I am back!

I'm back home from a whirlwind two weeks - first a little journey to South Tyrol where I got to meet the people from the Archaeoparc and do some wool prep and spinning sessions together with them, and then it was back home to repack and go to Cambridge for more spinning - this time including cotton, and involving the replicas of some Colombian spindles that were used about 600 or 700 years ago. One of the questions was which spinning technique might have worked with them - but in addition to this, we were also exchanging spinning and fibre preparation knowledge with two lovely indigenous women from northern Colombia. There were a few eye-opening moments for everybody, and there was oh, so much fun and laughter.

There was also some table accessories collateral damage. It turns out you can use extra straws very well to explain and demonstrate some cotton fibre properties, and some harm was done to a few paper napkins (which found themselves torn into strips and used to show twist effects, or solve questions about twist issues that turned up at one point).

These were by far not the first napkins* that I've seen repurposed for explaining textile stuff. I've seen them used to make impromptu threads or bast strips, to be torn into garment shape to explain draping, or to be torn into bits to show how garment construction works. They have proven so useful and versatile over the years that I am actually considering now to make one or two of them part of my teaching kit. Just in case, you know.

There was also a lot of splicing in some ways, and some stitching (the traditional bags are made in a variant of nalbinding and fitted with a braided strap). I have understood a lot more about cotton spinning now, and am much, much better at turning spindles into my previous non-favourite counter-clockwise direction. (Still not good at this clockwise and counterclockwise direction thing, though.

Now it's back to all the things that have assembled here to make me go back to the desk and catch up. I also need to go on a diet, we were fed very well and I have a hard time not eating all the delicious food that you get in Britain, but not in Germany... so it feels like I've eaten half the island now. 

I do hope though that there will be some sort of follow-up thing of this workshop at some time - not because of the food, but because of the amazing experience of meeting other textile people and seeing so many different approaches to one thing, and being able to learn from each other. It really was fantastic.

* I actually associate hearing "would you hand me that napkin, please" from any textile people so much with that poor napkin now being either drawn on or ripped up in some way that I was sort of shocked when I heard that phrase, handed a napkin over, and then found out it was to be used as a tissue.