I've been working on new stuff for the online shop - distaffs, for instance, and little glass containers for the oil-light wicks. And now I'm all blocked in my enthusiasm, as somehow my shop system refuses to let me upload the pretty pictures.

It stumps me - I've already checked the usual culprits, and everything seems to be in order. I've updated the shop system and checked the database... nothing. So I will have to add the things without pictures for now, and hope I can solve the problem soon.

Meanwhile, have some more pictures taken at Freienfels, where I did an outdoor test of the oil light wicks in a medieval-style glass lamp:


 The lamp and the chains were a present to me from several years ago, together with a different kind of wick-holder - a metal bridge that was supposed to hang across the oil surface and hold the wick. It did work, but not very well, as the holder and wick needed very frequent adjusting for a good flame.


Not so with the floaters - as long as there is oil to burn, it burns quietly and like a charm. Towards the very end, there are some quiet sputtering noises, warning you that the lamp will soon run out of fuel, so you have time to refill with some oil, or you can just wait until it has burned itself out.

We had the lamp hanging outside, and with the water level low enough, it was even relatively wind-resistant. I really enjoyed having it hang there, and it was giving a lot of light all around: the beauty of the glass lamp is that it's also illuminating the things right below the lamp, as opposed to a lantern or candle-holder. I will definitely use this lamp a lot more often in the future!

For most of the things that I carry in my market stall and shop, there is one main reason for them being there: it's stuff I wanted, needed, or lusted after and could not get.

Much of the materials and tools common (or at least available) in medieval times are not common anymore, and some of them have outright died out. A lot of more modern tools - still made and used 30 or 50 years ago - are also slowly inching out of existence, not being manufactured anymore because the buyer prefers a cheaper mass-made version.

So when I tried to find gold thread - tough luck. Spindle sticks? Good quality netting needles? High-quality linen thread? Really, really hard to find (sometimes it's even hard to find somebody still able, and willing, to make them).
Most of the things I carry are thus made on order, just for my store, by someone able and willing to do the things like I want them (which is sometimes slightly weird-sounding to modern ears). Which means that getting a new product into the store takes a lot of time and effort spent in researching, prototyping, testing, and finding someone to produce it. Sometimes, that means a lot more time elapses than one would deem reasonable. Or that something is half-planned, but then has to stand back behind other, more pressing issues and projects. It also means that sometimes, a product runs out and I'm not able to replace it, because the person or company has quit, or some material is no more available, or similar issues. Or that it would be possible to make something, but is not really affordable - for me to stock it, or for you to buy it.

All this, however, also adds to the experience for me. Yes, I'd sometimes prefer stuff to be easier - but at least this way, I can be sure that everything is just so, and you can be sure that the things you get at pallia are sourced and selected carefully, and often made by very small companies or individual artisans.

Just in case you are curious now about my current object of desire - it's cutting edges. Shears and scissors, to be precise. I am searching for forms documented for the medieval times, and there has been a lead... so I am following it. Who knows, maybe in a few weeks or months, I may be able to offer tools for your cloth-cutting, too. Which would be... enormously exciting for me. And I hope for you as well!

At the moment, the winter garden is feeling quite sheepy - with Rhönschaf sheep fleeces hanging out to air, dry out completely and be sorted (and probably partly combed).

Rhönschaf is a sturdy, rather large sheep with white, longish wool that has a nicely defined, wavy crimp. I have four fleeces; one of them will be put on hold for a workshop on historical wool preparation and spinning, and the rest of them...

Closeup of one of the fleeces

The fleeces are very good quality, with little to very little dirt in them; most of that falls out when combing the fibres. The sheep come from a good, sheep-friendly home and spent most of their time outside. The wool is not felted and very easy to comb, even without prior teasing or beating to loosen up the fibres; there's a pleasant amount of lanolin in it, but not too much.

The wool, when combed in the grease, has a chamois or light eggshell colour; it washes up into a clean white with water and maybe a smidgen of soap.

One lock after rinsing.

If you now feel the strong need to get your hands on some of that wool, you have several possibilities: I will sell you wool prepared into these lovely nests of hand-combed top:

Hand-combed top, in the grease, for spinning worsted yarn.

... which is ideal for worsted yarn - smooth, thin, strong yarns for your weaving or sewing needs.

If you have never worked with hand-combed top before, let me tell you: It will be much more expensive than industrial preparations, because we're talking about serious time investment here* - but it's also vastly different from industrial preparations. The short fibres are removed, there's still all the lanolin in,  there are no felted bits due to washing, and since I started working with those historical preparations, I don't like to touch the modern industrial stuff anymore.


If you prefer to do your prepping yourself, you can either get raw wool from me to use your own equipment. Or come to my stall at Tannenberg, where I will have a nice combing station, and you can use my combs to prepare wool for yourself.

* and you all know how I feel about fair pricing in crafts, right?

My new linen threads have finally arrived, and now I have a slightly different assortment than before. Instead of offering sewing thread in two colours (creamy white or fully bleached), I have reduced the colour range to one thread inbetween the two and instead now have two thicknesses of linen sewing thread.


The picture shows both linens and between them a spool of fine silk thread. As you can see, I have also started winding the thread on new spool-like objects, so now your thread rolls can happily lie around in open sight on every historical event - these babies are historically correct material. Plus you can secure your thread in the open end if you carefully crack the roll in one or two spots!

And just so you can get an approximate picture of the thicknesses we are talking about here:


These are, from left to right in the picture: Silk Gütermann 100/3 thread (for thickness comparison), the thin linen thread and then the thicker linen thread. I'm sorry the picture is a little blurry, but you should be able to compare the three thicknesses if you look at the spot right under the cent-coin.

I am very happy with these new threads: Sturdy, very high quality, very smooth and thinner than you usually get. Oh, and I have decided to do one hundred metre spools for now and see if there are requests for smaller portions, too.

After fiddling around a little and experimenting with different settings on the camera (thank goodness for one you can go "all manual" on), I have now managed to take some much better pictures of the gold brocade brooches. (By the way, the German term for brooch is "Brosche", and for brocading "broschieren", so I've been making "Broschierte Broschen" or "Broschurbroschen" with this.)

Here are some pics - clickable. If you look at the large pictures, please keep in mind that these brooches are only a little more than 3 centimetres in length!

After a long time of nothing happening for the market stall or range of goods(I blame it all on the upcoming move), I have some medieval splendour to spice up the modern life:
Brocaded tabletwoven brooches!


Made from silk and real gilt thread and mounted securely onto a gilt brooch base, these are a wonderful way to add the splendour of medieval luxury bands to your modern life. The picture really does not do these little beauties justice - photographing goldwork is not easy. The gold brocade really sparkles out from the deep ruby red of the silk. The gilt brooch base has a little locking wheel to keep the brooch from falling out of the fabric.
The little bits of band are made individually and can't unravel. The pattern is adapted from a medieval brocaded band, threads are pure silk (dyed chemically) and gilt fine silver around a silk core. The brooches are available now from the Market Stall.

The brooch is a beautiful way to subtly show your love for things medieval - and to find out whether your conversation partner knows about brocaded tablet weaving! This will also make a wonderful Christmas gift for somebody into historical textiles or textile crafts.

These tablets measure 6 x 6 cm, a convenient size when weaving and large enough that you can handle them well and even weave with the tablets standing on the corners, for tubular or other special weaving actions. The parchment is prepared by hand, in one of the last traditional parchment manufacturies in Germany. In this case, it is calf parchment. Rounded corners for smooth turning, large holes for ease of setting up the warp.

Parchment tablets have not been found in archaeological excavations yet (at least to my knowledge), but they are a logical material to turn to for complex bands with thin threads and lots of tablets. In some rare cases, "leather" tablets were recovered in excavations, although leather either needs to be much thicker or stiffened in some way to make it useable. A detailed analysis of these tablets would be interesting, in case they were originally parchment which underwent a kind of tanning process during burial in the soil.

In comparison to wood, horn or bone, parchment can be worked much thinner and will still be remarkably stiff and resilient. On the other hand, parchment stays flexible, so while thin wood, bone or horn might break easily, these tablets will survive bending without problem. The surface of well-prepared parchment is naturally quite smooth and will polish some more with use. With these properties, the parchment tablets are wonderful for weaving with historical material, presentations in a museum environment (please be aware that inkle looms and "tablet weave looms" are not medieval at all!), and well-suited for wide, many-tablet bands. If you are used to or happy weaving with cardboard tablets, these are a perfect historical alternative.

The parchment tablets are made completely by hand in my own workshop. The material is traditionally prepared parchment from calf hide. Being parchment, they can be marked, coloured, scribbled on - whatever is needed or desired. With a thickness of about 0,6 mm for most of them, they are slim enough so that handling a larger stack is easily possible - but stiff and wide enough to grasp them easily and that marking the edge of one tablet will clearly show.