Here's a fun fact on the Egtved corded skirt: These cords are thin. Really thin. And they are not fluffy at all, being twisted really hard.

The diameter of the individual, finished cords, consisting of four threads, is about 4 mm, often a little less - so a spun yarn thickness of a tad less than a mm was what I was going for. I did spin "normal twist" for my personal feeling, which is a rather firm yarn, but most of the final appearance is decided by the cording and the twist added then and there. (I tested that with the corded tassels on the belt, as there was a slight twist difference between the cut off warp yarns and the extra yarns inserted for the tassel.)

Here's a photo of the skirt in progress, with yarns and cords:



On the left, there's the sort-of-plied-up loops drawn through the band part while weaving. I used "fresh" yarn, so each loop plied up naturally quite a bit, resulting in a loose two-ply with a closed lower end. To the right of these, lying underneath the little scale gadget, you can see finished cords - and because the two-plied loops are a loose ply, and the finished four-element-cords are twisted very hard, they look only a little thicker than the two-ply loops.

To the right of those, there's the printout of the skirt in original size, for comparison. Like in the original, my cords vary slightly in thickness and twist density, but they are quite similar-looking overall. I do hope that this will not be affected a lot when giving the whole thing the finishing wet treatment. Though with the hard twist, I suspect there won't be a lot, if any, blooming/thickening of the cords. I do expect a bit of shrinkage of the whole band, bringing the cords a little closer together, perhaps. Things that keep those projects exciting!

 
 

Another week has flown past - but yes, there is some progress. Apart from some more spinning, the weaving bit of the corded skirt is finally finished, after a bit of a hiatus. But there's just so much spinning that I can comfortably do in a day...



So the corded part is woven. I had to spin a bit more after all, as there'll be some takeup when I'll be wet-finishing, and I only did the maths after spinning... of course. Duh. The corded bit is followed by a bit of plain band, which is also done, and the final finish is a braided bit. The latter might get slimmer in the original, so I'm planning to possibly un-braid again and finish it properly when I'm nearer the completion of the whole piece. For now, there is more cording to do; after that, I'm planning to give the whole thing its nice warm bath, then finish off the cords with the rings.

The bit you see in the picture, by the way, is all the two-ply loops drawn through that are waiting to be corded. Lots and lots of twisting coming up!

A bunch of skeins is hanging out in the cellar, where it's nice and warm, and they are all drying. Actually they are almost dry - but I prefer to be really sure and leave them a little longer, if I can, than take them off sooner.



This is a little more than 2.5 km of yarn. I'm wet-finishing the skeins - soaking them in hot tap water (which has about 60° C here) for about 20 minutes, then stretching each skein, then hanging them to dry with a bit of weight to keep the yarn slightly stretched. It's not a lot of tension they are under, just enough to hold the yarns more or less straight.

I've marked each skein with a number, corresponding to the sequence they were spun in - and I'm very, very curious now to find out if the yardage has changed with the wet finish. Soon. As soon as they are completely dry...

Here I am, with some more spinning done, and another three bobbins full.



Well, by now they have been emptied and partially re-filled. I also found out that my estimate of how much needs to be spun was a considerable amount lower than the final estimate is, after doing a test weave sample. It's the Law of Reconstructions and Reproductions, it seems, that if one mis-estimates anything, it's always a mis-estimate towards lower, quicker, easier, or cheaper than it turns out to be in the end.

Soon there will be a stack of skeins large enough that it will be time to draw a hot bath for them, and give them their settling soak. I've marked every skein with its number in the spinning sequence, so I can label them once they are dried - with the length in metres, the weight and grist. That will hopefully help to see how consistent the yarn is.

I'm also thinking about doing at least a partly re-skeining after washing and drying the yarn, to see if there's shrinkage. If so, I'd need to adjust the amount of yarn spun so it doesn't run out before the fabric is finished...

I think there's not much of a comment necessary, the picture says it all:



This, dear friends, is really pleasant work in a pleasant place with very nice and butt-warming pleasant company. And a nice podcast to boot.

Calculations for the fabric that I'm currently spinning for are finished, and, well, what shall I say? Those bronze age fabrics are... big. BIG.

Which, consequently, means that even though they only have a few threads per centimetre (around 4, overall), they do add up. Which means there's a lot more spinning to do until I'm finished. Overall yarn requirement for the piece of fabric needed to make the Trindhoj find man's garments, consisting of some kind of wraparound tunic and a half-oval cloak, is about... 5700 metres. Plus a bit of wiggle room.

Even spinning quite quickly, and winding into hanks quickly, and wet-finishing several skeins at once (which is taking a lot less time than doing them one by one), that eats up a hunk of hours. So if you're looking for me, I'll be at my spinning place... making yarn. In very nice cat company.

Have you measured your production spinning speeds? If so, I'd love to hear about how much you spin in an hour.

If you haven't done it yet, but are curious - my recommendation is to use a stopwatch, and spin over several hours before measuring. Doing just half an hour or one hour can result in quite different speeds than production over more hours. (Don't ask me how I know...) Note down how long you were spinning for the sessions if your stopwatch tends to eat the current time (I have one that will turn itself off after a while, and then the numbers are gone.) For measuring, find out the circumference of your skeiner and count the rotations.

Then do the metres spun by hours division, and voilà, you have your production speed number for this yarn type and thickness with this tool and this type of fibre... which might be quite different from a different yarn. Which, I find, makes spinning an even more interesting thing!

After doing a bit of spinning in teaching context, properly medieval with distaff and hand-spindle, I'm back to spinning with the slightly more modern method...

First task of the morning was using up the remaining small bit of weft thread for the corded skirt that I had on the spool, and afterwards spinning the last bit of yarn that will be necessary to finish weaving. That, as always, was done by guesstimating how much yarn I'd need and how long it would take me to spin according to my more-or-less known spinning speed for that kind of yarn, and then spinning the guesstimated time.

And afterwards, there was more spinning straight on - for the warp threads for the first of the woven items. Our test weave turned out with a bit too many warp threads per 10 cm, so I'm aiming to spin just a little bit thicker this time around... and hope fervently that it will be the right amount of extra thickness.

Spinning for a reconstruction is always a little bit nerve-wracking for me. There's lots and lots of yarn to be spun, and there's always a little bit of danger to slowly, gradually, unnoticedly (that should totally be a word) segue from the yarn that has the intended thickness, amount of twist, and regularity into a yarn that is just a little off, and then maybe even more off. That's why I do rather frequent stops to check if I'm still in the range, and typically have a "comparison yarn" put up and nicely visible at my spinning workplace.

Apart from that, spinning is a very pleasant job, and I thoroughly enjoy it. Which is a good thing, because for making fabric for garments, a lot of spinning is necessary!