One of the things that I really learned much more about at the London conference was sprang. Dagmar Drinkler and Carol James did a joint paper about tight-fitting trousers in Antiquity and Renaissance, and their arguments for at least some of the depicted trousers in artwork being made in sprang were, in my opinion, absolutely solid.

Even better was seeing and touching the sprang objects they both had brought, and seeing a pair of trousers in action (worn by Carol James). Together with seeing lots and lots of pictures of the Coptic sprang "hairnets" (many of them look more like caps or bags to me, since the word "net" does evoke some kind of openness or lacyness for me), my understanding of what is possible with this technique has grown a lot.

Carol James, by the way, has a website and a blog; she has made a few instructional videos, and you can also buy a book with instructions from her. Do check out her website, there is amazing stuff to be found on it!

The spinning wheel test yesterday was... half successful. I took the measurements for the new whorls from my previous prototype hack of the original flyer and whorl, and in theory, there should have been next to no pull on the thread, thus resulting in a lot of twist being delivered while the yarn winds on to the bobbin very slowly. I had significant pull on the thread and thus by far not enough twist to suit my taste. Due to the temporary fixings of the new flyer, it was also not possible to just hold the thread tight until enough twist was delivered. I've tested the flyer whorl before, with the hacked old spool from the old flyer, and it did work quite well, so the excess winding speed is probably due to too much friction between the bobbin and the axle.

The new flyer and bobbin arrangement sits differently on the axle than the previous one, so the wheel and the whorls are out of proper alignment. This, in turn, means that I have to adjust the alignment; I fiddled with it yesterday, but did not arrive at the best final solution yet.

The orifice end of the axle also needs some kind of stopper. The old flyer had a snap ring to prevent it from going too far through the leather bearing, and the new one will need something similar. That, too, is on the list of things to do.

And finally, the bobbin itself was in need of some smoothing out of the insides, to reduce the aforementioned friction on the axle. Because it's difficult as whatnot to drill an absolutely straight, absolutely centered hole through a round dowel, I decided to laser-cut a lot of small rings and glue them on top of each other, stacked on the axle. That did work, mostly, with a little leftover snaggyness. Taking a round file to the insides, though, did take care of it, and it now spins much nicer.

The next steps in the process are thus clear. Now I only have to do the drilling, clamping, glueing and smoothing connected to them...

The spinning wheel tuning is almost finished - I had planned to do the remainder of the work, not easily done in the FabLab, yesterday, but then a large-scale cooking session got into the way of that plan.

All that remains to do, however, is glue the parts of the flyer together and then test if the setup works well enough for a good, long test-run. I might have to make a new holder for the flyer, too, but for the moment there's a temporary contraption on the wheel consisting of the old holder and an array of clamps holding it in its new, better-aligned place.

So. Ten minutes for this glue batch to set, then I'll glue the next one. Then the wooden parts need to be fixed, permanently, to the metal axle. And then comes the moment of truth.

Hopefully it will all work out as planned!

Part of this morning was spent on preparing another session at the FabLab (planned for this weekend). I've finalised the 3D printing data for the whorl bit on the bobbin, and finalised the lasercutting data for the bobbins themselves as well as the flyer "wings". The previous incarnations have already proven that the numbers and setup do work, and that I will be able to quickly spin thin, high-twist yarns with the tuned wheel.

Unfortunately, it seems that I will also have to replace the part that holds the flyer and the bobbin, because the new arrangement of bobbin and flyer and flyer whorl results in a slightly shifted alignment between drive wheel and whorls. Slightly, in this case, being big enough to cause trouble.

A bit more planning is thus necessary. But if everything works out as it should, I will have a functioning, fully-tuned wheel on Sunday.

Spinning, as a research topic, has been occupying me a lot lately, and the next paper that I'm going to give, and that is currently in preparation, will also focus on spinning as an important part of textile production.

This time around, I am planning to look a bit more at the physics of what holds a yarn together, and to the properties of yarns with high vs. low twist, before launching into a look at different spinning methods - the one typical for modern hand-spinners today in the western world, and the two methods that can be reconstructed for medieval spinning.

The topic of spinning never ceases to rope me in and keep me interested. There are so many questions left - such as why there is a different spinning technique depicted on the few images from Hallstatt and the many more images from medieval times, even though Hallstatt threads were also high twist? Why is our modern technique not the medieval one anymore? When did those changes take place, exactly?

Spinning, to me, is the building block for almost every other textile technique that comes after. The properties of the yarn will influence everything done with said yarn - which means that you have to start with the spinning if you want something specific reconstructed as closely to the original as possible. And that, in turn, is a wonderful challenge for a spinner.

Though I love all (or, well, almost all) textile techniques quite a bit, and I work in a good number of them, weaving cloth is not among those. There are a bunch of reasons for this - one is space consideration (looms take up space, and quite a bit of it if you want to work seriously), another is the limited time that any day has, and there are only so many techniques you can fit into one life while still doing them justice.

Another reason - much the same reason why I don't dye my own fabrics or yarns - is that there are enough proficient people out there who already know how to do it, have the equipment to do it, and are willing to do it faster, better, and probably much more efficiently than I could do it if I started out now. (That does not mean that I won't jump at any chance to dabble in these techniques, have some fun with the equipment and get some more practice.  That, after all, is both for my enjoyment and for furthering my understanding of these crafts. Or do an experiment concerning them. But I won't offer anybody to hire me for that kind of work, as I do for other techniques.)

Narrow wares, however, are a different beast, and I've done my bit of weaving these. So imagine my delight when I found out that there is a repp band weaving tradition in Ireland that is still a little bit alive: Crios belts.

Makes my fingers itch to do a little more rigid heddle weaving...

After all these linky posts, it's time to do a "what is happening here" post again.

Yesterday, I finished the current state of a project - sewing basic garments for a new open-air museum, the Freilichtlabor Lauresham - and sent the things on their merry way to their new home. The project is not completely finished yet, but the next part will have to wait until the cloth for tunic and hose have been woven and dyed, which will take at least a few more weeks. I'd have loved for them to have all the clothes in time for the opening on this Sunday, but unfortunately, we were not able to get the cloth issue sorted out in time for that. (This proves again: textile stuff just gobbles up time.)

With this off my back and off my agenda, it is time to turn to the next exciting bits on the to-do list. So today, I'll do my level best to get some more work done on the Textile Forum. Check our website at www.textileforum.org tonight or tomorrow for the preliminary programme. And if you want to join, you can still register for the conference!

Another conference I have to prepare for is Crafting Textiles from the Bronze Age to AD 1600, taking place on October 10 and 11 in London. (This year is the year of travelling to England for me!) I will be giving a presentation about spinning as a historical craft, and I'm looking forward to that conference very, very much already. The programme is full of interesting papers!

Today's the last day of the Free Shipping offer on the Dread Pirate Roberts knitting pattern. If you were planning to get one, today is the day to do it!