I did the first of the spinning output tests yesterday, using the Great Wheel. I had settled on trying for half an hour spinning for each test, and that was quite enough for untrained me on the Great Wheel.

To have the material as alike as possible I will be using industrially prepared Merino top for all the tests (at least four of them, one with each spinning implement). That is, naturally, nothing really spinn-able for the Great One, so I transformed a portion of it into rolags for long-draw first, using my hand-cards.

And the result of half an hour spinning were 64.5 m of yarn (which would add up to 129 m per hour). I aimed for rather thin yarn (to match what I will be doing with the other tools) and for rather high twist (since that is historically more correct than low twist), and once the spinning tests are all done, I plan on plying each sample to have them in a more stable condition - I want to take them with me for demonstrations.

So. When you are reading this, please keep in mind that they are all very, very squishy figures - it's just one spinner, my tools and their quality are unknown to you as is my proficiency with each tool, and you only have my word that the wheel is functioning quite well and that I have not had much practice at all yet with the Great Wheel. (All of which, by the way, are reasons this post is not labeled Experimental Archaeology!)

First of all a link to an archaeological find (h/t to Cathy, who blogged this first ): Unique find at Viking Burial Place (with textiles).

Then there's an ebook library with lots of free ebooks, including some about archaeology. As with one of the library links I posted before, there's unfortunately no proper "about" info - the site footer is written in something that looks like kyrillic script to me. Use with your own conscience and smarts intact, and please consider buying a version of a book through your book dealer of preference in case you really like one of the books.

And finally, a link to one of the databases that I wrote about a few days ago: the Contini-Volterra Photographic Archive, with images from the 12th to 20th century. They have a searchable database with descriptions, though "spindle" and "spinning" are not in there, and all pics I have seen in my glance at it were black and white. Still, lots of pictures and searchable by, for example, saints' names.

A good while ago, I posted about the time I needed to ply close to 600 m of yarn on my old, small foot-driven spinning wheel.

That little wheel, bought during my teenage years, was sold to me as a young girl's spinning wheel. I learned how to use it, I learned a lot about wheels on and through it, I dragged it around and I spun and spun. But it's a small wheel with, accordingly, a rather slow spinning ratio. And with the years, I wanted to spin more strongly twisted yarns, and thin very high-twist yarns, and do so faster than the little wheel would allow me to, even when treadling very fast.

So I started to keep my eyes peeled for a production wheel, and finally decided to buy a double-drive wheel, second-hand, from a Finnish producer who had long gone out of business. And this weekend, I started tuning it - replacing the whorl with a new, much smaller one (thus upping the ratio from drive wheel to whorl) and glueing additional discs to the spool to bring that ratio up too and really close to the whorl ratio. (Really close, in my case, meaning nominally1:1 for the bigger of the new discs and almost 1:1 for the smaller one.) The fastest setting needs a little more running in, or a little more tweaking, but it does work already, and the slower setting works really nicely already and will yield a spinning output of high-twist yarn, my usual thickness, of about 120 m/hour according to my first tests. Spinning output, that is, not plying output. And I am planning on doing those speed tests... soon.

I have found in the last two days not one, but two long-ish lists of online resources in the Internet. They may or may not hold links to pages that are utterly nice and helpful - I don't know yet, but I intend to find out and then post the links.

And while I am at that, and doing my bookkeeping (again! yes!), and a small-to-medium-sized bunch of other stuff that is writing-related, have a gratuitous cat picture.


That's Madonna, our cat, doing one of the things she (like all cats) does best: napping.

I have been writing this blog here since December 8, 2008. I am trying hard to post something interesting each day - or at least to post something, preferably interesting. In those three-and-a-half years, I have not had a single guest post. I actually did all the 728 posts myself. If I copy-paste any content into this blog, it's something like a call for papers that gets sent out with the aim of being distributed to interested persons - and I like to help in that.

Which means that to any person taking more than a very, very casual glance at my blog, it should be quite clear that I am not going to do post exchanges or post advertisements. Yes, I will plug my own stuff (hey, it's my blog, after all) and I will praise other things that I am happy about - but not because I was asked to do so, but because I want to. Because I am convinced that there is something in high quality for a fair price. And I have never gotten any compensation for my plugs. (Most of the "you are so going to want this" posts are about free internet resources anyways.)

So. I still get the occasional "oh your blog is sooo coool please visit my site" comment spam (which I delete) and, about as rarely, a mail praising my blog with a standard set phrase and then the offer of either a link exchange or "guest posts" coming from that other site, or some money if I advertise for a product in my texts. Usually, I just ignore them. Sometimes when I feel like it, I will take a look at the site, laugh, and then delete the email. But this morning I received one of the guest post offer mails that didn't only (as usual) make it very obvious the person writing it had not taken a good proper look at my blog (though becoming a "fan" right away)... that person didn't even know the real topic of the post I was offered as a guest post, which did not fit in at all with my own focus.

So I finally took this opportunity of total incredulity on my part (really? you really think I will now believe anything your site hosts is well-researched?) and sent that person an answer mail... raising the offer. With picture of Wil Wheaton collating papers. (If you have never heard about that and get weird offers sometimes too, do click the link. If you haven't heard about it and don't get weird offers... oh, click it anyways. At least I think it's funny.)

Hah. Something I had wanted to do for ages. Who says weird soliciting mails are not good for anything?

Yesterday, I received a mail informing me that a colleague had stumbled across a .pdf version of a Festschrift for Frans Verhaeghe, online and downloadable free of charge. Since I am a curious person, I took a look at the link she had posted. And since I'm a very curious person, I then took a look at the site that hosted the file.

Calling stuff that one does not like or that seems outdated "medieval" is something that is... how shall I put it... not getting applauded very much by medievalists. Now, lots of snark can be released onto that topic, but I am not going to do it myself - instead, I am going to link you to Carl Pyrdum's blog, where you can read and laugh for yourselves.

In other and textile-related news, editing on our first Textile Forum Proceedings is going on - and I am utterly thankful that this work is done by somebody who is not me. I won't give an estimate of when it will come out, but I hope that there will be no unforeseen delays and that it is going to be not too far in the future.

The cat, by the way, has developed some sort of daily routine (well, routine in addition to meowing as if she were starving when it's feeding time). The part of her routine the most stable these past days? Her after-lunch nap. After lunch (and after the requisite bit of grooming), she settles down to take a little nap... which ends about an hour before her next meal, at six-ish in the evening. I am continuously astounded by cats' ability to sleep!