There's... rather a lot going on here now, with the upcoming events and the incoming colder season (which means stuff like changing the car tyres to winter tyres, and getting the garden ready for frost). So I'm not unhappy at all that tomorrow is a public holiday here in Germany: The Day of German Unity. 

Fun fact: Wikipedia says there's a celebration held each year - and yes, that may be true, but most people here just enjoy a day off that is at the same date every year - so it's also nice to plan around this. Back when I started doing Living History, one of the events always took place on October 3 and the nearest weekend, so you could use the days between (before or after the weekend) to have an extra-long weekend, and more time at the event. I've never even heard about any official-ish celebrations before stumbling across the Wikipedia article.

Anyways - for me, that's a day off tomorrow, and for you that means enjoy some blog-free time until I am back on Monday. (Unless I totally forget to blog again, like I did yesterday. Oops.)

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.

We're definitely in autumn now - leaves are slowly losing their green colour, apples and pears are ripening, and the Crazy Season is starting. Or at least it feels like every year in the autumn, things are happening all the time!

Thus I will be off the blog for a few days while I am teaching in Switzerland. I will be back on Tuesday next week, and then I can keep you updated on my (hopefully not too frantic) work on my conference paper for the Instrumentum Colloque in France in October.

And after that, if we want to look as far into the future... the Textile Forum will try to eat up every little bit of brain I have. I'm already looking forward to that!

A long while ago, I chatted with Adam from Kaptorga, and the podcasting thing came up, and we both found that it might be fun to do a podcast at some point. 

Quite a bit later, that actually happened. (Fun fact: I do my recordings in our wardrobe. It's small and there's a lot of fabric in there, so acoustics are good. This time, I had the laptop outside to do the recording, and halfway through, it went out of juice... )

It's all in German, but if you do understand German - here it is:

...except the usual. Some more planning, some more prepping, some cake baking in preparation for the weekend, when there's a birthday in the family to be celebrated. 

But maybe you will find this video of a spinning mule from Leeds interesting as well: 

And you can read a little more about the machines here on the museum page. 

If you're a regular reader here, you'll know that I have a thing for coffee. (If you didn't, well, you know now.) I also have a thing for tableware, having grown up in a town where there was a lot of china production.

So I was rather delighted about the new virtual exhibition of coffee tableware from the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek - and it's also available in English for everyone not reading German to enjoy. There's a few pretty weird things in there, and I'm not sure if I've ever seen a Barttasse before. (That is a cup with a special little bar to protect your shaped and waxed moustache from your hot beverage. Probably, now that I think of it, not only to keep the coffee from deforming your whiskerage, but also from keeping your products involved in said shape from, um, enhancing the flavour of your coffee.

There I am, mid-September, and a certain November event is looming ahead. We'll do tablet weaving at the European Textile Forum this year, so I am currently trying to find out how much yarn of what type we will need, and how many tablets.

And that is the point where you suddenly, unambiguously, get shown again that tablet weaving is indeed, well, weaving.

As I like to tell people when I talk about spinning now and back then, one of the big differences is how much you'd need to produce. Many modern hobby spinners spin for their knitting... back in history, it was done for weaving. Big difference between knitters and weavers? Knitters talk about metres and grams, weavers talk about kilometres and kilograms. 

Similarly to "real" weaving, tablet weaving yarn requirements do add up quickly. Four bits of string per tablet, then at least 1.5 m of warp length (because you want some space, and the relation between loom waste or, in this case, tablet warp waste and weaving is always worse if you go shorter), and then some tablets, there you are.

With the added extra cherry on top that while there are quite a few bands that only use 20 or 30 tablets, we also get the big whoopers. With about 90, or 140, or even more tablets. And while, rather obviously I think, we will not equip everyone at the Forum with a 150 tablet band... having at least one to see how this moderately insane stack of tablets can be handled is definitely something.

I would also really like to go a little further into the rabbit hole of the twist-patterned bands, made from untwisted silk. 

The image shows a microscope picture taken from a broken part from Band D571 kept in Speyer in the Dom- und Diözesanmuseum im Historischen Museum der Pfalz. It's silk, it is untwisted (before the tablets twist it), and I think it would be really nice to do a little test during the Forum with similar silk. So that's my little pet side project at the moment: Find out if I can get thread just like that.

(Any hints are welcome. My suspicion is that it's not or not fully de-gummed, but reeled off in thin enough strands to retain shine, and then doubled up until desired thickness was achieved.)