The month of May will be full of different appointments for me, including one for a surgical procedure, which also means that I will unfortunately not be able to go to the Nadelwelt in Karlsruhe. Because I'll be off to NESAT following that, I'm putting the shop on hold for a while, and orders coming in will be sent off after May 28, when I will be back.

I'll also be having a blog break during that time, so I can take all the time necessary for recovering and don't need to squeeze in blogging between coming back home and going off to NESAT. 

So I will leave you with this image of my test weave for the fabric reconstruction:

The lower part is the one that's the best fit to what we are going for. The little test piece was done weaver-tensioned, and my selvedges are still, well, let's phrase it kindly and say they are offering a lot of room for improvement. But it's doing okay for what it was intended for, which is answering the questions "how will it look, approximately" and "will we get into the right range of thread density" and "does the amount of twist in the threads look about right". 

And then, just like with knitting swatches... you go for the big thing, and you hope. Which is what will happen while I'm off the grid, or a bit afterwards, depending on how things go, timing-wise. Keep your fingers crossed all goes well!

Because I have to wet and stretch the skeins anyways, the plan for the warp yarns this time was that I add some sizing in that process, saving Silvia (who will do the weaving) from that extra prep step.

As it's here and available already, we settled on animal glue for the sizing. The idea behind sizing is to strengthen the threads against friction and abrasion on the loom, making it easier to weave and giving a better end result. So I dissolved some animal glue in warm water, bathed the skeins in their hot bath to set the twist, pressed out as much excess water as possible and gave them a good long soak (about half an hour) in the gluey liquid. 

I'm very, very happy about two wonderful prototypes... of shears!

Shears were more common than scissors for most of the Middle Ages, at least according to archaeological evidence. They are still in use for some things today, so you can relatively easily get simple shears in either a fairly large or a very small size - for shearing sheep, pruning plants, or snipping threads.

The medium-sized shears, though, they are hard to come by if at all. And if you're going for historically correct shapes of the blade and the overall form, well, here's none of them that will pass scrutiny. So for years, I have searched for someone willing to accept the challenge and make shears for me to sell.

Finally, I found someone. These shears are made just like the originals were: With steel cutting edges, welded onto the iron body, in the shape and size they should be (around 14 cm in length). A nice, rounded bow at the end, and a bit of decorative waves just before the blades start. They are sharp enough and well enough aligned that they will cut fabric nicely and cleanly. 

There will be a little bit of fine-tuning to make them softer to press together, as cutting at the moment requires a little more strength than is comfortable for doing more than just short bits, and then they will turn up in the shop at some point. And I am thrilled they will!  

 There's an exhibition opening this weekend - in Lauterbach, about the everyday life on Burg Wartenberg. The exhibition includes some finds that have never been shown before and are not published anywhere as images, plus some finds that have been newly evaluated.

Alas, I won't be able to go there, as I will be in Kamenz demonstrating spinning - but I do hope I'll be able to see the exhibition at some point! 

And now for something completely different... I found this very amusing, and I hope you do, too! 

And because I arrived at the conclusion that it might be interesting for you to watch, here's a video showing... spinning. Or, to be more precise, drafting. That's me production spinning for the current project, and the bobbin that I made this video on averaged out at a little more than 160 m per hour. (Personal best.) All you will see is my drafting motion, and I found it very, very boring to look at, but then I've looked at this from a slightly different angle for a lot of hours by now, and it's much more interesting if you're actually doing it. (Still of limited interest though. A hundred times a very little will still not be much...)

Again, this is possible because the wool is very easy to spin and the thread is in my absolute comfort zone, thickness-wise. I need to concentrate more than I have to do at slower speeds, and stopping the spinner for adjusting the winding lead on the flyer has to be done slowly and with care, otherwise there will be a lot of slack thread. Similarly, starting up again should be done slowly.

Both hands are working here, by the way, though the front hand (my left hand, I'm strongly left-handed) does most of the moving. The other, though, subtly presses down on the fibre a way back or lets go, which helps me to draft evenly, and turns the end of the top to help catch the fibres that I want to catch.

The spinner can do a max speed of about 1650 rpm, and it's set to a little less than 3/4 max, so it's probably runnning somewhere around 1000 to 1200 rpm. I have about 1.5 bobbins to go for finishing the warp, that's a bit more than 1.2 kilometers. And then... the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and the proof of the yarn is in the weaving (and then wearing). 

As I've stated in one of the previous posts, there's a lot of different statements about spinning speeds around on the Internet. They are, in a lot of cases, outrageously high. 

In a quite well-known, frequently cited book by Almut Bohnsack about spinning, there's also a list of how much could be spun on a handspindle... and these numbers, again, are very high. Outrageously high, if you ask me. Careful reading of the text, however, shows that for getting these numbers, the author measured the rotational speeds achievable by the different spindles, and did that measuring right after flicking them, with no resistance by the thread to speak of. These were in the ballpark of c 3000 rpm - and then, this number was taken as the maths basis to calculate how many twists per metre you need for yarns in different thicknesses (all of them very, very thin),  and how long it would take for the spindle to deliver this number of twists. No consideration of drafting speed or winding up, and no taking into account that the spindle slows down, and that twist in the yarn will make turning the spindle harder.

Other calculations on the 'Net sound like it's a normal thing for someone to do close to 250 or even 400 m per hour, but if you follow the numbers to the source, they are extrapolations from - you may have guessed it - the speeds achieved during competitions that ran for 10 or 15 minutes.

So. Statements and calculations like these have resulted in the fact that I have very, very little trust in spinning speed numbers stated somewhere, without a very detailed explanation on how the numbers were derived. There's a huge difference between spinning for a few minutes and timing it, and spinning for production. Back in the days when I lacked experience and was going for the first reconstruction projects with hand-spun yarn, I did my time budget calculations from a 15 minute test spin. Even though I tried to work at normal speed, I was much, much quicker than in the actual process. Lehrgeld, we call that in German. (Tuition fee would be the translation...)

Which means that I trust the numbers that I have for myself, and timings that I have taken myself (like for the spinning experiment), and there's a few other people that I know and whose numbers I will take for true. 

And there's still issues with these numbers... because comparability of spinning speeds also depends on the type of yarn you are doing, if you're using the same tool. For instance, if I'm spinning with hand-spindle and distaff and I'm making yarn of c 0.9 mm diameter and with a really high twist, someone else making yarn with 1.2 mm diameter and medium twist may be much faster than I am... but might not be faster doing the same yarn type. Someone spinning for speed and not minding if the yarn is rather irregular - can this be compared to someone spinning yarn for a specific purpose and going for consistency? If I get a bad spot in my production, I will interrupt the process and fix the spot (unless it's within the acceptable parameters, then I'll just go "huh" and let it slide). That takes time - I would not do that if going for speed.

So in case you're now interested in my speeds... my hand-spindle spinning is reliably at about 60 m per hour. I haven't tried speed-spinning there; this is "explain and demo" or production speed spinning. I'm not using my treadle wheels for spinning anymore as they are too slow, but the e-spinner will get me between 80 to 160 m per hour for production spinning, with most of the yarns in the 90-110 m per hour range. Doing ahundredfiftyplus takes a good bit of concentration, and is only possible sustainably if it's a very well-prepared fibre suited for this and a yarn thickness that is in my comfort zone. 

If you're spinning, I'd be happy to hear about your thoughts about speed, and about your speeds. My recommendation is to get a stopwatch that you place next to your wheel; that way you can track your spinning time easily and accurately. Time yourself for spinning for a whole bobbin, and then measure out the whole bobbin, that will get rid of a lot of the variation in your spinning.