There are things that we see, or use, that look easy. Easy as pie, and they are convenient and quickly picked up or quickly used, and nobody ever thinks about how much work has gone into them.

Take a book, for instance. It has contents (hopefully!) and a cover and a price, and there is writing and cover artwork and editing and layouting and printing going on before you can pick it up and settle down for a nice read. Or a film - even if you know that there will me much, much more that is filmed before the cuts reduce it, it's still something different to experience it yourself.

The same is true for something like an embroidery kit. Which tells you that I am still working on it - this iteration, there is tweaking and testing of the pre-drawing, taking still more notes about what needs to go into the instructions, and testing of how well the frame works for all this. I'm also testing the needles that will be included in the kit and making exact notes of how much thread is used for which of the parts. Meanwhile, the fabric for the final version has been sent off to be dyed, and I want to have finished this second prototype by the time it gets back here.


It's not the final pre-drawing, but pretty close to how it will be, both regarding shape, size and placement. The frame on a closer look (and especially upon touch) is obviously not real wood, but it looks very nice in combination with the dark blue fabric. As I want the kit to be so complete that you can get started right away and end with something that can be used as decoration without further ado, this frame is the perfect solution even though it's very modern.

And this is how the embroidery looks at the moment:






As you can see, I have not progressed so very far. I hope to find a bit of time this evening, though, so that I can at least finish the middle leaf!

The cat, meanwhile, is thoroughly un-impressed:

The lily of the valley outside in the garden bloom like there's not tomorrow, smelling sweetly, and the iris (who in German are called Schwertlilie, literally sword-lily) are getting ready for their bloomtime too.

So what better time of the year to finally do the prototype for a new gold embroidery kit? I've been offering the starter kit for a good while now, but several people have told me they would prefer something that comes with a motif, thus making the start easier.

Gold embroidery, a nice motif that will appeal also to non-living history folks, preferably not hard to embroider for a beginner? There's a clear winner for this: the French Lily, or fleur-de-lis.

So with the Beast off the table and a lovely fair coming up in the autumn (more about that soon), I finally found time to do some maths, some planning, and now I'm working on the prototype:






If all goes according to plan, the final assembly will be an all-you-need kit, including detailed step-by-step instructions, suitable needles, indigo-dyed linen fabric with the motif pre-drawn, gold and silk thread and an oval embroidery frame that, after finishing the embroidery, can be used as a frame to hang the piece on a wall.

This will make the kit a mix of medieval and modern - historically correct fabric and yarns, but modern tools (especially the frame). This will, however, be very clearly explained in the pattern instructions - and I think that giving more people the opportunity to enjoy this fascinating technique is the main object here!

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!