During the Forum week, we of course chatted about all kinds of things (though most of them fibre-related), and of course there were requests to share this or that link or site.

So here's the Brain Test, my part - let's see if I can remember what I was supposed to.

First of all, of course, there's Phiala's String Page (where I made my first braiding steps many years ago) and where the now-famed and coveted pdf about tablet weave structures may be found. The accompanying talk lit quite a few lightbulbs in tablet weavers' heads!

There's a video on Youtube I talked about - no, wait, there's more. First there are the two wonderful and calming videos showing short-draw and long-draw spinning by Ruth MacGregor that I linked already here. (At the Forum, I had the joy of getting taught long-draw by Ruth herself. I can now spin thick and fluffy yarn, hooray and huzzah! And Ruth in person is even more calm and friendly than her videos suggest.) Then there's the incredibly speedy weaving on an inkle loom, to be found here.

Then there was mention of the Tsarina of Tsocks. If anyone can tempt me to add knitting to my stash of textile techniques, it is her with her incredibly beautiful socks! There's also a blog where she writes about tsocks (who would have guessed?)

Another thing I frequently mentioned to several persons (mainly day-guests and visitors, though) is Therèse de Dillmont's book. If you have not yet found out about it, go visit the webpage where the whole book (in the English version) is available for free!


Oh, and I am also supposed to put up pictures of the event (and the spinning) on the Textilforum website, send around the list of adresses of the participants and analyse and evaluate the data from the experiment. Which will all happen, and soon.

A few days ago, I discovered that a colleague who also studied archaeology at Bamberg has been blogging since 2007 - he is not only excavating and publishing the results, he is also doing a very nice job designing virtual 3D models of historical sites and buildings. On the blog, Mathias Hensch is writing about his excavation work and the historical context, including photos of buildings and of course trenches (and archaeologists in trenches).

If you can read German or like to look at archaeologists at work, take a look at the blog of Schauhütte - Archäologische Dienstleistungen!

I'm sorry this blog post comes so late, but I seem to have caught some kind of summer flu or similar illness. There will be no blog post tomorrow, but I hope to be fit and blogging again on Monday.

I have long been fascinated with fingerloop braiding (or loop manipulation braiding, if you prefer). It is an amazing technique with some disadvantages, but many advantages - the two most important, in my opinion, being ease of working and speed.

There has been a discussion recently in Cathy's costuming blog concerning the manufacture of a six-ended braid in red and yellow to go on a viking apron dress. And I'm afraid I haven't convinced the participants yet that fingerloop would be the thing to use...

What makes braiding difficult is the number of strands. Everybody who has done some single-end braiding knows this: While three ends are easy to handle, five ends demand considerably more attention and practice, and more ends even more so. For a braid with six ends, this means it will be quite time-consuming.
Here enters Fingerloop - to the rescue! With a loop-braiding pattern, it is possible to create almost any* traditional braiding pattern, with exactly half the amount of "ends" to handle. A six-end conventional braid becomes a very fast and easy three-loop-braid, resulting in the same braided pattern as the single-end version. For uneven numbers of ends, the solution is nearly as simple: for a five-end braid, just braid a normal five-loop pattern without turning any of the loops, and you'll end up with two five-end braids.

Because I find that the loops are much easier to handle than single ends, I personally do prefer the loop-braided version. The disadvantages are there - like a tendency to get a tighter braid towards the end, the stubbornness of mistakes (they are very hard to undo) and some technical difficulties for longer braids (though you can enlist somebody to carry the shed, or carry it with your toe, or even build a contraption for beating), but to me, they are far outweighed by the ease and speed of loop-braiding versus single-end braiding.

And to come back to Cathy's problem with the six-end braid, here are some possibilities for a three-loop braiding solution:

This is a simple three-loop braid, with loops consisting of one black and one red shank, both hands taking the loop turned (the lower shank becomes the upper shank on the other hand). It's quite firmly braided, bringing out a nice pattern of triangles in red and black.


This is the same setup, braided more loosely, with the loops turned 360° instead of 180° (so the same colour stays always on top).


This is a 3-loop braid made with 3 differently-coloured loops - one red, one black, one light gray, to show the structure better. Both hands taking their loop turned.


And this is the same setup, but only one hand taking the loop turned - resulting in a double-width band.


Such a double-width band with parted loops (half red half black) will result in a band that is black on the left and red on the right (or vice versa) if the loop taken turned is turned 360° and a kind of "checkered" band with black left and red right, then changing to red left and black right after a while and so on.

There are actually lots of variations using only two colours. And that's another thing I like with fingerloop - even if the colour scheme will not be intuitive, by changing the loop colours, making them from two differently coloured ends, or changing the turning sequence, many different variations can be produced.


*The exception to this is four-end whipcording. It's not possible to recreate this, but then, it's not necessary: whipcording is easily done with bobbins, and quite fast with two persons working.

So no proper blog post today.

Go to this time-sink this wonderful page with ressources instead:

On-Line Digital Archive of Documents on Weaving and Related Topics

and have fun!

I'll toss you some nice links today for a change, and I hope to get a proper textile post in during next week - it's been much too long since the last one. For now, enjoy the more or less textile related goodness here:

The National Museum of Denmark has a new webpage that's worth a good look. If you click your way through to the "exhibitions", you get wonderful pictures that can be zoomed for a real close-up view. Don't miss the Mammen textiles in the Viking section while you're browsing!

I know few people as active as Roeland Paardekooper. The man is a veritable epicentre of connections between folks in archaeology, experimental archaeology, and Living History - it seems to me as if everybody knows Roeland. He's running a rather large database with articles and information about archaeology and open air museums that can be found on http://publicarchaeology.eu/.

In a comment to one of my hairnet posts, Isis from Medieval Silkwork pointed me to another wonderful database: KIK-IRPA, the website of the Royal Institut for Cultural Heritage in Belgium. Click your way through to the photo library database and be awed: They have pre- and post-conservation shots of the hairnets I have shown and a lot more truly amazing things. Thanks, Isis!

And non-textile related, but nice nevertheless: A kitchen maid from around 1900 blogs about life in and around her kitchen, including recipes. Brought to you by the Danish National Museum, and available in Danish only.

Through some lucky coincidences in timing and an old acquaintance, I will be interviewed on Tuesday for "Huscarl on Air". Huscarl is an independant Austrian online magazine that offers a German-language platform to everybody connected with Living History, medieval Markets/Fairs and Reenactment. They are aiming for interesting and variegated reports, both in written form and on their monthly radio programme (all German, too).

This Tuesday, the radio programme topic is archaeology - how one gets the idea to study this, what excavations are really like, and what scientists and Living History folks think about each other. The programme is on air tomorrow evening, 19.00 to 22.00, and you can tune in to Radio B 138 via the Internet. And if you can't wait until tomorrow to hear something from Huscarl on Air, you can download live recordings from past programmes. Enjoy!

Let's say you could not resist the temptation and started netting yesterday. Now you'll need to know how to do the embroidery, right?

The stitch used for the bird motifs is called linen stitch, because it emulates the binding most commonly found in linen cloth: tabby. It is simple darning, first filling in threads in one direction. Then, in a 90° angle to that, you weave the thread in with your needle, alternately going over and under the threads already in (including the threads of the meshwork).

In case you have never tried darning in this way before, you can have a look at Thérèse de Dillmont's instructions, straight out of her wonderful book "Encyclopedia of Needlework". And if you don't know her book yet, consider getting a copy - either an old one, or one of the reprints. Or go for the online version at encyclopediaofneedlework.com. In any case, don't miss out on this book: If I could choose only a single book for textile crafts to keep, it would be this one.

Bonus pic: The netting needle tip, without thread on.

Clickable for larger view