I have been dabbling a bit more with the Lengberg cap sprang - on and off, though mostly off in the last months, and now it's more on again. (I am on row 48 or so of almost 200, and I realised that I will need the frame for the Sprang workshop in June, which gave me a nice bit of extra motivation to finish before then.)

While I did make the pattern for the hands-on piece for an exhibition about women's networks by marriage, due to start in May, the piece was done with slightly thicker threads and ran much longer than the original for the same amount of rows. Our solution was for me to make fewer rows - it's enough so you can still get a nice impression of the pattern, but it also was a good compromise for the museum budget. In this case, being a bit "off" from the original was thus not really bad.

It still irked me a little, especially after taking more looks at images of the original and realising how incredibly dense it was. So I made another set-up (with probably way too long threads, but I wanted to have room to manipulate at the end still), with slightly thinner threads, and made it my main task to get the fabric really, really, really, really dense.

By now I am far enough to see how well it worked - and I am actually not too far off the original this time!

This image shows you part of the pattern chart written by Carol James, with my marks of "done" rows and, more importantly, small numbers giving the length in centimeters at that place on the original, calculated from the amount of overall rows and the full length of the original piece. It's a guideline, thus, nothing more - but I find it very helpful.

As you can see (more or less well), I should be at about 6.85 cm of length now. I am at... 

...about 7 cm. That is not too bad! The bottom piece is a little more irregular, and I measure something between 7 and 7.3 cm there, but I still have hope that it might even out again some more.  

The trick to getting there was, apart from having the right thickness of threads, working with very little tension and pressing the new row in very, very, very hard. That includes pulling the threads against the weaving sword in small bunches, and repeating it across the width several times. It doesn't take quite as long as the braiding row itself, but it feels almost like it!

So this is how the frame looks, and yes, that is my working "tension".

It does work, though! And I can have a little more working tension when doing the manipulation, too, as I am working close to the top fell. Now only about 150 rows to go, and I will be done! 

In connection with the sprang cap I made for a museum exhibition, there will also be a sprang workshop - at Burg Trausnitz near Landshut, on June 27. The day starts with a guided tour through the exhibition, and then there's a lunch break, and then there's the workshop. I'm already looking forward to this, it's far too rarely that I get to teach sprang... and maybe I can manage to get the for-fun piece that I currently have on the frame done until then.

(Actually, I should, as it's on one of the workshop frames...)

If you are interested, you can go here to find out more about the (German language) workshop! 

Aaargh. Sometimes I still manage to click that button necessary to do the blog publishing and not do the confirmation thingie. With the wonderful result of  the post, you may have guessed it, not going out. 

Which is, you may also have guessed it, what happened yesterday. You didn't miss much, though - I finally got around to doing a little maintenance stuff, such as sorting the new stamps, tidying up things in the main stock shelves, and checking if the amounts I have listed for this and that are still more or less correct, and if and what I have to re-order and re-stock.

The little cat, meanwhile, was making the most of the summer heat and has been napping in the wintergarden all day. The wintergarden, of all places, where even with as much shadow as the curtain-like roof thingies will provide and the doors open, it gets very warm. I jokingly refer to it as the cat oven in the summer. But, well, she insists (and could go somewhere cooler any time).

When I took a break and joined her, it was definitely no place where you'd want to do work of any kind. Napping, though... yes, that might work. Unfortunately there's still a few bits to take care of here on the desk! (Where it's also nice and cool compared to outside, so I have no real excuse to slack.) 

This morning, though, it was still cool enough that I could keep the cat company and do a little bit of sprang. I'm getting closer to the required length for the Lengberg cap, and it's really nice to work in that technique again.

One of the things I find fascinating is that sprang also shares that rhythm of "stuff can happen - nothing happens" that you also can get in tablet weaving, and that you sometimes have in knitting (when there's no pattern on the wrong side row and you only purl back). 

In sprang, you do your patterning in one row and then just confirm and get things nice and orderly in the following one. I have done sprang stuff before, but it was mostly solid things, partly with interlinking in the opposite direction and partly with double layers - but I have not worked with a larger hole pattern before. 

My guess before starting out on this would thus have been that with a heavily patterned sprang I will have one slower row (to read and follow the pattern) and one faster row (just go over everything to set up for the next slow one). I've found, however, that it's not as pronounced for me here as I would have guessed.

The main reason for that is... edges. Sprang, when done with the basic interlinking as the main structure, acquires a curl or twist after a while. That's just normal, and with a solid piece, it means you will have some curling, and thus potentially crossing threads, at the start and at the end. Which, coincidentally, is also where the usual selvedge effect happens and your threads are a little looser than the others. (That happens because they only have one neighbour, and thus don't get as nicely fixed down in the fabric, and there's also a little less take-up, so they can get longer compared to the others after a while. It's annoying, but can be found as an edge effect in many techniques.) 

So with a plain thing in sprang, done with only interlinking, I get slowed down a little at the start, where I have to take care the threads are in the correct order, and at the end, where there's the same issue. The rest is breezing through, more or less. With patterns in the sprang, though... Patterns in this case are made by working holes. And holes are, in fact, a right edge and a left edge happening in the middle of the fabric. 

These edges behave, for all practical purposes, like edges. That means they will also try to curl up a little. So instead of having two places where you have to pay a little extra attention, you now have as many extra places that will try to mess with your flow as you have holes. Actually... double the amount, as each hole has a left edge and a right edge.

I've measured time, and it does look like I am almost consistenly as quick doing the pattern row as the unpatterned one. I'm working with fairly little tension on the threads, which might make things a little more difficult sometimes, but definitely helps with getting a nice, tight interlinking. Quite often in sprang, there's rather big holes even in the (technically solid) base fabric; one reason for that is the use of sticks to save the previous sheds, just in case you made a mistake and have to go back. I haven't worked with sticks in a long time, but for the Lengberg sprang, it needs not only no sticks, but also enthusiastic pressing in of the new crossings. Which is made easier by having low tension on the threads, as they will be happier to stay crossed over and not stretch out again.

Very long story short: I am having fun. In both rows. Even though I don't appreciate the edges trying to be difficult.

I spent a part of the long weekend (thanks to Pentecost) taking extra naps (thanks to a cold I managed to catch). As Murphy wills it, now that the weekend is over, I'm back to health again, and of course also back to work.

(Not really complaining here, though. Even though I could have done very well without the cold, at least the timing was only mildly annoying, slowing down the weekend, as opposed to horrendous, as in "could have hit me while abroad and needing all my brain and energy".)

Plus side of having some extra time to just sit and do stuff: I managed to do a little bit of sprang. The story behind it is that I might need to make a piece of sprang for a museum project, and that means I have to do at least a rough calculation on how much it will be, and that is, obviously, hard to do without a basis.

For things that I've done before, I have all the data written down and collected, so I know how long something takes when it goes smoothly (or, as it usually does in best case, mostly smoothly) and how long it will take if something explodes. (Figuratively, not literally.) Yes, I always take time measurements when working for work purposes. Yes, I still do it even once it's clear I am way beyond my initial estimate. Even if it hurts to see how much it's going off estimate - it will be really, really helpful for planning the next similar project.

(In case you are planning to track your work times now, too: My recommendation is a simple stopwatch to place at where you work. That way, you can pause whenever you get up for tea, or a phone call, or whatever - just in case it takes longer than planned and then you forget when you stopped.)

So now I'm spranging again. Last time was a good while ago, and this time I am supposed to follow a pattern to get, well, a pattern, so it was a little different. It took me a bit to get back into the flow and figure out how to get a fabric density similar to the original, but now I'm getting there. 

The threads are not optimal, but they have about the right thickness, and were what I had on hand quickly. 

As always with textile techniques, it pays to have a good, even set-up - differences in tension when doing the setup will mess with your work later on. And then...

There's a pattern to sprang, to the normal, very basic crossing pattern. It involves two threads from the front getting closer together as you pull one thread from the back, and then you split the pair and pull one more from the back and have a new pair to split. It's rhythmic and beautiful and mesmerising, and it only gets tricky if you have a tension issue, or if you get to the edge (where tension is normally a little bit off, too). This pattern will be persistent throughout work, only broken at edges (which includes edges of holes, making everything a bit more interesting). 

So basically, this means you have a running feedback on whether you are still correct, or if you have messed up. That requires adequate eyesight (very thankful for that!) and adequate light (thank you, Joseph Wilson Swan, Thomas Edison, and successors) and adequate concentration.

And then it's just... beautiful. It helps if you have a firm fabric, and if you take care to keep all threads nice and orderly, so I like to work close underneath the top fell. One of the hardest things, really, is now to stop in time before concentration wanes and I mess up, or to stop and do other things that need to be done. (I'm looking at you, bills I need to pay and orders I need to send out.)

By the way, my hack for getting an even warp when warping, or an evenly tensioned sprang setup: Don't tension your threads more than necessary to just keep them from sagging. You are measuring them off on a horizontal thingummy, so start with the thread completely slack and only tension it so it just goes straight. Continue with this technique throughout. 

Gravity helps you get it right here, because you always need the same amount of tension to just get it straight, no more. If you always adjust to that exact tension from slack, there's no danger of you building up more tension gradually as you are working - which is a rather common, if unwelcome, effect. In case you have accidentally tensioned more than desired (because your yarn stuck, for instance, and the ball/cone/reel/spool un-helpfully tensioned it for you), just let it go all slack, then re-tension to just straight. You do not need to make the set-up at the exact amount of tension that you want to have later! You can add all the tension you want or need for working with your  bits of string measured off this slacky way later on, and they will be deliciously even. Works with every technique where you do a set-up step measuring off threads that have to be the same length.

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!

The Hansemuseum Lübeck is up to great things - the first one in line: A conference about "Interwoven Societies", starting tomorrow.

For those of you interested in the conference, but unable to get to Lübeck for it, there's fantastic news: It will be streamed live on the EuroWeb YouTube channel! The conference programme is available here, it looks very interesting, and I'm looking forward to tuning in there tomorrow.

And then there's even more! 

The FGHO is celebrating their 30 year anniversary, and for that there's guided tours on Saturday - one of them including me. You can book your spot here on the museum website.

Finally, on Sunday I'll be giving a loopbraiding workshop. There's also still a few spaces left - you can join in!

Just before the presentation in Syke, there was an interview for the NDR (that is the Northern German Radio/TV), which is also online now. You can find it here - again all in German, of course. 

If you happen to be in London in the next months, you might consider going to see an exhibition about Kumihimo in the Japan House London. It will run until June, so there's still some time left. For those who want to get in the mood, or cannot make it but would still like to hear more about kumihimo, there is a recorded talk about the exhibition on the website as well. 

And just in case you'd prefer going for a nap, but have a hard time falling asleep: There's a Boring Books for Bed podcast. Though I'm not absolutely sure I agree with the title "boring" for something about embroidery. You can also listen to things about Egyptian Archaeology. Or Darwin's Origin of Species...