Unfortunately, I think we consumed the rest of our chocolate yesterday while looking at graphs and fiddling with axis setups (the most patient man of them all and myself). Good chocolate. Good graphs.

And not only have I graphs, I also have visual survey cards of all the spinner's threads. Which you already know from one of the photos I posted a while ago - but now I have them all. And they are all scanned in and available digitally.

And they are huge.


This has already been resized - generously, I might add, because it did not fit into the blog otherwise. It's Spinner C, by the way - our not too experienced spinner who delivered valuable comparison data to the experiment.

After weeks (or what felt like ages, at least), rainy mornings, there is actually blue sky above today. And the weather is supposed to get a bit better during the next days. Whew!

Apart from that, I'm making things like this:


which, in this case, shows the ten thread samples Spinner E spun. E's data points lie in a group underneath the trend line for wraps per 3 cm compared to tex (which compares the weight of thread per metre to its diameter, giving a hint on how tightly spun it is).

And that tells us that E spun a bit looser than most of the other spinners, and did so consistently. Incidentally, E also has a quite "flat" spinning angle, flatter than most of the other spinners. Which perfectly fits together with soft, fluffy threads.

Now at last the finish line is in sight - if things go smoothly today, the Forum Experiment analysis (the hands-on part of it, that is) will get finished.

I'm already looking forward to squeezing results out of all that data. A few steps of the documentation are still left to do, though - like scanning all the visual survey cards so that they are available for presentations and easy on-screen comparison, and reading out the spinning angle on most of the samples, but the worst and most time-consuming part will be dealt with. And in good time, since I will do a presentation of the results at Textile Forum.

In other news: Some of you might remember Hartenstein and the two knights for the exhibition there. There's something more for that museum in the air... and I'm already looking forward to lots of fun and a heap of work. Stay tuned to read more about it once details are emerging from the project!

I'm back after having a wonderful time doing all sorts of things: Going on a summer holiday and spending almost three delightful weeks getting stronger legs in pleasantly cool weather (read: cycling trip in Northern England), with a market right before leaving and a market and workshop right after coming back.

And then I spent a wonderful and very educating week in a place close to Vienna, where I met two dear colleagues for a full week and we did fibre preparation tests and spinning tests for four old-style sheep fleeces. That was a wonderful experience and I learned a huge lot about wool prepping for spinning. To top it all off, I get to spin threads for dyeing tests and a reproduction of one of the famous Hallstatt tablet woven bands - so there's spinning work being done here for the next few weeks. Yes, weeks - I don't spin all day, but rather only an hour or so, it is quite a lot of thread, and since the thread thickness of the 2-ply yarn is only about 0.2 - 0.3 mm, it is slow work as well.

And that's not the only thing being done here at the moment - rather (as usual after some time away) I have a huge to-do list with lots of exciting but time-consuming items on it, one of them finalising the spinning experiment analysis and putting it all into words, graphs and pictures for the upcoming talks about it - one at the Textile Forum, which is also drawing near at an insane speed, and one at the OEGUF conference in October in Vienna. Plus there's some other projects coming up, in different stages of pre-planning. And thanks to the many days away from home, I am feeling energised and happy to tackle all these things again. Heap of work, here I come!

I was asked recently about my electricity needs for my market stall - for lighting in the evening hours. My electricity needs are described in a single word: None.

I have a very easy policy for late-night market hours. Evening or even night market hours are a phenomenon that seems to become quite common these days on events, especially on events connected to a town anniversary festival.
My policy is that when dusk comes upon the market area, I am slowly packing up the small stuff, and when dusk is fully come, I close my shop. Nobody is going to see anything in my market stall anyways in the dark hours, except if I install a floodlight contraption (which will not fit into my tiny little TGV and aside from this is not really historical). There's just no sense to shop for plant-dyed threads in the darkness, and there's no way anyone will be able to appreciate the gossamer-fine hairnets and the delicately manufactured needles and needle-cases in the evening hours.

And my shop is not the only one thus affected - which is why evening- and night-hour markets are one of my (albeit lighter) pet peeves. Would you shop for something at night? When you can't discern its details, or properly search for flaws? I cannot believe that back in the Middle Ages somebody would have shopped for something in the evening hours unless driven by dire need. And in all the years that I visited markets, I have never bought anything after dusk (except food or drink, of course). I have looked around and chatted with people, and I have said things like "oh, that's where his/her stall is, I'll have to come back tomorrow and have a look".

I can just see no reason at all to shop at night, and I think that it doesn't fit in with a "historical market" scheme. A few oil-lamps or lanterns are nice and add to the atmosphere, but will never give off enough light to properly shop by.  With lighting by oil lamps or lanterns also come the problems with fuel spills and other, flame-related, hazards. Thus, a lot of the late-hour stalls have electrical light installed. That is more or less hidden and more or less made to look like lantern light, but it is still electrical lighting and thus out of place in an otherwise historical stall. I refuse to buy something under electrical lighting in both cases: When it looks like lantern-light (because then it's too dark for my taste to see and properly appreciate the wares) and when it looks like a floodlight installation gone astray (because this just glaringly stands out of the historical setting so much it hurts).

I'm fine with food and drinks stalls, I like to sit somewhere and see people walk by, or perform something, or listen to some musician on the square and have a little chat with friends. And I can understand if incense or lanterns are sold after dark. But all the rest? Even if it is a merchant or craftsperson I know and trust, I want to see the things I'm about to buy in daylight to fully appreciate them. So why do we need to transfer our modern late shopping hours to a historical market anyway? Is it our modern taste for convenience? Is there anybody really shopping at night, spending money enough to make it worth opening shop for so long? Or do the merchants just stand around and look decoratively with their stalls open and lit?

Soon (read: at the end of this week) this blog will go on a several-week summer-induced break - we are having a bit of a holiday, and then I'm off to do some yummy and exciting textile-y things. And I'm looking forward to both parts of this summer blog break very much!

As to the work part after the relaxing part, first there's the workshop and "Spectaculum" in Friesach, and afterwards I'm travelling to Vienna for an exhilarating project: A reproduction of some of the Hallstatt woven bands. For that, the team doing the reconstruction is actually starting from scratch, with the raw wool, and everything will be prepared and spun using proper historical implements. That means several kilometres spun on handspindles all together, and in really fine quality: The thread used in one of the bands is plied yarn with a thickness of about 0,2-0,3 mm. I am very excited about this and looking forward to doing a lot of ultra-thin spinning and then some plying - it's wonderful to be part of that work!

The whole reconstruction work is itself part of a large project called DressID, by the way - with the aim (beside others) to show the key position of dress for identity. DressID is also another try to get researchers from all over Europe together and give them the opportunity to exchange knowledge and network a bit.

I am fully occupied with sorting through some stuff here, trying to stow tools and materials in a better way than before, getting my textile technique demonstration projects maintenanced and ready to show things again, plus planning for and working on some stealth projects.

And I have one non-stealth project to blog about, too: My "Fehlerschautafeln" have arrived! These are rectangular black cardstock boards with slits punched into each of the long sides. Using these slits, thread can be wound onto the card and then sits in exactly parallel lines. And then it's very easy to get an impression of how evenly spun the thread is, if it is smooth or rather fluffy on its surface, if there are any thick blobs of fibre or badly twisted bits, and so on. Now I just have to decide how to handle all the thread samples with their vastly different lengths - should I start winding about five metres in, where possible? And if yes, from the beginning or from the end? Or should I try to get the middle section of each thread? Going "x metres in" would be much easier to accomplish, but I am willing to do the "more work" approach if there is a good reason for it; however, the method has to be the same for all the samples (except the utterly short ones where I'll use an alternative method of determining where to start).
I can wind about 3,5 metres on each of the boards; most of the spinners made between 30 and 40 metres of thread during the one hour spinnng time. 3,5 metres would thus correspond to about 6 minutes of spinning time.

Now, if you spin for two hours, and there's a sample from hour one and from hour two - when in each hour would you suspect are the most representative six minutes to pick?