I had a beyond wonderful time at the last fair - a lot of people stopped by to say hello that I see way, way too rarely; I had lovely food (Margit treated me to Königsburger Klopse for one dinner) and lots of nice coffee and there was sunshine and warmth and general enjoyment. The fair featured a nice, large, well-lighted space with tables to sit and eat and drink and knit in one part, and most of the stalls in the second part, with a little foyer inbetween.

As usual, I didn't get out much from behind my table, but it was enough time to go on a button-hunting safari for the Most Patient Husband of Them All, who has almost finished knitting his cardi and needed buttons for that. So out I went, armed with a yarn sample (for colour coordination) and my phone and a size indicator and sent him photos of buttons I supposed might please him. I can definitely tell you that proxy-button-shopping is an exciting thing! (It was also successful, to my great delight.)

[caption id="attachment_3753" align="alignnone" width="1632"] As usual, I'm standing side by side with Margit from Alte Künste...


There was even a little knitting done in the evening - my five-toe socks are slowly creeping towards being done. And I definitely need to knit faster. Or spend more time knitting. Or, preferably, both... because, you see, there might have been a tiny little mishap at the fair.

You know that good resolution that we knitters tend to have? About not buying any more yarn before the last project is finished, or the stash has been diminished a little? Well. While I was flanked on one side by Margit's stall, I had Holles Wollfärberei on my other side. And when I returned from a quick run to fetch some coffee, I sort of got confused for a few minutes and turned left a few metres too late, and by the time I had sorted out my directions, I might have accidentally dropped some money at that stall, and some yarn might, in turn, have accidentally dropped into my bag.



I blame fair-addled brains. And her choice of blues.

So. That does look, to me, like a little cardi and a pair of socks, some assembly required. See why I need to knit faster?

(She has an Etsy shop. Just in case you wonder how to get that stuff.)

So, after finding out that my drawing skills are indeed horrible, let's look a bit more at diverse instances of yarnwinders in actual historical artwork. Images of yarnwinders are not that straightforward to find, so I've been using the yarnwinder linklist by larsdatter.com as a starting point. Things listed in the following without links are from that list.

There's also some yarnwinders listed as utensils in the Morgan Pierpont library database, which is very nice. These are also referenced to without links, but you can identify them via call number.

If you know of more yarnwinding pictures, please let me know!

And now on th the actual images. Well. They vary greatly. Some of the later ones are very clearly showing the perpendicular crossbars and are also accurate regarding yarn path. Examples for these are, from the larsdatter list,

Peasants by the Hearth (Pieter Aertsen, 1560s)
Man and Woman by the Spinning Wheel (Pieter Pietersz, c. 1560-1570)

Base-de-page, The Hours of Catherine of Cleves (PML M.917, fol. 109), c. 1440. This is also on the PML list, Call No.: MS M.0917/945, p. 109.

Portrait of a lady spinning by Maerten van Heemskerck, c. 1531. This yarnwinder also has diagonal struts between the crossbars and the middle stem - something that might add even more to the confusion of images.

A visit to the wet nurse by Marten van Cleve (third quarter 16th century) shows a winder with very straight arms (on the partition wall close to the door at the right side of the painting).

An old man by Lucas Kilian also has the correct yarn path, and also looks like it has diagonal struts between crossbars and stem.

In addition to these from the larsdatter list, there's the bonus lady riding the pig, from the 1460s manuscript mentioned yesterday.

And from the PML list, Call No.: MS M.0230, fol. 003v - Flight into Egypt, dated to 1435.

There's also a variation of the yarnwinder with an extra handle coming out of the bottom end, and usually a little knob or short bit of rod at the upper end, showing a similar yarnwinding pattern to my very crude drawing from yesterday - one V-shape that has its point in the middle of one of the crossbars and two upright strands of yarn.

Again, the larsdatter examples:
Both examples from the Maastricht Hours (Brit.Lib. Stowe 17), 1st quarter 14th century.

However, there's a second winding pattern that can be seen, and that is an X shape with two parallel yarn strands at the sides. Examples for this kind of picture can be found both with handled and with handleless yarnwinders. Again, from the larsdatter list:

Mural cycle showing the processing of silk and flax at the Kanonikerhaus in Constance, Germany, c. 1320: a woman winds (linen?) thread (handled; image is hard to read)

An ape holds a spindle and winder, psalter (Douce 6, fol. 48r), c. 1320-1330 (non-handled, cross is at the back)

Adam and Eve, a book of hours (Douce 248, fol. 207r), middle of the 15th century (handled, cross very clear)


Finally, there are some winding patterns that differ again.
An ape winds wool, Voeux du paon (PML G.24, fol. 15r), c. 1350 shows just an X shape, with no extra upright yarn strands, and
A woman winds thread from a spindle, the Hours of Charlotte of Savoy (PML M.1004, fol. 96r), c. 1420-1425 seems to show the same pattern, though the picture available online is very hard to read, as it's very light.

From the PML list: Pierpont Morgan Library M.453, France, c 1425-1430 has a lady with a handled yarnwinder with X pattern on fol. 114r. Call No.: MS M.0453, fol. 114r


Also from the PML list: Call No.: MS M.0919, fol. 232v, early 15th century. I do not think that Call No.: MS M.0919, fol. 164r from the same manuscript shows a yarn winder - it looks more like a cooking stand or something similar to me.

Back to larsdatter - Veturia, De mulieribus claris (BNF Fr. 599, fol. 48v), 15th-16th century, is completely different again - here the yarn is wound straight around the parallel crossbars of a handled yarnwinder, no crossings whatsoever.

For both the long-handled one and the handle-less one, some images look like the crossbars are parallel, and some like they are perpendicular.
Old woman spinning (the niddy-noddy is next to her on the bench), 16th century shows an empty handled yarnwinder, with the crossbars clearly not parallel, but not properly perpendicular either.
Standing woman with winding tools by Andrea del Sarto (late 15th to early 16th century) also shows an empty handled version, crossbars perpendicular.

PML Call No.: MS M.0754, fol. 080v has a yarnwinder in a bird's beak in the upper margin, though whether this is an empty one with struts or a filled one is not possible to tell.
PML Call No.: MS M.0754, fol. 067v shows the same yarnwinder again, same style (which is to be expected in the same manuscript). That manuscript seems to have been yarnwinder central, actually - fols. 22r and 21v also show yarnwinders. Date is 1320-1329.

So. Plenty of different types, plenty of different winding patterns. Next step? Finding out if there's a pattern somewhere. Which will work even better with more pictures, so if you have something to add to this list, please comment!

Let's start out with taking a closer look at the yarnwinder with the perpendicular arms. This is how it looks when yarn is wound onto it:



As you can see, it sort of looks like a V-shape made by the yarn, and that is the case from every side. Looking at it like this, it's not that easy to draw, but also not completely impossible.

In fact, there are plenty of images from early modern times where such a yarnwinder is shown absolutely correctly, such as the one in "Man and Woman by the Spinning Wheel" from about 1560-70.

The earliest I have found yet is dating to the 1460s and is in the collection of the Royal Library of the Netherlands - a woman riding a pig and winding off yarn.

If I'm trying to draw how it looks and try to take out any attempt at perspective at the same time, I'm ending up with something like this:

[caption id="attachment_3683" align="alignnone" width="495"] Yes. My skills at making freehand drawings on the computer with the touchpad are very, very near zero. Sorry.


It is caused by trying to capture the V-shape the yarn forms and showing all four strands of yarn. It's not really close to the actual thing, but have you tried to draw a bicycle recently, without looking at one to do it? The chances it would be non-functional, but other people are recognising it without any problems as a bicycle are rather high.

Coincidentally, this drawing does look similar to some of the yarnwinder illustrations in medieval manuscripts...

To be continued.

One of the many interesting things made out of wood and related to textile work are yarnwinders. One style is rather well known and still in use today - it's what is usually called a niddy-noddy. The design is very simple: two crossbars, standing at 90° to each other, connected with a stick in the middle. Yarn is wound around the bars so that there seems to be a V from each side, as the yarn comes down or up from the bar facing you with its side to the one showing only its tip.

Well, the design may be simple, and winding on may be simple as well, but drawing such a thing? It is not. Which I used to think would be the reason why we do have images of yarnwinders of that design that are depicted somehow... alternatively.

This ape winding wool from a 14th century manuscript is a typical example. Or this ape winding wool from a different 14th century manuscript. (Hm. Do we sense a pattern here?)

Medieval images are not always true to perspective, and they are not always mechanically correct when they are depicting tools that are a bit more complicated, like this wool wheel:

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="500"] A woman at a spinning wheel being kissed by a man while patting her on the bottom. France, S. (Toulouse?), c.1340. British Library MS Royal 10 E IV f. 139.


You can clearly see that this would not work as depicted. The wheel has the requisite one-sided axle, and there is only one post holding it up, but it is drawn on the wrong side - facing the viewer. You could theoretically spin with that setup by shoving the wheel and letting go of it again, but this is not really compatible with the usual style of spinning with this tool, where the fine control of the wheel's (even) speed lets you draw your thread out evenly.

There's a similar error in the image in the Luttrell Psalter - again, you clearly have one post only, and it is on the wrong side.

[caption id="attachment_3679" align="alignnone" width="682"] British Library MS Additional 42130 f. 193: Women working.


So there are obvious difficulties in getting the details right, and it looks like the difficulties are similar, and it seems to be a pattern. In the case of the wheel, though, it really makes no sense at all to set it up this way.

Which is why I used to think that the alternatively depicted yarnwinders were also some kind of artistic thing - something not gotten quite right.

However... I'm going through the wood things again, and I am thinking of adding a yarnwinder based on medieval sources to my assortment of goods, and I've been looking at images again. There is a pattern - but the pattern is not what I expected, and it has led me to take a closer look, and start to doubt my previous assumptions - that it's just a matter of how things are drawn, and that you cannot wind yarn on a yarnwinder of this style if the crossbars are parallel to each other.

So. I'm very excited right now, and very much in research mode, and will look at more pictures, and try out things. And tell you more about the results tomorrow.

If you've ever done a spinning demonstration, you will probably have heard the Sleeping Beauty question at least once. If I had a Euro for every time that I've heard it... well, I'd be a good bit richer than I am.

Especially for people who only know a (flyer) spinning wheel as handspinning tool, the question about where you could prick your finger is a vexing one. Then, when people see a hand-spindle, they sort of jump on the possibility that this could be The Thing! My usual reaction is to offer them a glass of beer and a band-aid if they manage to draw blood using my spindle. Up until now, nobody has taken me up on it...

A while ago, the question also came up on a German facebook group page that I'm in. I'm not on FB much, mind you - but occasionally I check stuff, and even more occasionally, something makes me feel the urge to write an answer. In that case, I did a short bit on the topic and put it on my website, and now I've finally translated it into English. So if you feel like reading a bit more about it, you can go here and check out The Sleeping Beauty Question. And of course, please feel free to link to this if the question pops up in your bit of the internet, and you think it would be helpful!

You remember that ridiculously large package of wool I sent away recently?

It has returned from its adventures... looking still very large, and slightly (ahem, well, maybe more than slightly) battered.



And it contained wool, beautifully combed into top.

Lots of it. Obviously.



Of course I had to take a little bit of the fibre right away, and a spindle, and give it a little twirl - and just like I expected, it spins absolutely wonderfully.



So now I finally have Rhoen sheep wool and Valais Blacknose wool, already prepped ready to spin, in the shop! I'm ridiculously happy about this - and I hope other people will be just as much in love with these two rare sheep fibres as I am!

The little sock is growing, albeit slowly now that I am back at the home desk, working, instead of hanging out in trains, planes and airports with plenty of knitting time on my hands. I've turned the heel by now, though, so it is the slow way up towards the leg and cuff at the moment.



In terms of proper work-work, I'm still puddling around with the Textileforum website. It's growing, too - but there is yet quite a bit of stuff to do. Also, I'm wildly determined that 2018 will finally be the year that sees my thesis in English. Things are going on behind the scenes. Things that I will be able to tell you about soon. Sooooon...