Some time ago, Sabine and I decided to go on another mad venture and include nice, really thin, naturally dyed silk threads for embroidery in our assortment of goods. So Sabine had a lot of good opportunity for cursing when she dyed them, and I had a lot of good opportunity for cursing when I reeled the threads off on little spools. But it turned out that these threads are absolutely fabulous for couching gold threads - and even if they resist getting dyed and spooled with all their might (which is impressive), I feel that it's well worth the struggle when the final result looks like this:

The colours are red (madder), blue (indigo) and golden yellow and olive green (birch leaf); you can only see a tiny bit of the gold-coloured thread right on the top of the picture, about in the middle.

These threads are wonderful for couched work, used like in this photo - though the picture doesn't do the colours justice, and I find goldwork enormously hard to photograph...

Because I tend to forget passwords, I use a nifty little programme called "KeePass" (here is its official website). The programme can store your passwords for everything and anything, so it is finally possible to have different passwords for all the important and security-relevant things, and only keep the one master password in mind. (Better not forget that, though!) The little programme will even generate long and very secure passwords for you.

The only thing that really throws me off track with Keepass sometimes is when I've generated one of the nice and safe passwords, copied it to its new home, saved everything, bumbled on... and then I find that the password hasn't been stored correctly in its new home because there is only space for 12 digits, and they cut off my password without warning! And there I stand then, trying like mad to get into the site, application or whatever. I KNOW that new password, darn it! I just changed it! I KNOW it's the correct one, it's stored in Keepass!
... and after a while, it dawns on me...

So should you need a little programme to keep track of your passwords (and I think it even can be add-on-ed into Firefox), KeePass is a good choice. It's free, secure, helpful with password generation, it's even portable so you can take it with you on your USB stick or whatever else you carry around for data transport. Just make sure you don't fall into my trap and check the maximum allowed number of password digits first!

Ah, textile terminology is a thing to talk endlessly about - or maybe I should say "whine endlessly about"? And it gets even worse when things get translated.

One of the common problems concerns buttonholes (or lacing eyelets, in the time before the buttonhole's rise to prominence). There are three different stitches that can be used for securing the edge of eyelets or slits: the basic overcasting stitch (whip stitch), blanket stitch and buttonhole stitch. And the last two have a history of being confounded with each other, and often both types are called "buttonhole stitch". But there is a difference!

For a whip stitch, the needle enters the fabric from the front side only, and this results in the thread spiraling through the fabric, around the edge, through the fabric and so on. Whip stitch is technically able to do the job around an eyelet or buttonhole, but I can't really remember any extant example - and blanket stitch is nicer to work than whip stitch around those kinds of edges.

For a blanket stitch, the needle goes in at the front of the fabric, out at the back, but in addition, on the way back to the front for the next stitch, the needle is going through the loop that forms around the edge of the fabric. This forms a continuous line of thread lying more or less on top of the edge, thus protecting it better than simple whip stitch. (You can see blanket stitch in a stitch dictionary on this page - scroll way down.)

For a buttonhole stitch, the needle also goes through the loop after going through the fabric, but from front to back. This forms a little knot (a half-hitch, in effect) that is supposed to sit right on the edge of the fabric. This, if made accurately, will hold the continuous line of thread even better on top of the fabric edge.

So what are the differences? Buttonhole stitch takes a little longer to work than blanket stitch (at least for me), because in the way that I make it, I need to change my hold on the needle one more time per stitch (for forming the knot). What takes more time, though, is to make sure the little knot is placed and tightened correctly, and this can be fiddly work.
The biggest difference, however, is discernible when working the stitches tightly beside each other, as required in eyelets or button holes. Then it becomes evident that buttonhole stitch will build up on the edge, effectively making the hole a little smaller. This is not too bad on a buttonhole - in fact, it might even help countering the buttonhole's tendency to widen with use, but on an eyelet hole that is only poked into the fabric and not cut, it's much better to have it in the same size after finishing it. And I have not yet found a true buttonhole stitch in medieval context - this seems to be used only in modern times.

And the conclusion? When I read a term for a stitch, I always look for a picture of the stitch in question - because you can never be sure which terminology the author uses. And when I name a stitch, I always try to give an additional description or picture - because it's never a given that everyone else will think of the same stitch as I do when I name the name.

A recent discussion (and my recent read of Beaudry's "Findings") makes me wonder about Footnotes vs. Endnotes. Publishing houses nowadays seem to prefer endnotes - because it makes page layout easier and a little nicer for the eye not to have footnotes sparsely dotting the bottom of the page. However, for reading, endnotes are much less practical - because looking up an endnote means to put your thumb into the book at the place you are right now, go to the back of the book, find the endnote, read the endnote, and then go back to the front of the book and try to get back into the flow of the argument. This takes much more brainpower than just shifting the eyes to the bottom of the page - and thus will regularly exceed the capacity of the "Working Memory", breaking the flow of the reader. I have also made the experience that endnotes get read (and thus used) much less frequently than footnotes, because it is more trouble to get to them.

And now I'm wondering: Am I the only one who strongly prefers footnotes? Are the publishers right in placing looks over footnote access, do readers prefer endnotes in general? What do you think? If you look to the right side of this page, you can find a little poll to mark your preference - and of course, comments explaining your vote are highly welcome!

Quite a lot is going on behind the scenes here, not least of all the fact that we have started actual work on the new market stall. The first bit of cloth has been cut and now takes up space in our living room, lying around and looking innocent (as far as 30 square metres of cloth can look innocent, that is). Now we only need to sew one long line of about 7.5 metres before it's time to shrink and waterproof this part.
The wood is already in the basement (mostly - one bit is missing), and after the long piece we're at now is sewn together and treated, the wood structure can be inserted and the fixings made. But it will take a few more evenings of needlework until that is the case!

Another thing happening is my collecting of ideas for some more textile tools for the market stall. I'm thinking of more accessories and tools for goldwork and embroidery - so if you have any suggestions or wishes, let me know, and maybe I'll be inspired to include it.

Blogging is a bit later today than usual, because I wanted to finish the market stall page at least far enough to put a first version online. Originally, I had intended to write a German and English version of the market stall, finish both with all the items I have in my real-life stall, and put them online then. But as things happened (and took longer than planned) and time progresses, I have not managed that yet.

But I know that some people are out there waiting for the page to come up, and I feel bad to let you wait for so long and yet longer. So instead of the all finished, everything included and html polished version, today I'm putting up the market stall page in English, with a link from this blog and the first page of my homepage (that still waits for the full English version, too). And I'll try to add the rest of the goods as soon as I can.

I hope you enjoy it!

For a change, here are some thoughts about the book I currently read. The full title of Mary Beaudry's work is "Findings. The Material Culture of Needlework and Sewing", and of course, a title like this seriously incites my interest.

The book aims to give an overview of the findings in connection with sewing and needlework, directed at archaeologists who are confronted with such small small-finds and wish to give a better interpretation to them than just "oh, textile tools - means women were here". That is, in my eyes, a wonderful thing, and I started reading the book with high hopes. However, I now am halfway through the book and already feel quite let down, due to several separate issues.

First of all, Beaudry concentrates on early modern and modern artefacts; this can be expected from a book that seems to be mainly geared towards American archaeology, also mostly citing finds from US sites. She also incorporates short history passages about each tool, however, going back to Middle Ages and beyond, and those are unfortunately not always correct. Terminology also poses a problem, especially combined with the extremely sparse illustrations, since Beaudry groups her objects by modern names. This lumps objects called "pins" from metal together with those from organic materials, and thick and long pins with the small slim ones. While bone and wood "pins" are called by the same name as metal "pins", I think of something much more substantial and thick when bone and wood are mentioned than when talk revolves around metal pins, and I do have different uses in mind automatically. Grouping bone and wood pins in with metal ones and setting them into a common timeline seems to me quite misleading, especially if there is not a single illustration to go with them. A similar thing happens in the "Needle" section, where knitting needles (and then also crochet hooks and netting needles) can be found.

When giving the history of knitting, she states that nålebinding as "an early variant of knitting [...], employing a single coarse needle, was common in northern Europe during the Middle Ages. This technique was used for making stockings and gloves, and in Norway many milk-straining clothes were made in this way [...], but needles used in nålebinding remain elusive." (p. 60)
There are large numbers of rather large, eyed needles made from wood, bone or antler that are perfectly well suited to work nalebinding, and needles are actually made again and sold again for that purpose today, since the technique has seen a revival in LH circles. Actually, the very first hit that comes up on google search when typing "nalebinding needle" is a shop that sells different needles and bodkins well suited for the technique. She is right however in that to my knowledge no needles have been proven to have been used for nalebinding.
Maybe even worse, nalebinding and knitting are technically so different from each other that stating one as the variant of the other is absolutely misleading to the novice while quite apt to boil the blood of a textile person - and severe mistakes like this do cast doubt on the general reliability of a book.

Another very curious interpretation (without pictures of the artefacts in question) is mention of mid-seventeenth c. bodkins with an earscoop at one end: "Those [...] can be quite large, sometimes more than seven inches long, sometimes with an ear-spoon or earscoop at one end. The earscoop was designed to gather earwax for the use on sewing thread, to keep the cut ends from unraveling. Well-to-do women were likely to purchase beeswax for this purpose, but earwax was thrifty and readily available - and cleaning out the ears contributed to personal hygiene." (p. 66) I would be really interested in a source text or picture showing evidence for this - because earwax* has more like a toffee consistence when gathered with an earscoop, quite soft and sticky, and would be totally unsuitable to protect threads from abrasion like beeswax coating does (but very suitable to attract dirt and dust, and keep them nicely in the fabric). And beeswaxing threads is mostly not done to keep ends from unraveling, but for much different reasons.

The almost nonexistent illustration of the book (about 40 figures alltogether, with some of them showing only tools and equipment as depicted in an 18th century craft book, with no further description) takes away much of its usefulness. Especially the section about pins and bodkins would have much profited on a selection of artefact drawings from finds; instead, the reader has to look for those drawings in the literature cited by the author.
This literature is typically given by one note at the end of each paragraph, which can lead to some confusion as to what book yielded the information. The end-note style further takes away from the usefulness of the book, since checking each note means a lot of back-and-forth leafing in the book, disrupting the reading flow.

Some questions Beaudry mentions are quite large issues, like the standard gendering of all things textile as women's work only, though pins were used by men and women alike in their dress. She is also certainly right when writing that pins, needles and sewing implements need better interpretation and more attention. However, the three issues mentioned above - research that seems a bit too superficially done, lack of illustrations to give the reader the possibility to follow the author's distinctions and comparisons, and the sometimes egregious mistakes - are, in my opinion, very much keeping this book from achieving what it aims to do: giving the archaeologist without knowledge about textile work a reference book for differentiated, educated interpretations of these small finds. For this, I would rather recommend Crowfoot et al's Textiles and Clothing, the volumes about small finds from York or, for those who read German, Krabath's "Die hoch- und spätmittelalterlichen Buntmetallfunde nördlich der Alpen. Eine archäologisch-kunsthistorische Untersuchung zu ihrer Herstellungstechnik, funktionalen und zeitlichen Bestimmung."

* Linguistic aside: in German, earwax is called "Ohrenschmalz" which literally translates into "ear-lard" - giving a much better idea about the consistency of the stuff.