While I'm doing necessary office work (the books have to be kept once in a while, for tax stuff to be sorted out in time), part of my brain is still nibbling on the madder-water-tests. Especially that part which likes to add more and more things to an experiment... because, well, variables and such. And the good old "but but but there's more to find out, can we not?" thing. Aaah.

Current ponderings are related to the dyestuff, not the water. I had decided, in the start, that we'd use one batch of madder, preferably of at least decent quality, and if possible (very much preferred) of very good quality, to do the test runs. Now one of the colleagues asked "which madder are you planning to use", and I started thinking... It's clear that we will test different waters with the same madder - but should we also test different madder harvests/sources with the same water? There's definitely enough local tap water to do that, and I might be able to get two or three other waters in sufficient quantity to do a comparison of two to four different kinds of madder (well, technically one water would do, but maybe different madder qualities react differently to different waters)... so that would be an option. An option that tickles me, to be honest.

And that's not even dipping a toe, or fingertip, into the whole huge, HUGE topic of assists such as bran, fermented bran, beer, and other plant materials that were sometimes added to the madder bath. I've even read about the roots being roasted beforehand. So, so many things that one could try, and try to figure out what they do. In some cases it's pretty clear, at least part of it - adding sour material such as beer or fermented bran will adjust the pH, which is almost always a factor when dyeing. But what pH is the best one for the madder? And how did the dyers of old know how to dose it? (Well, if you just add beer or bran, you can taste it. That would definitely work.) But is the pH the only thing that will be doing stuff? Or would the fermented bran also do some microorganism magic and act on the madder roots while it all soaks before dyeing? Would the (probably dead) yeasts in the beer add something? Or the alcohol have an effect?

So many questions. It would probably be enough for a doctoral thesis (a pH-D-Thesis, hah!) to figure out all, or at least most, of the influences on the madder. 

Here's hoping that nobody will get mad when we tackle this at the Forum... 

I stumbled across a post about knitting cables (1/1 cables, to be exact) in different ways (which was, however, not very substantial), and that brought to mind again the many very detailed and very cool posts on the Techknitter's blog, and on a whim I looked it up again. I had noticed a long while ago that the blog seemed to be on hiatus. 

As many blogs who go off for a while do that to never return, that was sort of what I had expected. So I was very pleasantly surprised that the Technknitter is back! (I also discovered the reason for the hiatus.)

So if you're looking for knitting tricks such as how to make jogless stripes, or how to fix curling scarves, or how to handle several colours at once - go check out the blog. It is a fantastic resource, with really neat solutions for a lot of knitting problems, very well explained and nicely illustrated. Even if it's something I'm pretty sure I will not use in my knitting, I still enjoyed reading the posts about it!

To our great delight, Jessica Grimm, fellow archaeologist and professional embroideress, has agreed to do some testing of the membrane silver threads we made. 

(Jessica also teaches embroidery, both in-person and online. Do check out her page if you're interested!

And... we got first results! One of the sample batches was, as expected, not holding up too well, but shed some silver. (I think we messed up with that membrane, as there was glue on it....) Another one also shed some silver - that was a sample silvered with no glue at all. The others all held up rather well, and the test also showed that these threads are much more supple than if they were done with solid metal strips. (Also not entirely unexpected, but then you never know...)

That is a very nice result to get before the conference in Belfast. Now I'll have to think about how to shoehorn in one more sentence without going over time!

A while ago, I started knitting the Semki socks -  and recently, I gave up on this project, and frogged them.

I had gotten a good bit up the shaft already, and then tried to try them on, just to realise that my heel won't fit through the very narrow leg part, and that my instep is way too high for the sock. So I ripped back to where the decreases start and adjusted, doing some kind of make-it-up-as-you-go-along changes to the pattern.

That was fun, and it sort of worked, and I ended up with a sock that would fit... but unfortunately, the variegated yarn and the pattern didn't go back to playing well together. I did like the wide stripes in the foot part, and had it turned back to this look after a bit of shenanigans for the transition between foot and leg, I'd have been fine. But this? 

Nah. Not really.

So I frogged the sock, and have since started the next try of sock-knitting - this time the "Basketcase Sock".  The last time I've done entrelac knitting was ages ago (and a project that I also frogged), but I really like the idea, and it was time to work on my backwards knitting skills too...

Band weaving with rigid heddles (or with string heddles) is a wonderful technique - it's relatively easy, quick, and versatile, and if you like patterns, there's always the possibility to do pick-up patterns or insert some extra heddles. Small wonder that there's a lot of band weaving implements in folk museums...

The North, especially, seems to be a place for beautiful bands and, consequently, for looms and other weaving tools. There was a discussion on the Braids and Bands mailing list a few days ago about a certain form of band loom, the Norwegian cradle loom, and Mari Voipio did the list a favour and made a public list of the looms in the Digitalt Museum (thank you Mari!). You can find the list here - it contains a lot of looms, and there is also a very interesting video about band weaving included. 

Here I am, back home - after having a lovely time at Düppel for the textile day on Sunday!

It was an absolute pleasure to show and tell about distaff spinning, and have some people join me to give this wonderful technique a try. The weather was sunny and warm, but fortunately there was always a little bit of shade to stand in. There were lots and lots of interesting questions by visitors, and at one point I was even taking a group of them further back into history... to starting out textile works (or proto-textile works) with plant fibres and splicing. It was a fortunate coincidence that some nettle plants grew behind my stall.

It was also the first time that I did distaff spinning with a "join in and try" stall. It did work satisfactorily - but has shown me, once more, how important good conditions are for teaching. There is a reason why the amount of participants for a workshop is limited, and why I much, much prefer having a nice closed room to doing a workshop outside, even though it may be nice and pleasant to be outdoors, and I generally enjoy being outside a lot. Distractions are a thing, and do have an impact on the learning curve. 

Apart from that extra bit of added difficulty, there were the usual problems when learning how to spin with a distaff - some of them easier to solve than others. One issue is always movement of the distaff (which is easier to remedy when I have the very large clamps that I bring to workshops, and that I could not bring to the Middle Ages, due to obvious reasons). Another very common issue is problems with remembering which direction the spindle is turning, and that's something that I've not yet found a solution for. (Sometimes I have left-handed people in the workshop who have been re-trained to use the right hand in their childhood, and they often have this issue. But it's not limited to them, and makes the whole thing really hard.) 

It was a lot of fun, and also an opportunity to try slightly different methods for teaching and explaining, and now I can feel the back of my brain processing everything and trying to see if there's things to change for better teaching in the future... because you never stop learning.

If you're following me on Instagram, you may have seen some pictures of this on-going project already. It is, so to say, a left-over from last year's European Textile Forum, where we tried to explore the making of membrane gold threads.

Membrane gold threads are the cheaper version of real gold threads - it's a gilt animal membrane wrapped around a fibrous core. In our case, we built on the analysis results of some Italian threads that Cristina Scibé is researching.

There's a lot of unknowns or insecure things in the reconstruction of the process, and we were (and mostly still are) unfamiliar with most of the materials involved, so there was a really steep learning curve and there were plenty of "d'oh" moments.

But we have arrived at a process that is working, and that would be plausible also for production.

The photo shows the two spindles I am working with for wrapping strips of stuff around the core - one with the two linen single yarns, and the other with the wrapped yarns. These are not membrane strips, but modern metal and metallised plastic strips, done for practise purposes, as the membrane is a little too much work and too much of a resource to use as training material.

It's an utterly fascinating project... and I will give a little presentation about it on the EAA in Belfast this year. I'm already very excited about that!