Here's one of the things I played around with regarding spinnning angles - an overlay of several measurements by several people on the same yarn picture.


It's hard to see, but you'll hopefully be able to make out the angles drawn onto the thread. I find it fascinating that about nobody picked the same spot, and that the results are so mixed (which is probably due to my spinning).

I'm also fascinated by another comparison - two threads, one of which was spun quite a bit firmer than the other one. Measuring the angles, though, gave almost the same result for both. Was that a fluke of my measuring? (I'll probably do a few more measurements to find out...)

Anyway - it stays interesting. And it makes me wonder how reliable the spinning angle is... though I'm quite convinced that there is not a better thing to be found for the archaeological or historical textiles. Sigh.

The work is all done and finished - the last of the fabrics has been cut into and stitched up into a hood. And while I was really happy that everything was done and finished and I could send it off, it was actually hard to pack it up, as the resulting piece was so wonderful that I would have gladly kept it for myself!

The hood, of course, could not be sent off without first trying it on in a few different styles:

[caption id="attachment_2956" align="alignnone" width="385"] The usual, boring way to put on a hood. It was surprisingly heavy, but very warm and comfy!


[caption id="attachment_2954" align="alignnone" width="393"] The "pirate headcloth"-style, one of my favourite ways to wear a hood. Also one of the reasons why a hood has a liripipe - you tie the thing in place with it.


[caption id="attachment_2955" align="alignnone" width="405"] And yet another of my favourite styles! This is basically the neck opening sitting on the head, with the cape draping over head and shoulders in the back. Warm on the head, cool around the neck, and visually stunning.


If you want to see the hood for yourself, you'll need to go to the Schiffahrtsmuseum in Bremerhaven after March 14, where it will hang out in the new exhibition around the medieval cog.

The fabric turned out wonderfully after being fulled - soft and lush and beautiful. It also surprised me a lot.

It's a fourshaft twill, which means every thread goes over two and under two, staggered to give diagonal lines. In a fairly balanced weave with a similar amount of warps and wefts per cm, that should result in a fabric that looks the same on both sides.

Well, guess what this cloth does not do?


Look the same on front and back.

There you go. Be surprised along with me! (Probably has to do something with the spin direction in relation to the twill direction...)

The last of the fabrics for the project has arrived - a 2/2 twill woven from the same yarns as the previous plainweave fabric. It's now hanging out to dry after being fulled just like the others... and it's beautiful. Really, really beautiful.

Here's the cloth in its raw state:


And this is what it looked like after washing:


The last picture of the after-fulling state will have to wait for tomorrow when it's dry again - but I can already tell you that the fabric shows no tracking, hasn't shrunk a lot, and is really nice.

Here's a closeup of the threads after washing:


And tomorrow, it will go off to new adventures - cloth metamorphosis part two!

The third batch of cloth for the project is done, and it turned out just beautifully. Here's the cloth in its raw state:


After a little soak and a bit of a wash, it looked like this:


And then I took a little walk on it, and after about one hour, I had this end result:


I find it totally fascinating how the fabric changed - especially its hand, which went from stiff and coarse in the raw fabric to firm, but still somehow soft and fluffy in the fulled version. And I can't imagine a more beautiful tracking effect than the one apparent in the fulled fabric - it looks splendidly like diagonal lines even though it's plain weave throughout.

I've already hinted at it - while the packing cloth has turned out very nicely, and the sailcloth is about as perfectly as I had imagined it, there's a third type of fabric to be done... and that one is acting up. Considerably.

Doing archaeotechnical work (as in "recreating stuff known from archaeological sources") is interesting, and exciting, and lovely, and usually it is great fun. It is even more so if you are doing it as part of your work, and are actually getting paid for it.

However, archaeotechnical work also includes a guarantee that you will occasionally get kicked into your face by your technique and materials. You've not estimated correctly how long something will take, or how difficult it will be. Something behaves unexpectedly and throws all your plans into the garbage bin, leaving you to draw up new ones and do the work again. Leaving you also to lament your monetary gains that are joining the plans at the happy bin-party as your work hours, now unpaid, rack up and up and up. Germans have the term "Lehrgeld" for things like that - the tuition fee you pay, in this case to life.

And yes, all of the times in the past that something like this has happened, I did get to learn a lot from the experience. However, it is still painful. It's not only the feeling that you have made a mistake, or two; it's the tendency for a bad feeling to creep into your soul, making you think that maybe you are not competent at all. Maybe it will never work. Maybe you should never have agreed to do it.

It's especially painful if it is taking a colleague along for the ride, and the self-doubts are not getting fewer with someone else hanging in the same bad spot with you. There's no way out, though, but to try it again and again, keeping at it until you succeed. Hopefully before the deadline has rushed by... and at the moment, I think I can already hear it. (It does not help that February has fewer days than any other month in the year...)

If you're looking for me? I'll be spinning some more. Again.

Here's another little gem regarding the measurement of twist angles: the Human Factor. As in "different people get different results".

I had been suspecting it for a while, and the last Textile Forum gave me the opportunity (and the willing participants, a big thank you to you all!) to do a little test.

If you'd like to play yourself, here is the photo of one hand-spun thread. What twist angle would you read out for this one?

Once you're finished, scroll down... and see what others measured.


Done?

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Here you go:


As you can see, measurements of the eight participants of this mini-study range from between 20° and a bit to 48° and some, depending on where the measurements were taken... and who took them. Several people took measurement in a similar spot (there are two small black dots about in the middle of the thread), but even then, results range from 31° to 48°.

So. Twist angle. Hello there. It would have been nice to have a reliable, measureable something to describe threads with... right? Describing fabrics or threads with words is hard in any case, but this just seems to make it even harder.

Sigh.