Since I've decided to play it safe(r) and do another test run, here's the result of my not-so-perfect weaving:

Yarn twist in the warp is now definitely closer to the original. Also, my selvedges are quite uneven (sadly, that's pretty normal for me) and there's a bit of a weaving mistake at the start (but on the other side of the fabric, so you can't see it here). 

 I have some warp left, so I can do some fun weaving when I feel like it, and maybe improve a little bit... and otherwise, I'll take another closer look at the sample tomorrow and see how well it matches our goal fabric. And then... spinning can more or less start.

A second round of test spinning has happened, and now it's done and the yarns have had their hot bath and are drying, with a bit of weight to keep them stretched. Next step in the adventure will be to activate all my weaving skills and do a little bit of test weaving with the stronger-spun warp yarns, and see how the fibre combination we're planning to use will work. 

You can see the difference in the amount of twist in the two skeins - the grey one is obviously contracting much more than the white one. Fascinating, isn't it? 

A good while ago by now (I can't believe how time flies!), Gillian Polack and I co-wrote "The Middle Ages Unlocked". A few days ago, we got asked if we'd contribute to an article about co-writing at Artshub, an Australian website, and of course we said yes. There were a few questions to answer, and it was lovely to re-visit, in my mind and memory, those wild and fun times writing the book together with Gillian. 

The finished article is now up at Artshub, and you can read it here. I really enjoyed it - it's a very good one, and if you are thinking about co-writing something with somebody, you will definitely find some interesting advice in there (even if I say so myself...)

Here's the next step in our adventure of fabric reconstructions: Evaluating the tests. 

I've spun the yarns, my partner-in-crime Silvia has done test weaving, and now the samples have been washed (hot! because some like it hot, you know) and it's time to take a close look at them.

First step is to see if the thread count matches - which it does, satisfactorily, in the warp, but it's a bit too low in the weft. Next step is the close-up, and checking to see if thread twist and thread thicknesses, and the overall look of the fabric, matches our goal. 

Which.. well. Let's say there's room for improvement. In this case, the warp yarns can actually have a good bit more twist to match our original fabric; the weft yarns, to me, seem to be okay. Thread thicknesses are within range, too, I'd say.

Now we'll have to decide if we want to do a second sample piece with changed yarn parameters, or if we can gauge the necessary changes well enough to go for the piece proper straight away...

Some nice news for a change - a very rare species of rodent has been re-discovered: The Bayerische Kurzohrmaus (Bavarian Short-Eared Mouse), a sort of vole that lives mostly underground. Which is the reason why it was not seen for about 60 years after being first discovered.

There's an article with links to a video about it (all German) and some photos here at the Tagesschau page. And I do think that pictures of little critters with truly tiny ears and eyes are a nice thing for a Friday afternoon!

So... things are progressing in that the yarns have been tested, in form of two tiny pieces of fabric, and we're now waiting to see how things look once the test bits are dry again. (Because, as we all know, no textile is ever finished before it's been washed and dried.)

Meanwhile, as opposed to some times in my past, I was smart enough to keep some of the test spun yarns for myself, for future reference, and that is how the storage for them looks: 

Neither of the fibres is, unfortunately, a really good match for the fibres used in the original textile. We're close enough, though, for practical purposes.

We're living in the age of automated translation, and it's actually getting where, in some cases, it's possible to work with the outcome. Mind you, proper translations made by human beings who are fluent in both the source and the target language will always be a lot better, but at least things are not always complete gobbledigook anymore.

How is that topic popping up here, you ask? Well, because of some going-s-off-on-a-tangent. (In German, by the way, I'd say "vom Hölzchen auf's Stöckchen kommen", which literally is to get to a small piece of wood from a stick. There's no translation that really catches this in English - it's when you start with something and then have another topic and then another. Kind of like when you want to look something up in an encyclopaedia and accidentally read another entry first, or afterwards, and there's a cross-reference to something else, so of course you read that too, and then on the way to the next one something else catches your eye...)

So - I was wondering about translating stuff into hieroglyphs, and did an internet search and found that most "translators" only do a phonetic transcription, which sort of defeats the purpose. But it turns out that there is a sort-of translator by Google, called Fabricius. the amount of words on there is, unfortunately, limited, but it's still sort of fun. There's also this helpful list of dictionaries where you can look up things - and more or less make your own translations.