Every year, there's the International Museum Day around May 18 - and the German version takes place on Sunday, May 21. So if you have nothing planned for the day after tomorrow, you might consider going to see a museum or two. A lot of them offer specials, such as free entry, or there's special exhibition openings, or events taking place.

In case of the Stadtmuseum Erlangen, there's the opening of the new special exhibition about Stone Age - and I will be doing demonstrations about early textile techniques. Demos start at about 11:45, when the official opening ceremony and speeches are done. I'm already looking forward to it!

So if you're in the area, stop by and say hello, and enjoy the newly opened exhibition! 

There's a bit of research happening here right now - not only for some work projects, but also for a little bit of extra. There was, you see, this project at the last Textile Forum to try and find out about how membrane threads were made.

Membrane threads are, to explain it very quickly, the cheap version of gold (or silver) threads. Instead of wrapping a strip of gold or gilt silver around a fibrous core, organic material is gilded or silvered with leaf metal and then cut into strips and wound around a core. Usually, that core is made of cheaper material as well, and not of silk like usual for the proper gold threads. 

In our case, we used bovine gut membrane and linen thread as core, plus leaf silver for the silvering. There was a stack of questions when we started the project, and then there were more and more questions, and now there is still a lot, but also mostly new ones - which is nice, as it means we found answers for many of the questions from the first batch.

I will present our results in August at the EAA conference, and I'm already looking forward to that a lot. The next steps will be a comparison between the originals and our results (where one of the outcomes will, very obviously, be that ours are not very well crafted...) and then we will know more about how our process compares with the original one.

For now, though, I am very happy with what we did.

Even though we lack proficiency in all the relevant steps (mixing the appropriate glue, gilding the membrane, cutting it and winding it around the core), we have arrived at a workable solution for all the process steps that feels like it would be suitable for actual production. It's still a complex, time-consuming process, but then that's the case with so many texile-related tasks that it fits right in. 

And I can't tell you how nice and satisfying it felt to actually produce silver thread in our last go at this reconstruction process!

Somehow time's always too short to get all the things done. Case in point? One of the many, that is? 

I've had a revamp of the distaff spinning kit in the pipeline for a while, and there has actually been progress, but it's not completely finished. One of the reasons for that is the Most Patient Husband of Them All, who did a proofreading stint of the draft and had a few very sensible comments... one of them being about the unequal lenght of the pieces of combed top on the distaff band in the dressing instructions photos.

So "new photos" got on the list... and they have happened this week, so one step further along. 

Since I wrote the last distaff dressing instructions, I've changed my process a little, and it now includes unfolding the top.

Most of the pieces of combed top you can get commercially produced are a rather solid, thick band of fibres. However, there's usually something like a seam in the middle of it on one side, and it can be unfolded, leaving you with a wide, thin band of wool - something that is nice to use for dressing the distaff, and unfolding the top also helps in loosening up the fibres a little where they were compressed due to storage of the top. It works well, too, with just the folded tops, but I think it's even better when taking this extra step.

It's fascinating, by the way, to look back occasionally and see how different processes evolved over time - sometimes by chance, sometimes due to some problems, sometimes due to a change in materials, or getting more familiar with a certain material or preparation. 

I've been thinking about teaching again recently - because of teaching some more again, in different settings, and because of an upcoming conference where I will do and give a short presentation about the topic.

Teaching is fun, and fascinating, and has its own special challenges and rewards. There are some things that are easier to teach and some that are harder. Personally, I find that the hardest technique to teach from the many textile techniques that I have on offer is filet netting. The knot, once you have it in your muscle memory, is not hard to do. It's a nice, fluid set of motions resulting in a nice tight knot that has the correct size every time.

However... there is no good way to split up that set of motions, at least I have not found any way to do that yet. To form the knot, you have to do all the motions and all the passes over and under the different threads, and you have to do all of them correctly. So learning that knot requires you to memorise the whole sequence in one go, which, according to my experience teaching this, is a significant challenge.

I remember learning how to do that knot myself; I used the instructions provided by Therèse de Dillmont in her book, the Encyclopaedia of Needlework, and I read them bit by bit following the sequence for many, many times until the whole process had settled in my brain. 

So - teaching long, complex (sort of) sequences that have to be done in one block is definitely a challenge - but it is something that can be taught. Other things just cannot be taught (as in directly giving instructions or passing on sequences of movements) at all. In some cases, the difference between individual bodies means that every body needs an appropriate solution for a given problem; one may work for many or most of them, but not for all. In these cases, you can only assist. 

My favourite example for this is tensioning the yarn when knitting Continental style. For most knitters (according to my own anecdotal evidence of looking on hands), wrapping the yarn around the left forefinger works very well. Many knitters wrap twice, some once, some even three times, and the number of wraps may also depend on the yarn. So this is the way how to tension yarn that most people get shown and taught when they start out knitting. 

However... for some people, it does not work. That includes me - if I wrap the yarn around my forefinger, it just won't slide at all, and I get higher tension all the time, or if I jerk more of the thread loose, uneven tension. For me, it works wonderfully to just weave the working yarn through the fingers of my left hand: over the ring finger, under the middle finger, and over the forefinger. When I was learning how to knit, finding my personal way for tensioning the working yarn was actually one of the biggest challenges, because nobody showed me that method; I stumbled across it when trying out different possibilities.

So as a teacher, you can be aware of the possibility that a given method or process might not work for everybody because of physical reasons - and then you can, if you know of alternatives and options, tell about the other possibilities that the student could try. But of course you cannot slip into their skin and try out the options yourself to see which one feels best, and you might not be able to demonstrate the other options well as they might not work well, or at all, for you. In the end, they will have to find their own solution by trying out things. 

Have you come across similar things - in learning a skill, or in teaching? I'd love to know!

 With the pandemic lasting for rather long, I started (like some other people) to offer some of my workshops or courses online. So far it's the sewing workshop (about medieval stitches, seams, and hem types) and the spinning workshop.

I've been asked at some points about offering other workshops as well, and I've thought about it, but not every one of my workshops is online-able, at least not in my reckoning and how I teach it.

The most recent in-person techniques that I taught were the tablet-weaving workshop and the loop-braiding one. I can definitely say that I will not offer the tablet weaving one as a digital version. There are several reasons for that.

One of them is that there's often little movements or little habits that influence how smoothly the weaving goes. I need to see these, and in my experience from the spinning workshop, that is just not possible via a small screen and with limited camera positioning possibilities. It's not as crucial in the spinning workshop as it is for tablet weaving, and there it can already cause issues. 

I also need to be able to see the band, in detail and from up close - because occasionally, threading errors happen, or a single tablet flips or goes out of alignment, and, well, see above.

Those are the visual issues. 

Warping is another thing where I have a set-up in the workshop that works well, but it requires using my favourite all-purpose-tool: the clamp. To be more accurate, four clamps per person. These are used for warping, then two serve as anchor points for the warp for the rest of the workshop, and then I pack them up and take them home again. That means that participants in an online version would have to warp with what they have at home, or get clamps on loan and have to send them back, or have to buy clamps, or I'd do the warping and send the finished warp for the workshop. The last would be the easiest version logistically, but it would also mean that warping - which is an important thing to learn - would not be part of the experience.

And then... there's the touching. Warp tension is one thing where it's helpful to touch and see, but that is the least of the points. There's this stage in the workshop when we're going off to weave freestyle patterns based on diagonals - diamonds, X-shapes, diamonds with a swirly centre, diagonals branching off each other. Mistakes happen, confusion might occur, and then I need to orient myself to see what happened, and what needs to be done, and I do that by leafing through the stack of tablets, checking each one.

And this is where, at the very latest, the idea of doing this virtually would die. I'm still hoping to some day, when it gets less busy here, finish filming and making the instruction video for tablet weaving planned and started oh, way too long ago - but transforming the in-person workshop on tablet weaving to an online version is just not possible. 

(In case you're wondering about the difference between a video course and the live online version: The video can be watched again and again if there's something unclear or difficult. Since different people tend to have their problems at different places, watching individually and re-playing the passages in question would not be an issue. Explaining something online live without the possibility of showing it on the band, and having potential visual problems caused by the participant cameras, well... let's say that this is sure not to work out well. It would also mean factoring in a good amount more time for the workshop in advance, making an already rather long one... impossibly long.)

A colleague sent me the link to this video a while ago, and now I'm finally remembering to share it with you. It's a fantastic use of textiles, and an equally fantastic example of continuing traditions, and, well, see for yourselves: 

I'm not entirely sure if there's a lot of weaving involved - there's definitely cording, twisting, braiding and knotting, though.  

It's one thing done, the next thing in prep - I've just finished sorting and putting away all the tools and extra bits and bobs that went with me to the tablet weaving workshop. Apart from those bits and bobs of the collection that are going to travel to Lübeck with me!

The loops for the braiding workshop are all cut, knotted, and bundled together for the different braids; there's material to anchor them, there's extra yarn and my trusty measuring and loop-making tool, there's scissors and loops and all that remains is to print out the things that have to be printed out, and to pick and pack some of the sample bands so people can get an idea of what is possible with loop braiding. Like in all my workshops, I try to teach "understanding the structure" as opposed to "follow this set of instructions blindly to get result A, and this set of instructions to get result B". So we start with five loops, and every loop in a different colour - this makes later analysis easier, as you can follow each of the colours through the band. Or bands, depending if you are braiding one or two at the same time.

The biggest part of the equipment are the clamps I use to anchor the braids - but fortunately, the trusty suitcase has no problem to fit them, and it rolls so well that it's also no trouble to push or pull it around. Only staircases are not my most favourite thing in the world when I'm travelling with workshop equipment... makes you keenly aware of what people with reduced mobility have to face every day. 

I'm already looking forward to Lübeck on Saturday and Sunday!