I'm taking the rest of the week off from blogging to concentrate purely on boxing the remainder of the chaos here. If all goes well and according to plan, we'll move over to our new flat on Monday. Because the telephone will, in all probability, not move over with us right away but take at least till Tuesday, blogging will hopefully resume next midweek. If not, well, something has not worked out - or I felt such an urge to blog that I found another place to do it.

Meanwhile, here's a really bad knitter's joke.

What does a pirate knitter like best? ... Black Purls.

There's not much going on between the boxes at the moment - all of the more exciting (and more time- and space-consuming) textile projects are already packed into boxes, and more packing is on my to-do list for this week. It really is amazing how much stuff will come together with doing medieval crafts for some years!

Meanwhile, we did take a relaxing afternoon off yesterday, sitting in a wonderful little café, drinking coffee and tea. We had both taken some yarny things with us - knitting and nalebinding - and took the chance to get a few stitches done somewhere away from home. This was more relaxing than I had expected it to be, and I can absolutely recommend it!

(Though a few people looked a tad irritated by our occupation, nobody said or asked anything, by the way.)

And speaking of knitting in public, there's a nice article about knitting and public politics on Anne Galloway's blog.

After fiddling around a little and experimenting with different settings on the camera (thank goodness for one you can go "all manual" on), I have now managed to take some much better pictures of the gold brocade brooches. (By the way, the German term for brooch is "Brosche", and for brocading "broschieren", so I've been making "Broschierte Broschen" or "Broschurbroschen" with this.)

Here are some pics - clickable. If you look at the large pictures, please keep in mind that these brooches are only a little more than 3 centimetres in length!

After a long time of nothing happening for the market stall or range of goods(I blame it all on the upcoming move), I have some medieval splendour to spice up the modern life:
Brocaded tabletwoven brooches!


Made from silk and real gilt thread and mounted securely onto a gilt brooch base, these are a wonderful way to add the splendour of medieval luxury bands to your modern life. The picture really does not do these little beauties justice - photographing goldwork is not easy. The gold brocade really sparkles out from the deep ruby red of the silk. The gilt brooch base has a little locking wheel to keep the brooch from falling out of the fabric.
The little bits of band are made individually and can't unravel. The pattern is adapted from a medieval brocaded band, threads are pure silk (dyed chemically) and gilt fine silver around a silk core. The brooches are available now from the Market Stall.

The brooch is a beautiful way to subtly show your love for things medieval - and to find out whether your conversation partner knows about brocaded tablet weaving! This will also make a wonderful Christmas gift for somebody into historical textiles or textile crafts.

In a perfect world, every skein of yarn is a perfectly arranged series of loops, ready to be unwound with no trouble whatsoever.

Unfortunately, this is not a perfect world, and after going through the rigors of a dyebath or after being mangled by children, cats or other calamities, you might end up with a tangled skein. Maybe even a severely tangled skein.

You have three options now. Option One: Throw that lump of loops into the rubbish bin. Yes, that is a valid option - if you don't really need that yarn, if you can buy it again, if you don't have a lot of patience, if you are not really willing to untangle it, if it's wool and has felted itself together in the tangling process, so that pulling apart the loops will damage the yarn. If it's one-of-a-kind or it was horrendously expensive, though, you might not want to throw it away. Luckily, there is Option Two: Figure out some way to use the yarn that does not require it to be all in one piece. Draw out as much yarn as possible at one time (or your pre-defined lengths), cut, untangle the knob that forms, repeat until skein is gone and you are left with a number of one-length cutoffs. Take care to wind each cutoff after measuring it and cutting it, or you might face more tangles!

That is not the thing you need? You really want one long length of yarn? Then take a deep breath, go buy some chocolate, put on a kettle for some tea and sit down for some lengthy yarn skein de-tangling. To get an estimation of how long it will take you, make a wild guess. Then multiply the time of your wild guess by two - that's the pessimistic wild guess. Now multiply that by ten, and you have an estimate. (Seriously, if you are pressed for time, this is not an option. Go buy another bit of yarn. And if you are not patient in the face of tangles, find somebody who likes to untangle yarn and bribe that person.)

You will wind the skein into a ball of yarn by hand, or, if it is very fine yarn, you might opt to wind it onto something like the core of a paper roll. You will not be able to use a ball winder or similar contraption. There is nothing speaking against making a center-pull ball, if you can wind one by hand, though (and there are instructions galore on how to do that on the internet).

Try to find the original middle of your skein. If it is still bound off, that should be no problem - just locate one of the bind-off yarns, hold that and insert your hands between the bottom of the skein part with the bind-off and the mass of tangles. If your skein is not bound anymore, hope for the best. Open up your skein gently but completely and gently stretch it between your hands. Stretch it all the way around, rotating it bit by bit and stretching after each little rotation - this is to straighten out the loops as much as possible.

Now you place it on a good swift - one that is turning lightly, that does not have much weight on its own, and that has as many arms as possible. If you don't have a swift yet, it's the reason to get or make one (if you sit down to untangle a skein, you are probably a yarny person and you want a swift anyway). If you have a four-armed swift and face tangles often when unwinding, consider getting one with more arms, and if possible with arms that have a wide surface for the yarn to rest on (like the Goko). The higher the number of arms, the more your skein on the swift resembles a circle - and it's much easier to wind off a circle than a rectangle, because the corners are where yarn likes to catch itself.

Once your yarn is on the swift, spread it out as much as possible. Locate the end of the yarn - if possible, the end lying on the outside. Your skein is technically a huge spiral, and it's easier to unwind that from the outside than from the inside. In a skein that is tangled, the loops of the spiral have gotten into disorder, locking each other into place and hindering you from unwinding. Your task now is to straighten out those loops.

Now you are going to face two different kinds of tangles. (If you are working with wool yarn, the yarn might stick to each other as an additional, third kind - a pseudo-tangle.) You are winding your working end, and suddenly it won't detach itself from the surface of the skein - instead, many short bits of yarn seem to tie it down to the swift, forming a sort of small triangles. Those are loops locking each other and the working yarn - insert your finger and gently pull upwards, or try sliding your finger in the opposite direction of your winding direction. That should release the small triangles. Each of these triangles is a loop of the spiral, where one bit has been caught by other loops, locking it in place. The bit a little more "upstream", so to say, overtakes the bit that is caught (using up the slack in the yarn at the same time) and forms the apex of the triangle. To remove the triangles, you need to free the spot that is caught - if you move your finger "upstream" (against the winding direction) underneath the triangle, you will find that point. Gently tug on the leg that is caught in downstream direction to release it.
Typical "catch-points" are the arms of the swift, because this is where the skein turns a corner. The larger the angle of that corner, the easier it is to turn it for the yarn (that's why more arms make a difference). If something is caught at a corner, insert your fingers beneath the skein and flatten out that corner while gently pulling on the yarn end(s) caught - this should release them.

Once in a while, however, a single loop or a number of loops will form around your working end. If you slide your finger under that loop, back where it comes from, that loop will turn out to be one really big version of the small triangles of yarn. If you can go back to the point where one leg of the loop is caught in the skein and gently tug it free, do so and gently travel underneath that free leg with your finger to where your working end was caught - that will remove the loop completely. If your loop is really big and goes around and around the swift, you can in theory follow the loop until you find the end that is caught and release that in the same way. In practice, however, it is much easier to just cheat and move your ball or spool through the loop. This means you have now changed the run of yarn - it is not an unbroken spiral path anymore, but might contain one half-hitch knot. Never mind that, just be aware of it - because it means that you will eventually find yourself caught in a loop again and have to move your ball through it.

If you run across any bad tangles, always try to tease them apart with your fingers, leaving them more loose than you found them. If you can't get your yarn free from a badly tangled place, just move the ball through and move on. It will all get sorted out eventually. Spread your skein from time to time (if your swift has wide arm-ends) to help with unwinding. Take breaks when you need to - and don't make yourself finish in one day. Instead, I'd recommend placing your swift somewhere easily accessible (and with very good lighting) and just untangle a bit at a time. Don't try to untangle when you are angry, stressed or impatient, and most importantly, don't think that you need to do it fast - and the whole business can even be a soothing, meditative thing.

For those of you who can't go there (or for those who would like a little preview), here are photos of the two "guys" standing in the Hartenstein exhibition. I took my camera to the opening ceremony, but had unfortunately not checked the batteries before, so I can only show you pics from the setup procedure - which means that the pictures show only the almost-finished state, with little details missing.

First, there's the miles from around 1200. It's a knight from the Teutonic order, and there were two possibilities for him for the exhibition, the warlike outfit and the courtly one. When we set up the exhibition, the warlike presentation was chosen, so he currently looks like this:


And this would be his courtly self:


He's wearing braies, a pair of cloth hose beneath the mail, a wadded gambeson, the mail shirt with mittens attached, a tabard and then either a half-circle cloak or helmet and mail coif.
Isn't it amazing how much of a difference this makes?

And as the second "guy", we have the master of Hartenstein himself, caught in the act of donning his Great Helmet:

He's wearing braies, cloth and mail hose, a gambeson, a mail shirt, armour covered with silk cloth, knee protectors and vambraces. And gauntlets. And two helmets, of course - the bascinet with mail attached to protect the neck, the great helmet with a fish as the crest. (I hope I got all the English terms right - I'm not so used to translating weapons-and-armour terminology.) He isn't equipped yet with his shield and his sword - he only got those after the photo.

(He's cut off at the knees because there are tools and paraphernalia at his feet. He does have feet. Really.)

Here's proof (visual) that I'm doing my best to join the Dark Side (and thank you, Darth Harma, for your friendly welcome!)


I am really amazed at how much stuff about knitting is there on the Internet (and I haven't even been to Ravelry in my forays). This all makes it easy to find out about stuff - it truly is standing on the shoulders of giants. Like, to name just one of the many, Darth Techknitter, who happily shares her knitting knowledge with incredible drawings - and everybody who ever made a drawing of any textile technique that entails yarn looping through and around other loops of yarn will know what that means. So a huge thank you from me to all of you out there who make it possible for others to learn about knitting - and not only the canonised version of one's own country and the tricks from one's vicinity, but all the twists, turns, variations and tricks from all over the knitting world. You rock!

And they are not normal giants. No, there are giants who are doing seriously mad stuff, like knitting two socks at once. Simultaneously. On double-pointed needles.
That, now, is seriously awesome, and I don't know whether to be happy or mad at Darth Harmless Drudge, because this is so awesome that I absolutely have to try it.

I like the dark side. There are socks. There is chocolate as accredited motivational tool. And there is madness... it seems to be just the place for me.