., GEORGE, PH., DE JONGHE, D., Y., VAN STRYDONCK M. J., WOUTERS, J., VYNCKIER, J. und DE BOECK, J.: Stof uit de Kist: De Middeleeuwse Textielschat uit de Abdij van Sint-Truiden. Leuven 1991. Catalog Nr. 107, page 354.

At least after you read your way through the recipes listed on Medieval Cookery. And there's even a blog to go with the site.

If you are at all interested in medieval cooking, go check it out (but have something to snack on ready). There's even a forum, so you can connect to other cooking enthusiasts, should you be one. (Yes, kuechenmeyster. I know where you will spend the next hours. Like they said over at phd comics, in the now defunct blog: "We're not working, so why should you?")

These days, I am in netting needle heaven. I have gotten the most wonderful, enormously gorgeous needle for my birthday, and it is breathtakingly beautiful craftswomanship.
I'm sorry that I can only give you a picture with the needle wound with thread, and thus you won't be able (yet) to see the wonderful finish of the passage from shank to tips - but this is my "no brains needed" craft, and I could not keep from winding it again the evening before taking the photos, when it had run empty.


It is made from brass, after one of the London finds given in "Textiles and Clothing", and it works like a breeze for my normal mesh size of about 4 mm. I'd like to try my hand at smaller mesh sizes one day, but first I will enjoy this utterly wonderful netting needle with the fast-to-work larger meshes, currently on a net that was inspired by the twocoloured one I blogged about here.


Here you can see the mesh size. I tried a new version of casting on, but I had a few problems with it, so there are some irregularities in the net especially in the first few rows. After the long cast-on loops, there are five rows of normal-sized mesh, then one row for doubling the number of meshes. After that I am now continuing with red thread (madder) for a while - I still have to get a feeling for how much thread on the needle will last for how many rounds.
In the picture below, you can also see my normal gauge, which is a shashlik stick shortened and smoothed with fine sandpaper, resulting in the 4mm mesh size.



I have a free day tomorrow (hooray), so the next blog post will be on Wednesday - have a good time until then!

Any craftsperson will tell you that tools are important. In fact, if you are reading this blog, I'd be surprised if you did not know yourself that a good needle makes for better stitching than a bad and crooked one, and that a smooth-running spindles, scissors, shears or what-have-you will help you have more fun and less stress when working.

While getting pins and needles made from copper alloy is very easy today, compared to the situation only a few years ago, there are more problems waiting for the unsuspecting dabbler in textile arts who ventures into lesser known territories. Like netting. It can be incredibly hard to get a proper netting needle nowadays.

When I first started learning how to net, I searched and searched for a netting needle. The results? Zero, nil, zip. But I wanted to net!

So first of all, I tried with a needle. You can use very little thread with a normal sewing needle, plus the chance of pricking yourself is very high. Not good at all. Even nastier, because a pricked finger will heal: There was a good chance of hitting a thread with the tip of the needle (I was really stupid and used a sharp sewing needle), thus sewing into the net and not knotting.

The next step was trying to make a simple makeshift netting needle by winding two pieces of wire together, forming the ends into netting needle shaped ends. This was better, but not much: The thread kept inserting itself between the two wires, and the makeshift thing had a tendency to bend, twist, and fall apart. I needed a proper netting needle.

So I whined and begged until I got a netting needle made from a hobby metalworker, made of thick copper wire. I had to twitch it a little, and it would only serve for rather large mesh sizes, but I had a netting needle that was actually useable. Hooray! It was much too short for significant lengths of thread, though, and rather hard to wind on and off. But at least it worked. Some time later, I tried to make one myself, which was also of the rather-crude-but-working sort.


Imagine my happiness when I found out that a proper modern company still manufactures netting needles, sells them via normal sewing shops (though they had to order it) and cheap, too! And with three gauges thrown into the packet! I ordered one at once.

Believe me: it is a good thing this was so cheap. You do not want to buy this. It is so crudely made that I laugh about myself every time I see it. I actually did try the "needles" once. Here is pictorial evidence for you:


Frankly, they are a bad joke if you are going for medieval-style netting. The material is very cheap and you can see that they are also cheaply made - no wonder, since they have a retail price of about 7 Euros. The shanks at the ends bend easily, they are much, much too thick and will catch the threads of the net much better than sliding through the mesh. If bent together too much, winding and unwinding is hard and abrasive on the thread; if there is a gap between them wide enough for easy winding, the tip is even wider and bulkier. Well, maybe they work if used with the "gauges" that accompany them (plastic sticks), which will result in mesh sizes of approximately 8 to 15 millimetres. Which is rather... huge. I would not recommend buying them, unless you have no other choice whatsoever (read: unless there is nobody at all in your acquaintance that you could beg until he makes you a crude-but-workable netting needle).

... to be continued tomorrow on Monday. (This is what happens when you don't keep track of what weekday it is.)